They live in homes of bamboo wood, concrete blocks and corrugated metal. They cook over fires. They have no running water.
At the same time, many of the simple homes of Hmong refugees at Wat Tham Krabok are supplied with electricity from power lines that crisscross the community’s dirt streets.
Many of the homes have televisions and VCRs or DVD players. The refugees communicate with relatives in the United States and other parts of the world by cell phones or e-mail, available in the Internet booths dotting the camp.
On weekends, they watch movies projected against a large white sheet in a crude outdoor theater. Their children play computer games in a cobbled-together video arcade, if they can fork over 15 baht per hour, or 37 cents.
The most modern technologies have found their way to people living a timeless, simple life of the mountains in the refugee camp.
Vang Sue Yang, 32, and his wife, Meng Lee, 26, who recently moved to Wausau with their four children, had a cell phone and television in their home at Wat Tham Krabok.
The phone allowed them to talk with relatives in the United States, and the television gave them at least a small window on the world outside the refugee village. The family used television to watch news channels and features about other countries.
“We would watch nature shows with animals from around the world,” Yang said.
Yang and Lee said exposure to technology in Thailand is helping them in America.
A small number of the refugees at Wat Tham Krabok are immersed in modern technology, and they know it will ease their transition when they move to the United States.
Pao Moua, 30, operates an Internet booth with his brother. They plan to move to Minneapolis. “A Thai teacher taught me how to use a computer,” said Moua. People can use his Internet setup to call relatives in the United States for 5 baht per minute, which comes to about $1 for eight minutes.
