Novice monks and students at Wat Fa Wiang from the Shan State line up for their lunch at 12pm. The won’t eat again until the next morning. Many Shan people fled Burma and took refuge in the monastery after heavy fighting in this area in 2002 between the Shan State Army and the Burmese Goverment.
Northern Thailand and the borderlands between Burma and Laos are home to a number of stateless hill tribes and is renown for drug smuggling and human trafficking.