Women here carry a lot of responsibility — being good wives, helping improve the family's finances, preserving the values and traditions of family and culture. In principle, we're equal to men. Women mostly handle the housework, cooking, and raising children, along with side work like sewing or making handicrafts and souvenirs. Men mostly do the harder physical labour, like working the rice fields. Women can step into men's jobs if needed — if a husband gets sick, his wife can take over on every front — but it doesn't really work the other way around; a man wouldn't know how to run the household.
Tourism has brought some genuinely good cultural changes — more traditional music and dance performances now happen than before. Religious life hasn't changed much, since not many people here are especially religious to begin with; those who are tend to be Catholic or Buddhist. Social relations among people have stayed largely the same, though they've grown a bit more open.
The food available has changed too, in both quality and variety — tourists like different dishes than we're used to, so new options have appeared, and there's simply more food overall, since there are more mouths to feed. The way people dress has shifted a little as well — the basic style is the same, but the details and colours have changed.
I think tourism can develop here in a good way, but it needs real attention and better organisation. Right now there's almost no control — people build what they want, wherever they want, and that's changed the town a great deal, not always for the better. What I'd like to see going forward is a fairer distribution of the benefits, so women and minority people can earn more from it too.
Up till now there is almost no control, people just can go ahead and do what they want, built what they want, and where they want it — that has changed the town a lot, and not all for the better.
Equal in theory, still first in the kitchen — and a town that's growing without anyone quite steering it.