The drive to establish the pulp and paper industry in Thailand has brought losses and suffering to people who have been forced to leave their lands. When Pira Sudham left home for Bangkok at the age of fourteen, he became aware that he was born in the poorest part of Thailand. When Pira Sudham left his home in Nong Eso, Hamlet 13, Napo District, Burirum for Bangkok for the first time at the age of fourteen, he became aware that he was born in the poorest part of Thailand. Some Bangkok Thais who wanted to show their contempt said that he was not Thai, but a stupid, impoverished Lao-speaking ethnic from Esarn. Most Esarn people who try to escape from the abject penury of their birthplace and make a success of their lives in Thailand s large cities become side-street food hawkers, labourers, taxi drivers, workers in factories, slaves in sweatshops, servants and prostitutes.
Some luckier ones are boxers or employees in offices.
Some try to hide from their new friends and colleagues that they are from Esarn, being ashamed of their Lao tongue and humble origins. A large number of the Esarn Laos in exile do not want to return home. Poverty, drought, debt, land becoming more barren or damaged by saline waste water from salt mining, rivers becoming highly polluted from toxic waste released by factories, land lost through debt, gambling or forced relocation to make way for dam constructions or for planting eucalyptus trees to enable investors to develop the pulp and paper industry, drive the people of Esarn away from their villages. Pira Sudham considered himself more fortunate than most when his parents gave him away to a Buddhist temple in Bangkok as a dek wat , an acolyte to serve the monks. During the first year as a temple boy in the capital, it dawned on him that he had little chance to improve himself.