Kuy Erotic

Ask a Kuy speaker what the name means and the answer is plain: kuy is the word for a person. It is what the people call themselves, and many prefer it to Suay, the name Thai and Lao speakers long used, which in Thai also means tribute. Their country is the dry lowland and patchy forest where Thailand, Cambodia and Laos meet. On the Thai side that means Surin, Sisaket, Buriram and Ubon Ratchathani. In northern Cambodia it means Preah Vihear, Stung Treng and Kampong Thom, and in southern Laos, parts of Salavan and Champasak. The Kuy are generally counted among the older populations of this part of the mainland, settled there before Tai speakers moved in.

Kuy is a Katuic language of the Austroasiatic family. That makes it a distant relative of Khmer and a closer one of Bru and Katu, which are spoken further east toward the Annamite hills. It has no script of its own, so when it is written it borrows Thai, Khmer or Lao letters. How firmly people hold on to the language varies from place to place. Many Kuy in Thailand grew up speaking Northern Khmer or Isan at home, and in Cambodia whole communities have slid into Khmer within a few generations.

Beyond the region, the Kuy are known for elephants. In Surin, Kuy families caught and trained wild elephants for generations, and the work came bound in ritual. Senior elephant masters led the hunts, and the lasso of buffalo hide was treated as the home of a guardian spirit. In the forest the hunters used a special restricted vocabulary, and their families at home kept taboos until they returned. Surin itself takes its name from a title the Siamese court gave a Kuy headman in the eighteenth century, reportedly for helping recapture a runaway royal elephant. Catching wild elephants has ended, but the village of Ban Ta Klang still raises elephants and sends them to the Surin Elephant Round-up each November. In Cambodia the older reputation is for iron: Kuy smelters worked the ore of Phnom Dek in Preah Vihear, and their metal is thought to have reached Angkor.

Most Kuy are Theravada Buddhists, but the spirits never left. Ancestor and household spirits still receive offerings, and farming and healing still involve ritual. In Thailand the Kuy are largely part of everyday Isan life as rice farmers, weavers and migrant workers. In Cambodia, families in Preah Vihear and around the Prey Lang forest have long tapped trees for resin. Their villages have become some of the most stubborn opponents of logging and plantation concessions on their land.