Nyaw Erotic

The Nyaw are one of the small Tai-speaking peoples of the middle Mekong, and what holds them together is a shared memory of a journey. Ask in Tha Uthen, the riverside district of Nakhon Phanom that serves as their unofficial capital, and you will hear some version of the same account: their ancestors came from Hongsa, in what is now Xayaburi province of Laos, moved downriver in the early nineteenth century, and founded a settlement at Chaiburi, where the Songkhram River meets the Mekong. The war that followed Chao Anouvong's failed revolt against Bangkok in the late 1820s scattered them across both banks. Some stayed on the Lao side, in what are now Khammouane and Bolikhamsai provinces. Others recrossed the river and spread through Nakhon Phanom, Sakon Nakhon, Nong Khai and Maha Sarakham, with smaller outlying communities in central and eastern Thailand.

Their language, written Nyaw, Yo or Nyo depending on who is transcribing it, belongs to the Tai branch of the Kra-Dai family and sits very close to Lao and the Isan speech around it. Neighbors follow it without much trouble but notice it immediately: the tones fall differently, and a few everyday words mark a speaker as Nyaw within a sentence or two. Nearly everyone also speaks Isan Lao and standard Thai, the language of school and government, and the usual pressure applies. In town, Nyaw is increasingly a language of home and older relatives.

Religion is Theravada Buddhism practiced in the Lao manner, which means the temple and the spirit world share the calendar. Families make merit, ordain sons for a season, and keep the cycle of twelve monthly observances common across the Lao world, while staying on good terms with village guardian spirits and ancestors. The landmark of Nyaw country is Phra That Tha Uthen, a tall white and gold stupa on the Mekong bank, built in the early twentieth century on the model of the older That Phanom downstream.

Most Nyaw families grow rice and fish the Mekong and the Songkhram, a river whose seasonally flooded forest supports one of the most productive fisheries in the Northeast, and many now have members working in Bangkok or abroad. Thailand counts them simply as Thai citizens, and locally they are named as one of the peoples of Isan alongside the Phu Thai, Kaloeng, So and Lao. In Sakon Nakhon, Nyaw families make up much of the old population in and around the provincial capital. Provincial festivals in Nakhon Phanom and Sakon Nakhon now parade Nyaw dress and dance beside those of their neighbors, a sign that the name still carries weight.