The Moken (sea gypsies)

The Moken are animalistic, and traditionally nomadic, a sea-faring race belong to no one country. They travel without Passport, crossing international boundaries without care and probably without the knowledge that they are even doing so. Whole families (very often three to four generations) live as a unit on a single boat.

The boats, which are the sphere of their universe, are passed on from generation to generation. They are of a wooden build with an average length not exceeding fifteen meters. A wooden cabin starts just forward of amidships, running aft to the stern and has a roof of thatched palm leafs or bamboo slats. Mechanization has given them a Yanmar single cylinder diesel outboard engine, (known locally as a long tail, as the propeller shaft is long and can exceed 3 meters, giving the impression that the boat does indeed have a tail!).

Trying to trace some history on the Moken. we have managed to find some interesting facts, directly relating to them. Extracts from ‘Siamese White’ by Maurice Collis read:

“Besides occasional pirates, the Mergui archipelago was well known as the lair of certain professional freebooters called Saleeters, men of a race distinct from those who lived on the mainland. They seem to have been very formidable and were great seamen”. 

“The Saleeters, in boats of a peculiar build, which could weather the roughest seas, had no settled abode. They moved from place to place like gypsies, encamping on the islands but never cultivating the soil. Piracy and fishing for pearls were their only means of support. They infested the routes through the archipelago, like outlaws on a heath over which pass roads to a capital.”

The sea gypsies still exist in the archipelago, under the name of Salons, but with the suppression of piracy, which came in the nineteenth century, when the English dominated the bay, their warlike manner of life was interrupted. This loss of a traditional occupation broke their spirit, for now they are a timid, slinking race, very poor, making a precarious living by diving for pearl-shell and collecting ambergris (sea cucumbers). Like other disheartened people, they have taken to drugs. Opium simulates for them in dreams, the energy which once drove them against Junkceylon (Phuket)”

It seems that the name ‘Saleeter’ is the old Burmese name for Sea-gypsy. They are now referred to by the name ‘Salon’ by the Burmese. ‘Moken’ is the English term for them.