Claudia Case came home to Seattle from a hill-tribe trek in northern Thailand delighted by her trip but dismayed by the poverty she saw.

She decided to do something about it.

Case is setting up a foundation called "Friends of Thailand" that will funnel aid - medical supplies and money to food and clothes - to those in need.

"It's not just for the hill tribes, but they would get a major portion," said Case, a real-estate broker.

"We went into one hill-tribe village and there was a little boy who'd cut his foot badly a few days before. Nobody had been able to do anything for him until we arrived with a first-aid kit. . . .

"We became very endeared to those people and thrilled by the Thai people in general. Everyone who was in our tour group wanted to help."

Basic living

As Case and other travelers to northern Thailand have found, the hill-tribe villages are no rural Shangri-la.

Many tribespeople are extremely poor. They live in wood huts in villages that often have no sanitation, no electricity, no medical care and no schools. Some of the less-remote villages are better off and do have primary schools and electric power - and TV antennas sprouting from the rooftops. But in most villages, life remains very basic.

It's no pristine environment, either. The tropical forests around some villages are vanishing, both because of the traditional slash-and-burn agriculture and illegal logging. (The heavy siltation

and runoff that follows over-logging has been blamed for much of the flooding of major Thai rivers this fall.)

Yet thousands of European and American tourists head for the hill tribes each year. Most are looking for adventure, physical and cultural. They usually find it - and they find gracious villagers.

For Westerners, a hill-tribe trek gives a glimpse of a kind of society long gone in Europe or North America. These are self-sufficient villages, deep in the mountain jungle, still set apart from modern society by their centuries-old languages, customs and traditional dress. A walk of a few miles between villages is a walk between cultures.

An estimated half-million people, belonging to about a dozen ancient tribes, are scattered in villages across northern Thailand. The major tribes include the Akha, Lisu, Lahu, Hmong and Karen.

These people are ethnically distinct from the majority Thai, having migrated from Tibet, Burma (also known as Myanmar), Laos and China. National borders have little meaning for them: their villages are the borders of their world. Many hill-tribe people still move at will between Thailand, Laos and Burma on back-country forest paths, far from any formal border crossings. Some still move their villages every few years to carve out new and more fertile fields from the jungle.

While most Thais are Buddhist, many hill-tribe villagers are animists, believing in omnipresent spirits. But Christian missionaries have roamed the hills for decades, and some tribespeople have adopted Christianity. In some Karen tribal villages, children and adults serenade trekkers with a perfect renditition, year-round and in English, of "Silent Night."

Some hill-tribe families trace their stay in Thailand back 200 years; others have come in recent years, especially from Burma where separatist Karen tribal groups and the Burmese government have been fighting for decades in one of the world's longest and least-known civil wars.

Thailand's much revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej and the Queen Mother, who died in the summer, have taken the hill-tribe people under the royal family's wing, helping to get schools and other social services established while championing the villagers' traditional lifestyle.

Yet the modern world has taken its toll. While some tribal elders traditionally have smoked opium and grown the opium-producing poppy flowers for their own use, some villages have become enmeshed in the drug world.

The Golden Triangle - the borderlands where Burma, Laos and Thailand meet - has been a major opium and heroin supplier to the world in recent decades. For some impoverished villagers, the lucrative drug trade has been irresistible. And there are addicts, devastated by opium and heroin, in some villages.

The Thai government, with U.S. backing, has cracked down on the drug trade, scattering military posts through the hill-tribe area. Villagers are urged to grow corn and coffee instead of opium poppies. And helicopters occasionally swoop over villages on search-and-destroy missions for poppy fields.

Tourists have brought some profound changes, too. The ever-increasing flow of European and American trekkers introduces Western ways, Western material goods and Western desires into these once-isolated villages.

Many young people now leave the villages and head to the bright lights of Thailand's big cities. Some find work. Some young women are lost to prostitution, especially in Bangkok.

Cultural etiquette

For trekkers, visiting a hill-tribe village can be culturally complex - and confusing. Some visitors may feel like voyeurs, swooping into a village for a day or two to see how the locals live. And the contrast between what Westerners have, and what villagers don't, can be overwhelming.

Some tribespeople may resent trekkers, particularly if visitors come with cameras blazing or if the village is overloaded with tourists. After all, trekkers stay in villagers' homes; there are no hotels in the hill-tribe villages.

There are some ways that trekkers can smooth the cross-cultural encounter for themselves and villagers:

-- Go with an experienced tour guide. And before you sign up, ask lots of questions about a specific tour's itinerary, and the tour guide.

-- Know what to expect. Trekkers sleep in a group in villagers' homes, use an Asian-style squat toilet (or the bushes) and have no amenities and little privacy. A trekker needs to be reasonably fit to cope with the primitive living conditions and to walk for at least three hours a day. However, everyone from 7-year-olds to 70-year-olds goes trekking.

-- Be respectful. Dress modestly, as the hill-tribe people do. Save shorts and tank tops for the beach. Wear pants (better protection from sun, bugs and scratchy bushes on the trails, too) and a shirt with sleeves. Ask permission before you take photos of people or their homes. Some villagers, or whole villages, may resent being photographed or even forbid it. Don't touch the spirit gate or the statues found at the entrance to some villages; they are religious icons.

-- Break the ice. Playing with the children is often the best way to get to know villagers and to start enjoying each other. Bring bottles of bubble mix or a small ball or frisbee for playing with the kids. Photographs of your family, your house, your hometown (and postcards of your city) are a big hit with both children and adults. You're there to see their lives; give them some idea of yours.

"The villagers see us as these fabulously wealthy people who never work. And who have all this stuff. They're just mystified by us," said Marilyn Staff, an American who's lived in Thailand and nows runs the Colorado-based Bolder Adventures company which arranges treks and tours in Thailand and Southeast Asia.

"Take things to show them that help convey that we have a real life, that we have kids and jobs. That we do things other than travel and look at them."

-- Play fair. In some villages, tribespeople will offer handicrafts for sale. Bargaining is expected, but don't start bargaining - and getting their hopes up - unless you really intend to purchase something. What is a casual souvenir purchase to you - a $2 bracelet or a $4 handbag - can be major income to villagers.

-- Be cautious with gifts. Giving presents can be tricky: it creates expectations, can foster begging by children and it's hard to distribute gifts fairly within a village. If you want to donate some money or simple medicines, such as bandages, ask your tour guide for advice. If you become especially fond of a child and really want to give a small gift, give it through the child's parents so that they retain control. ----------------------------------------------------------------- CONTACTS

Aid to Thailand

For information on the "Friends of Thailand" foundation, write Friends of Thailand, c/o Claudia Case, 10315 23rd N.E., Seattle, WA 98125.