Chaing Rai - Akha village
Trip Start
Oct 10, 2005
1
10
19
Trip End
Ongoing
Chaing Rai,
Thailand
Thursday, December 8, 2005
The weather in the North is getting pretty cold at night so I decided to go out and get myself a jacket for riding in, after finding one I liked and trying it on I started the haggling process. The tag price was 850 baht but he immediately dropped to 800 baht, I thought I would go through the steps and did an 'that a bit expensive' look and offered him 790 baht, at this suggestion he started to look all stressed and saying, no, no not sell 790 Baht. 790 Baht not lucky, me sell for 780 baht or not sell. I had to have him repeat this as he just lowered his price even more. Anyway I ended up getting the jacket for 780 baht and had a good chat with him afterwards and he ended up telling me that if he not sell for a price with the number 8 in it he would have a bad day and not have any more sales.
Another thing never to do over here is to go window shopping first thing in the morning, the Thai's believe that if the first customer of the days does not buy anything they will have a very bad day in the shop. I had to buy a stick of gum at a few shops just so they would make a few sales that day.
After yet another visa run to the Burma border (Mae Sai) and another 30 days to stay in Thailand I decided to travel a little south to the mountains in Chaing Rai province. I stayed in the city for a couple of days then happened to stumble across a Thai guy who told me about a Akha village that you could go and stay with in the mountains, Akha people are a hill tribe that are situated in Northern Thailand and Sounthern Burma.
Akha village
After a 45 minute ride I arrived in a village with a bunch of locals staring at me, at this time I thought I was in the wrong village so I asked directions in broken Thai only to be told that this was the place that I would be staying. Initially I thought that they were expecting me to sleep rough in one of the rice fields but after trying out my broken Thai I managed to be shown to a hut on the side of the mountain with a balcony that had spectacular views.
In the end the place was not as backwards as I first thought and after wandering around the village for a few minutes I saw that the electricity poles ran all the way up to the village, it turn out that they had hot showers and a fridge to keep the beers cold. All is good.
It was a really interesting few days watching the locals get on with their day to days lives and then at night time sitting around a fire with them eating, drinking and having a good laugh. These people must see a few tourist that do the same thing that I did and you would think they would get sick of it but they made me feel extremely welcome and went out of their way to make sure I was enjoying myself.
I did a few hikes in the area, one to a hot spring (an Akha spa), once to a river to watch them catch a few fish and one to an amazing four tier waterfall that you could swim in, an amazing place. Photos attached.
