The Akha are an ethnic group who live in small villages at higher elevations in the mountains of Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Yunnan Province in China

Akha, the isolated Laotian village that touches the clouds

Beyond the mountains, almost where the earth meets the blue sky, we find a village located about 1,000 meters above sea level where a tribe lives above the clouds. The village of Akha in Laos, nestled in a complicated place, the tribe speaks their own language and you could even say that they ‘live in another time’ as they struggle to maintain their traditions in the present.

The Akha tribe comes from China, specifically from the province of Yunnan. It was in the middle of the 19th century when this tribe migrated to Vietnam and Laos to later arrive in Thailand via Burma. It is said that the first village in Thailand was established around 1903 near the Burmese border. There are currently more than 50,000 Akha living in Thailand, settled mainly in the provinces of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, in the northwest of the country.

As in the cases of many of the ethnic groups found in the Golden Triangle, an area where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet at the confluence of the Ruak and Mekong rivers, their villages sit on mountainous elevations with a traditional structure: their houses are elevated and built with bamboo and wood on stilts. In addition, they all have a ‘spirit gate’ that separates men from domestic animals, spirits and wild animals. They are engaged in planting coffee and tea, as well as farming and selling some fruits from the plantations.

An Akha small village is also located in the Thai jungle, and can be visited with the help of tourist agents located in the area. The Akha people live in the high mountains in the provinces of Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai, as well as in other parts of Laos and China. Over the years, tourism has increased in the village.

-Thailand News (TN). Video courtesy of Now in Lao / Youtube

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