Akha Hill Tribe

What a funny few day’s I’ve had…

Absolutely luuurved Pai (just not the people there, huge shame), so decided to stay with the Akha hill Tribe, just north of Chiang Rai for a few day’s before hopping over the boarder to Laos.

The website looked amazing – lots of opportunities to do voluntary work for the community, and the location looked gorgeous too. After my 10 hour bus journey (Pai to Chiang Mai, lunch break then bus up to Chiang Rai and transfer to the hill tribe) we arrived (myself an a Colombian girl I met on the bus). As advertised we were after the 100 bhat room but these were not available due to ‘renovation’ (surprise surprise) and all they had were 300 bhat rooms. Now to you this may not sound a lot (about 6 quid) however I’m trying my hardest to work to a 10 pounds-a-day budget (hahaha) and have so far been able to stay in MAX 200 bhat rooms. We were truly in the middle of nowhere so we did our best bartering and lowered the cost from 300 b to 200 b. Meant we could only really stay for two nights.

This actually turned out in our favour as the 5km hilly trek to the local ‘spring’ turned out to be nothing more than a lido ;-( the food was TERRIBLE and we didn’t get any sleep due to the ants in the bed, HUGE spiders and lychee trees which dropped fruit all through the night onto the tin roofing!! At least the local waterfall was amazing and well worth a visit. As for the view from my hut – Amaaaazing!! This hasn’t put me off, I plan to do many more homestay’s in Laos.

Photos: will follow shortly, internet/computer @ current hostel is rubbish

I am currently in a great guest-house in Chiang Rai (smaller version of Chiang Mai, north east Thailand) and we are making our way to Laos tomorrow. This means a 05.00 start, leave hostel at 05.30, get to bus station and catch the 06.00 bus. 2.5 hour ride to Chiang Khong where we catch a ferry to the Laos border and get our visas (name escapes me, Huay Xai or something like that). From there the two day slow boat down the Mekong. Long few day’s but (hopefully) relaxing.

I hope you are all safe, well and happy. Sending over all my love, hugs & kisses XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX