The Hilltribes

The Akha and Lahu hill tribe villages that we visited recently were located at relatively high elevations (4000’ on Al’s GPS) and situated near or right atop their mountain settings. The steep and rugged terrain mandates that most homes be built on stilts and ensures that the people who live there are decidedly strong and fit. In terms of gradient and rutted surfaces, the roads to these villages are comparable to the more extreme fire roads on Mt.Tzouhalem and Cobble Hill. One difference, though, is that the steepest sections are almost always paved with concrete, presumably to provide some semblance of traction when it rains, because wet clay soil is at least as slippery as motor oil. In the rainy season some sections of these roads would be impossible to negotiate, even on foot. At one point we came across a work party paving a stretch of hill, and I realized that they were mixing the concrete by hand on site. Imagine building a concrete slab, 6” thick and one lane wide, on a very steep slope, with only hoes and buckets for tools. Such patience and tenacity!
I once made the mistake of describing a hill tribe village as being in the middle-of-nowhere, but I have since realized how that comment merely highlighted my ignorance. Every remote village is the centre of somebody’s universe, and in some cases that somebody might never range more than 20km from it during the course of a lifetime (in fact, from that person’s perspective the little village would actually be “in the middle of everywhere”).
We have enjoyed sumptuous Thai meals during our stay in Ban Natoe, including a number of “local foods” such as deep fried bamboo worms, ant egg soup, sliced banana flowers and curried banana tree trunk (and of course there were fried crickets and water beetles for sale in the night market, though so far none of our group has opted to sample these treats).

Peter