Final Akha Hill Tribe Volunteer Days

Lets see where do we start....

So we are officially done with the first part of volunteer work. We visited one last hill tribe two days ago where we were driven 2 hours into the hills, of course all piled up in the back of a truck for one last big excursion in the mountains. As it turns out it was a holiday in Thailand where no one is supposed to work. Our leader consulted with the trees to make sure that if we did any work that the spirits would not harm us...turns out they were ok with us working. So we knocked down the remains of a house, cleaned up piles of leaves and debris and set them on fire, and lit really big fires for when we slept in our bamboo hut with no walls, that bugs and animals would stay far away from us (akha tradition...which worked b.t.w) We had dinner and breakfast on the floor of the main elder of the tribes house and had impecable views of the sunset in the jungle on the side of the mountains! We were taught about many different herbs and plants they grow to use as medicine and export (one of them being a red root they use to dye eggs for a traditional red egg ceremony/new years celebration)

The last day consisted of gardening at an orphanage. Going to a hill tribe who gives elephant rides (we opted to wave at the elephant riders, rather then ride) and hike to a waterfall. Today and last night was the big farewell. We had a ceremony and had a big pot luck with everyone. There were people from Germany,Scottland, Canada, Israel, Korea, Japan, France, and of course US, we all made a course from where we were from which was really special. They had a good luck ceremony after which consisted of taking a chunk of chicken, a chunk of egg, a chunk of rice and eating it while taking a shot of Akha water (cheap whiskey) and some tea. They then tied a string around our wrist (right on boys left on girls) three times and a beaded necklace. The necklace represented good luck for our travels

After the ceremony we watched a teary slideshow on a laptop of all the photos they took of us with the background of romantic music dubbed over by thai singers (think phil collins).