Pounding rice in the early morning. A day in the life of a young Akha girl (name: Apoe, 14 years old) in an Akha village on the Thai-Burmese border. The Akha are one of the most distinctive and colourfully dressed of the ethnic minorities that live in the mountainous border areas of Thailand, Burma, Laos and southern China. Of Tibeto-Burmese origin, they build their villages of stilted houses on the middle slopes of the forested hills. This is the village of Maw La Akha in Chiang Rai province..