Akha girl collecting water in gourd from the village bamboo aqueduct, which leads down from the spring several hundred metres up the hill, on the Thai-Burmese border. The Akha are one of the most distinctive and colourfully dressed of the hilltribes 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..