Tea With The Akha Tribe

Again we distribute cookies and medicine. We meet two young girls with red paint all over their face. It turns out these girls had been fascinated by the red lips of a previous tourist, and she had kindly given the girls her lipstick. They had not had an occasion to wear it since, as there had been no visitors for months. But now we had arrived, they thought it appropriate to put it on. One of the girls had obviously forgotten that it was supposed to go on the lips, and had instead made red dots all over her face. The older girl had remembered where it was to go, but her skills of application were limited. She had a huge red gash from ear to ear. However both young women thought they looked beautiful, and as men have learned all over the world, it is always wise to offer no opposition to these feelings that women have.


Here we are invited to have tea in one of the houses. We feel we cannot turn this down, but we would much rather not drink out of any of the rather dirty looking glasses we are offered. However our guide says that they do wash their utensils in the river water. We follow the example of our guide who pours tea into his glass, swills it round and then tips it out, before pouring in more which he drinks. We are also offered deep fried peanuts straight from the pan, which are delicious, together with some bananas collected from the jungle. We are pleasantly surprised to find that we do not get sick the next day.
When we return to Kyaingtong in the late afternoon, we are both exhausted and promptly fall asleep.
This is not a town famous for its restaurants. There are a few local eating places, none of them catering to tourists. However that evening we find a Chinese restaurant that deep fries a whole fish caught that day in the river. It costs $3 and is delicious.