The Akha swing festival comes 120 days after that village planted it's rice. The festival marks the end of the hard weeding work on the rice and other crops.

A village must have an elder called a Dzoeuh Mah in order to build a swing or a gate. The gate can only be swung on for four days, and then the rope of braided vine is wrapped up around one of the four large legs and the swing sets idle for the next year.

Since swinging on an Akha swing involves swinging very fast and to great heights, it is not safe to swing on a swing that is old, or when one does not ;;know who built it.

The Swing Festival is a time of celebration for young and old.

The Akha say that humans came down through the swing from heaven.

Tourist guide book propaganda claims that there is some kind of sexual circus at these festivals, typical of western people who somehow always want to think this way of indigenous people, humans with less dignity than themselves. Thai guides will quickly claim this kind of idiocy as well.