Bpeh Lang village is located near Hua Mae Kom in Chiangrai's Ampur Mae Faluang.

Akha women sit near a creek, eating lunch, taking a break from working at the flower farm near their village. Pay is 60 baht a day, inside the plastic structures, breathing pesticide and herbicide.

At least 20 villagers work here.

Most of Bpeh Lang village is traditional. 23 houses. 

I left them with a copy of the Akha Journal and headed up into the village.

I hadn't come to this village in a long time but it was quite nice. Quiet, secluded, undisturbed.

The villagers say they have farm land. But many work for the flower farm also.

Bpeh Lang village is as sleepy as Akha villages get on our arrival. A volunteer from Switzerland travels with me. It is mid day. Dust, chickens, workers gone to prepare the fields for the new planting season.  Opening up the soil, hoping the rains come soon.

Huts sport new thatch roofs. A man cleans out a padock next to his hut where he keeps his house.  This is monday but the smaller school is empty. All the kids appear to be over at the bigger nearby school.

There is a small temple near the village. No church. Missions have made it all or nothing.  A policy of religious re-education. Their pressure on villages to gain control and financial benefit.

Next door nestled in the dry hill is a Hmong or Lisu village.

Nearby an Akha man grumbles that people "come to the village and write in books".

The grumbling Akha man has an absolutely massive pig in his yard. But I wouldn't do him the favor of asking him how old the pig was.

Down below the village there is a tea farm getting started along towards the Burma border side. On the distant hill I can see roads in Burma and Burmese army posts.

Most new tea farms are the small leaf tea variety for Oolong Tea. These tea plants require lots of water. If it requires lots of water I don't recommend planting it as there will not be enough for everyone.

This region is known for its yellow flowers that bloom in late November, but now it is March and even more brilliant yellow flowers can be seen on trees here.

The grumbling continues to curse on about people who write in books. He is in a bad mood, so I don't ask him what the problem is.

Normally I stop to see the man in the hut above the road but today even he was gone.

When there is something a little off in a village the dogs bark, people snap and complain, and sooner or later one comes to find out what bad event has occured to make things this way.