SOMETIMES YOU JUST CAN'T WIN
This is from an article in the Asia Times. The Akha are hill people in Thailand.

But now, it is not only the likes of Ake who are troubled by this shift to Christianity among the Akha, one of the six main tribal communities that have carved out a colorful niche in this mountainous part of the country along the Myanmar border.

Concern is increasingly being expressed also from an unlikely quarter - tour guides who operate in Chiang Rai.

After all, the hill tribes are the main draw that attracts tourists in the thousands to northern Thailand - a fact amplified by the posters and postcards of the hill-tribe people that are visible in the local airport and in the shop windows along Chiang Rai's narrow streets.

"Tourists come here expecting to see a village that is very authentic and typical of the hill tribe culture. So they are not happy when they find churches in the villages," said Charlie Keereekhamsuk, a tourist guide for more than six years.

An increasing number of guides and tour companies are opting against taking tourists to villages where the people have converted to Christianity, he said. "There is a big difference in the village culture after the churches have come in. In Akha villages, it is very clear."

An Akha cultural-rights activist is hardly surprised by such growing concern, given the inroads that church groups, largely from the United States, have made over past 40 years.

"They have succeeded in converting close to 50 percent of the Akha villages in Thailand, and they are aggressively going after the rest," said Mathew McDaniel of the Akha Heritage Foundation, based in the Thai town of Mae Sai.

"Tourists don't want to see these tribal people with a church foisted on them," he said. "They are offended by what is happening: people being made clones of groups like the Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, other Protestant churches and Catholics from Italy."