Gate ornaments include bamboo strips fashioned into a chain of circles, or starry designs. Inside a tribal hut, however, a family's personalized cluster of spirits can be symbolized by a basket hanging in a special place in the home, or a prominent wooden post deemed holy. When disease strikes an Akha, worried relatives will call a shaman to fix supernatural vexations, often with opium, bloodletting or other traditional methods, amid cryptic prayers to the families' spirit clan, and to the shaman's more masterful, paranormal forces. Akhas are identifiable by the clothing and jewelry the tribes' women wear. Elaborate headdresses, of silver coins and half-globes, are fashioned onto a conical hat, which is sprinkled with white and red buttons and beads.
Some women attach a strip of monkey fur or chicken feathers.
Except when sleeping, women must wear their hats at all times. Premenstrual girls get a simple cloth cap decked with a yarn pom-pom. Cowrie shells, and old coins from Burma bearing a mythical lion, are also among Akha women's favorite jewelry. Like many of the region's tribes, Akhas also use geometric designs, stars, waves and elaborate mazes as decoration for spiritual items, and on embroidered clothing. Akhas are also famed for the big swing which they love to hoist in front of each village.