Mist, mountains, and the Mae Hong Son Loop
Mae Hong Son sits in a misty valley surrounded by forested mountains near the Myanmar border, reachable via the legendary Mae Hong Son Loop — 600km of winding switchbacks through hill-tribe villages, hot springs, and teak forests. The town itself is compact and quiet, centred on twin chedis reflected in a lily-covered lake at sunrise, a world away from the tourist crowds of Chiang Mai.
Mae Hong Son was a remote elephant-training outpost of the Shan princes until the late 19th century, when the Thai government established a province here largely to assert sovereignty over the borderlands. Its population remains a mosaic of Shan, Karen, Hmong, and other hill tribes who crossed from Burma over centuries. The town served as a WWII POW camp and base for British and Allied forces, leaving a small war cemetery maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.