Thailand (Lonely Planet, 13th Edition) - China Williams [296]
Shin Sane Guest House (0 5376 5026; 32/3 Th Mae Salong; s/d from 50/100B, bungalows 300B; ) Although Mae Salong’s first hotel is starting to show its 40 years, it still remains an atmospheric place to stay. The rooms are bare but spacious with shared bathrooms. The bungalows are much more comfortable and have private bathrooms and cable TV. Trekking details are available, including a good map, and there are motorcycles for rent.
Little Home Guesthouse (0 5376 5389; www.maesalonglittlehome.com; 31 Moo 1, Th Mae Salong; s/d from 50/100B, bungalows 600B; ) Located next door to Shin Sane, this delightful wooden house holds a few basic but cosy rooms and a handful of sparkling new bungalows out back. An attached restaurant does local dishes. The owner is extremely friendly and has put together one of the more accurate maps of the area.
Saeng A Roon Hotel (0 5376 5029; 25/3 Moo 1, Th Mae Salong; r 300-500B; ) Next to the teashop of the same name, this new hotel has friendly staff, spacious tiled-floor rooms and great views of the hills. The cheaper rooms share spick-and-span hot-water bathrooms.
Mae Salong Central Hills Hotel (0 5376 5113; 18/1 Moo 1, Th Mae Salong; r 500B) Situated directly across from the 7-Eleven, this large hotel offers two floors of characterless but comfortable rooms. There’s a restaurant upstairs (open primarily during the tourist season) and a teashop on the premises.
Maesalong Mountain Home (08 4611 9508; www.maesalongmountainhome.com; bungalows 800-1500B) Located down a dirt road 1km east of the town centre (signs say ‘Maesalong Farmstay’), this is a great choice if you’ve got your own wheels. The nine new bungalows here are located in the middle of a working farm and are bright and airy, with huge bathrooms. Another bonus is its location near a tea farm with gigantic teapot and lion statues – a bizarre but fun photo op.
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HOME AWAY FROM HOME
Mae Salong was originally settled by the 93rd Regiment of the Kuomintang (KMT), who’d fled to Myanmar from China after the 1949 Chinese revolution. The renegades were forced to leave Myanmar in 1961 when the Yangon government decided it wouldn’t allow the KMT to remain legally in northern Myanmar. Crossing into northern Thailand with their pony caravans, the ex-soldiers and their families settled into mountain villages and re-created a society like the one they’d left behind in Yunnan.
After the Thai government granted the KMT refugee status in the 1960s, efforts were made to incorporate the Yunnanese KMT and their families into the Thai nation. Until the late 1980s they didn’t have much success. Many ex-KMT persisted in involving themselves in the Golden Triangle opium trade in a three-way partnership with opium warlord Khun Sa and the Shan United Army (SUA). Because of the rough, mountainous terrain and lack of sealed roads, the outside world was rather cut off from the goings-on in Mae Salong, so the Yunnanese were able to ignore attempts by the Thai authorities to suppress opium activity and tame the region.
Infamous Khun Sa made his home in nearby Ban Hin Taek (now Ban Thoet Thai; opposite) until the early 1980s when he was finally routed by the Thai military. Khun Sa’s retreat to Myanmar seemed to signal a change in local attitudes and the Thai government finally began making progress in its pacification of Mae Salong and the surrounding area.
In a further effort to separate the area from its old image as an opium fiefdom, the Thai government officially changed the name of the village from Mae Salong to Santikhiri (Hill of Peace). Until the 1980s packhorses were used to move goods up the mountain to Mae Salong, but today the 36km road from Basang (near Mae Chan) is paved and well travelled. But despite the advances in infrastructure, the town is unlike any other in Thailand. The Yunnanese dialect of Chinese still remains the lingua franca, residents tend to watch Chinese, rather