Mae Hong Son

Mae Hong Son began in the early 19th century, when a Chiang Mai official was sent west across the mountains to capture wild elephants and set up camps in the valleys of the Pai River. Shan families from across what is now the Myanmar border settled around them, and one of the camps grew into a village named after the elephant training ground. A Shan headman, later given the title Phraya Singhanat Racha, was appointed to govern the area, and the settlement became the seat of a small frontier state owing allegiance to Chiang Mai.

Teak drew the outside world in. British Burmese logging firms worked the forests in the later 19th century, and Burmese and Shan craftsmen built the town's temples, which is why they look across the border rather than towards Bangkok. Siam absorbed the northern states around 1900 and made Mae Hong Son a province, but distance kept it apart: for most of the 20th century it was reached by mule track or river, and the road link to Chiang Mai was completed only in the second half of the century.

The Second World War brought Japanese troops through the province on the route into Burma, and their retreat left traces recorded in a museum at Khun Yuam. Later decades brought refugees from conflict in Myanmar, camps along the border that have housed Karen families since the 1980s, opium and its replacement by royal project crops, and finally tourism, which grew with the airport and the loop road and now supports much of the town.

This is the most Shan place in Thailand. Tai Yai is spoken by many older residents, temple architecture uses the tiered pyatthat roofs and filigree metalwork of Burmese Buddhism, and the religious calendar follows Shan custom: Poy Sang Long in the hot season, when boys are dressed in silks and jewellery and carried through the streets before ordination, and Chong Phara in October, when decorated paper castles are raised at the end of Buddhist Lent to welcome the Buddha's return.

The province is also one of the most ethnically varied in the country. Karen communities are the largest group in the mountains, with Lisu, Lahu, Hmong and Padaung villages, Yunnanese Chinese settlements such as Ban Rak Thai founded by families who left China in the mid-20th century, and long-standing Thai administration over all of them. Questions of citizenship, land rights and the ethics of village tourism are live and discussed openly.

Everyday manners are quiet and formal, a little more reserved than in Chiang Mai. Crafts include Shan weaving, lacquer and silverwork, and the town's food, music and dress all show Burmese influence. The valley's isolation has shaped a strong local identity: residents talk of the province as a place apart, measured by the two long mountain roads that connect it to the rest of Thailand.

Only a few thousand people live in the town itself, and fewer than 300,000 in the province, most of them in farming villages spread through the mountains. Agriculture dominates: rice on the valley floors, maize and vegetables on the slopes, soybeans, garlic, coffee and tea. Government offices, schools and the provincial hospital provide salaried work in the town, and tourism supports guesthouses, restaurants, drivers and guides, although visitor numbers are small by northern Thai standards.

The day begins before dawn with the market and the alms round, the heat or the rain slows the afternoon, and the town is quiet by mid-evening apart from the lakeside. Many families keep ties to villages in the hills and to relatives across the border. Motorbikes and pick-ups are the way people move; long trips to Chiang Mai for hospital treatment or university are part of life.

The province's difficulties are structural. It is among the poorest in Thailand, with limited road access, and the burning season fills the basin with smoke that regularly gives Mae Hong Son some of the worst air quality in the country. The war in Myanmar across the border affects trade, sends people seeking safety into the province and keeps refugee camps in place after four decades. Landslides and flash floods close the mountain roads in heavy rain.

Mae Hong Son eats Shan food, which is distinct from both northern Thai and central Thai cooking. Thua nao, soybeans fermented and dried into thin discs or ground into a paste, is the characteristic seasoning, used instead of fish sauce in many dishes. Khao soi here is closer to the Shan version than to the coconut curry of Chiang Mai: hand-sliced rice noodles topped with a tomato and meat sauce. Khanom jeen nam ngiao, rice noodles in a pork and tomato broth flavoured with dried kapok flowers, is a breakfast staple.

Other Shan dishes appear in the morning market: pounded rice cakes, sticky rice steamed in leaves, fermented vegetables, mild curries of pork with pickled greens and Burmese-influenced salads of tea leaf or beans dressed with garlic oil. Northern Thai cooking is here too, with sticky rice, nam phrik num and nam phrik ong chilli pastes, crisp pork rind and grilled sai ua sausage.

The mountains supply the rest. Yunnanese villages near the border cook black chicken soup, braised pork leg with mantou buns and Chinese pickles, and grow the oolong tea sold in the town; coffee from local plantations is roasted and served in small cafés around the lake. Cool-season produce — strawberries, cabbages, temperate vegetables from royal project farms — fills the market stalls from November, and wild honey and forest mushrooms appear in season.