Not so long ago, until as recently as the 1930s, you had to ride an elephant to get there – across rugged mountains and through dense forests. Only when an airstrip and the first sealed road were built in the 1960s did the provincial capital stop being a real struggle to reach. Mae Hong Son is Thailand's most inaccessible province, such that until relatively recently it was a kind of Siberia for miscreant government officials who had blotted their copybooks elsewhere; the dreaded message would arrive 'You are transferred to Mae Hong Son.' Today, with several daily flights from Thailand's northern 'capital' Chiang Mai and numerous connections from there to Bangkok, that's not so much of a punishment. For tourists, it's sheer delight easy access to a sleepy valley in the mountainous Burmese borderlands where modern creature comforts nevertheless await.
Four elements combine to give Mae Hong Son its unique character: mountains, mists, forests and Burma. No other Thai province has so much mountainous terrain or such extremes of temperature and none so much Burmese influence. The result is temple roofs shrouded in morning mists against forested mountain backdrops. Add colorful hill tribe people, working elephants, fast-flowing rivers, huge caves and high waterfalls and you have a potent touristic brew.
Mae Hong Son town actually began in the 1830s as an elephant corral for the Prince of Chiang Mai, who lived four weeks trek away to the east in his city palace. Up until 1775 the area had been Burmese. In their late 18th century resurgence, the Thais took the faraway territory into the national fold and made it an official province in 1893, but it remains a place apart in many respects. Ethnically in particular, Mae Hong Son is a land apart, for only a small percentage of the population are ethnic Thai. The vast majority are either Shan or hill tribes. The Shan, also known as Thai Yai, are close cousins of the Thai who are far more numerous across the border in the Shan States of Burma; the Shan are reckoned to make up half of Mae Hong Son's population. The diverse hill tribes are almost as numerous; there are migrant Tibeto-Chinese people unrelated to the Thais, mostly of the Karen, Hmong, Lisu and Lahu tribes. The Shan are valley farmers, the tribal people are usually slash-and-burn hill farmers.
Mae Hong Son, the provincial capital, is a Thai Yai town and a pleasure in itself – beautiful temples, a serene lake, misty mornings, green hills all around. Two spots draw all visitors. One is Chong Kham Lake – once the elephant bathing place, now the focus of a peaceful town center park – with the white and gold stupa of Wat Chong Klang and the silvery filigree-tiered roofs of Wat Chang Kham, side by side, reflected in the waters. Withing the temples, which date from the 19th century and occupy a common compound, the chief attraction is a collection of antique wooden figures, some as tall as one meter, brought from Burma in 1857 and depicting Jataka characters from stories of the Buddha's previous lives.
