Off the Beaten Path in Northern Thailand

Koh Kong was the last destination for Anna and me, and when she and I split up, I met Ryan in Bangkok for another month of travel!  After a day of exploring the extremely modern Thai capital, we boarded an overnight train headed north.

Hoping to get off northern Thailand’s very beaten tourist track, we opted to skip Chiang Mai, the hub of tourist activity in the north, and headed to the much smaller and less-known town of Mae Sariang.  While I’m sure Chiang Mai has a lot to offer, we loved our time in the Mae Sarieng, and it felt like we got to see a bit of the ‘real’ Thailand.  Plus, the lack of crowds, English speakers, tourist kitsch, and drunken chaos was very refreshing.

About a 4.5-hour bus ride from Chiang Mai, Mae Sariang, located on the Yuam River, is closer to Thailand’s border with Burma.  The Mae Sariang sub-district includes 10,000 people spread over nine villages, and the town itself basically consists of just two main streets connected by a handful of alleyways.  Far removed from the Westernization taking place across much of northern Thailand, the only real inkling of Western influence in Mae Sariang is the lone 7-11 (Thailand has around 6,000 7-11s, I’m not kidding).  Not surprisingly, it’s a pretty quiet place and attracts very few tourists, though we saw a handful of other Westerners (all European, as far as I could tell) during our time there.

We ended up staying at two different hotels in Mae Sariang, both small places with no websites and no English-speaking staff.  All the food in town is Thai, so we had lots of noodles and lots of curries during our time there.

We lucked out, and, on our first night in Mae Sariang, the twice-weekly night market was taking place.  A small side street closes to traffic and vendors line both sides with stalls of clothes and food, including unidentifiable meat, noodle dishes, and ice cream.  At the end of the street, one stall had something rolled up in little pieces of paper, which the vendor told us cost 5 baht (about $0.17) each.  Thinking they might be spring rolls, we bought a couple.  When we opened them up, we found that they weren’t spring rolls, but rather pieces of fry bread drizzled with honey.  They were amazing!

On our first full day in Mae Sariang, we rented a motorcycle so we could explore the surrounding countryside on our own.  After doing a bit of research about the area, we decided to head towards the border, specifically to a tiny village called Mae Sam Laep, about 60 miles from town.  The ride took us through mountains and past several villages, and offered some beautiful scenery.  The road was pretty bad in some places – muddy, steep, and full of potholes – so I’m lucky Ryan’s an experienced rider!  After an hour and a half or so, having not seen any signs (at least none we could read) indicating we were anywhere near Mae Sam Laep, we started to wonder if we were going the right way.  At that point, we had passed the most recent village a ways back, and there really weren’t any people around.  Finally, after about another half hour, we came up a path that split off the main road, and a guy we happened to pass just then pointed us down it.  The path was in even worse condition and seemed more like it might be leading to nowhere – until a cluster of stilted houses appeared.  We had arrived!  Mae Sam Laep is tiny, and we didn’t see any other foreigners in the time we were there.  There’s not much in the town, and it’s really only accessible by motorcycle, so I can’t imagine too many travelers make the journey.  But, again, it felt like we were getting a peak of ‘real’ Thailand, and we loved it.

We parked the bike and strolled through town, taking pictures of the houses, the scenery, and the view of Burma across the river.  Towards the edge of the village, we passed a small shop selling what appeared to be samosas.  As the woman selling them didn’t speak any English, we smiled and handed her 10 baht (about $0.33), thinking that might buy us two samosas.  We watched, shocked, as she filled a little plastic bag with three, four, then five of them.  Apparently they were only 2 baht (about $0.07) apiece.  Since we had no idea what might inside the samosas – liver? brain? some type of critter from the not-very-clean river? – we got a little worried we were going to be stuck with a whole bunch of something we didn’t want at all.  Turned out, they were vegetable samosas – just potato, carrots, and peas – and they were delicious.

After venturing back into the village center of, we stopped at another little shop for a soda, which, though the shop had electricity, were kept in a cooler out front.  As we sat, enjoying our cold drinks, the shop’s owner sat in front of a small laptop, playing Thai karaoke and singing very loudly into a microphone, which broadcasted his singing out into the street.  We couldn’t really tell if other people in town appreciated the singing or were ignoring it.

As Mae Sam Laep wasn’t right on the border as we had expected, we left to go further down the main road, to see what we could see.  Unfortunately, as it was the rainy season, an impassable puddle prevented us from getting much further down the road.  So, we headed back into Mae Sariang – we need to rest for our trek the next day anyway, but more on that next time.