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Mae Salong
(Santikhiri)
POP 20,000
For a taste of China without crossing any international borders, head to this atmospheric
village perched on the back hills of Chiang Rai.
Mae Salong was originally settled by the 93rd Regiment of the Kuomintang (KMT),
who had fled to Myanmar from China after the establishment of communist rule in 1949.
The renegades were forced to leave Myanmar in 1961 when the then Rangoon-based gov-
ernment decided it wouldn't allow the KMT to legally remain in northern Myanmar.
Crossing into northern Thailand with their pony caravans, the ex-soldiers and their famil-
ies settled into mountain villages and re-created a society like the one they'd left behind in
Yunnan.
A generation later, this unique community persists, and today the Yunnanese dialect of
Chinese still remains the lingua franca, residents tend to watch Chinese, rather than Thai,
TV, and you'll find more Chinese than Thai food. And although Mae Salong is now thor-
oughly on the beaten track, the distinctly Chinese vibe, hilltop setting and abundance of
hill tribes and tea plantations converge in a destination quite unlike anywhere else in Thai-
land. It's a great place to kick back for a couple of days, and the surrounding area is ripe
for self-guided exploration.
 
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