Why you wouldThe good part

ของย่างริมทาง

The roadside grill is the most reliable good meal between towns, and you smell it before you see it.

ขนมจีนน้ำเงี้ยว

Fermented rice vermicelli under a thin, sour, red broth of tomato and pork, with dried kapok flower, pork blood cubes and a pork rib.

ข้าวซอย

A coconut curry noodle soup of upper northern Thailand, Laos and the Shan States. Chicken or beef, pickled mustard greens, shallot, lime, chilli…

ข้าวเหนียว

Glutinous rice, steamed rather than boiled, eaten with the right hand in small pressed balls. The everyday grain of the north and the northeast.

อาหารยูนนานที่บ้านรักไทย

Chinese Yunnanese food, on a reservoir, a few kilometres from the Myanmar border, at the end of a road that goes nowhere else.

ตลาดเช้า

Every town on this loop has one. Rice, curries in bags, grilled things, sticky rice, coffee, and whatever the hills sent down that morning.

อาราบิก้าจากดอยที่เพิ่งข้ามมา

Northern Thailand grows arabica on the hills this road climbs. The plant wants altitude, shade and a dry harvest — which is exactly what these slopes…

เมี่ยงและชาบนดอย

Before the coffee, these hills grew tea. Much of it still does, and the older use of the leaf is not a drink at all.

เซเว่น

In the towns, the convenience store is a coffee stop, a water stop, a shade stop and a toilet. It is also the most reliable of the four.

เพิงกาแฟบนยอดดอย

Somewhere near the top of most long climbs on this circuit there is a shack selling coffee, with a bench pointed at the valley.

น้ำพุร้อนแบบไทยเป็นอย่างไร

What to expect at a developed spring here, and how it differs from the Japanese arrangement most visitors have in mind.

น้ำพุร้อนผาบ่อง

A developed hot spring on the southern road out of Mae Hong Son, with a communal foot pool and rooms where the water is run into a tub for you.

น้ำพุร้อนท่าปาย

A hot spring inside a national park east of Pai, where the source feeds a stream you can sit in where it has cooled enough.

วัดจองคำ และวัดจองกลาง

The pair of Shan-Burmese temples on Nong Chong Kham, the pond at the centre of Mae Hong Son town.

วัดหัวเวียง

In the centre of Mae Hong Son town, beside the morning market. The image inside is the reason to go in.

Wat Jong Soong

วัดจองสูง

In the middle of Mae Sariang, with the whitewashed tiered chedis and the tin roofs of the Shan-Burmese manner rather than the Lanna one.

วัดพระธาตุดอยกองมู

The temple on the hill west of Mae Hong Son town. Two Shan-style chedis, a road to the top, and the view that gives the province its nickname.

วัดพระธาตุแม่เย็น

On the hill east of Pai. The seated white image is visible from most of the town, and the climb is the reason people go.

ทำไมวัดแถบนี้ชื่อจอง

A naming pattern that maps the cultural border better than the political one does, and it is visible in the map data.

บ้านรักไทย

A village north of Mae Hong Son settled by Chinese Yunnanese, on a reservoir, with tea terraces and the border immediately behind it.

ดอยอินทนนท์

2,565 metres, in Chom Thong district, reached from Route 108 or from Mae Chaem over Route 1088. Not on the loop; one turn off it.

ห้วยน้ำดัง

A national park straddling the Chiang Mai and Mae Hong Son line, right on Route 1095, with a viewpoint that looks east over cloud at dawn.

แม่สามแลบ และแม่น้ำสาละวิน

A river village west of Mae Sariang at the end of a side road, on the Salween where it forms the frontier.

น้ำตกแม่สุรินทร์

A single-drop waterfall in Namtok Mae Surin National Park, in Khun Yuam district.

ออบหลวง

A gorge on the Chaem river in a national park on Route 108, roughly midway between Hot and Mae Sariang.

กระท่อมที่ไม่มีผนังด้านหุบเขา

The form that made Pai's name and has since spread down the whole circuit: a raised bamboo platform hut, open on the view side, often with the…

ตึกแถวไม้สัก

Mae Sariang and Mae Hong Son both keep rows of timber shophouses from the teak years, and some of them take guests.

ควรนอนที่ไหนบ้าง

Which towns are worth a night, which are worth two, and the one decision that changes the trip most.