I'm Officially Done Climbing Mountains in Thailand Part 4: Mae Hong Son-- My Obsession With Mae Aw (Ban Rak Tai)

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This blog has 27 photos --please scroll down and turn page to view all of them.Unfortunately I have noted that when using my iPad to upload photos none of my crops or other edits show, so forgive the occasional finger, dark picture etc.

I came across Mae Aw while researching my trip to Thailand and instantly decided it was a must see place. It might not be the most spectacular spot in the country, but I find it really unique and cool. The village was settled by Chinese peoples who were members of the Kuomintang Party.The village for all intent and purpose is "Chinese" which gives it an uniqueness. Here is a great synopsis of the village's history found on Legal Nomads:

To trace back to original inhabitants of Mae Aw (or as the Thais call it Ban Rak Tai, “the Thai-Loving Village”), one needs to go back to the Chinese Civil War and the Kuomintang (KMT) party. Under Chiang Kai-shek, the KMT ruled a good swath of China from the late 1920s, until Mao Zedong’s party wrestled control and established the The People’s Republic of China in 1949. Several KMT divisions (most notably the 93rd Division, many of who ended up in Doi Mae Salong) refused to surrender to the Communists and fled into the jungles of Burma, where they camped out and built up infrastructure for their new lives. KMT Chinese forces were once so prevalent in the Shan state that they even built an airport at Mong Hsat with regular flights to fellow KMT strongholds, and took over the whole region east of the Salween River. As Thant Myint- U notes in The River of Lost Footsteps the KMT “were on the verge of taking all the Shan States and were within a day’s march of the regional capital, Taunggyyi.” Seeking to destabilize newly-communist China from inside Burma, the KMT tried to invade Yunnan seven times between 1950 and 1952, but were pushed back into the Shan State each time. From Burma’s perspective, this was nothing less than an invasion from China and they launched an offensive against the KMT. At the same time, Burma doggedly lobbied the UN to call for withdrawal of KMT troops to Taiwan. China eventually did agree to evacuate, but only removed several thousand troops. Finally, in the early 1960s China sent 20,000 troops from their People’s Liberation Army into Shan State near Kengtung (site of last week’s earthquake) to crush the KMT. Under General Tuan Shi-wen, KMT troops fled south, crossing the porous border into Thailand and settling in the parched foothills of Doi Mae Salong, Doi Pan and Ban Mae Nong Bua. The Thai government granted the KMT refugees asylum on the condition that they would help insulate Thailand against a Communist invasion. Though Mae Aw did not tumble into a heavy opium trade like Doi Mae Salong (Mae Salong was the site of some fierce mountain battles, both political and drug-related, and only opened to tourism in the mid 1990s), its KMT museum has a smattering of opium paraphernalia. Not as bloody or complicated as the history of Mae Salong (and thus not as sexy to talk about) Mae Aw’s backstory remains fairly unknown to tourists in Thailand.

Pretty interesting no?.... Local people told me that Mae Aw did in fact have a pretty heavy opium trade at one point and stopping it was a condition of the asylum. These days Mae Aw is known for tea. There are tea plantations on either side of the road leading into town. My first stop upon arrival was a tea tasting. I got to experience the different grades of green tea and ended up taking home a couple of favorites. I ventured into the main part of town for lunch and had an amazing tea leaf salad and a saute of morning glory greens with mushrooms. Everything was seriously spicy which made me happy to no end. Some Thai tourists wandered into the restaurant and were pleased to see me dining. They inquired about the food to which I gave a rave review (and then dabbed the sweat off my face.) After lunch I strolled around town and checked out the buildings.Many had kitchy roof adornments such as big gold tea pots. Some were constructed of mud mixed with straw and hand painted, like my favorite building --the KMT museum (which unfortunately was closed.) Chinese lanterns were everywhere which made me very happy ---I'm easy to please sometimes.......

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