Into the mountains of Northern Thailand

Three days in Mae Hong Son

Dec 07, 2025

In a city where you always feel a need to do more, be faster, sometimes you just need to escape to the mountains. The funny thing is, I was already in the mountains. But Chiang Mai (beautiful, bustling, delightful Chiang Mai) just wasn’t giving me what I needed.

Chiang Mai is the epitome of a big city trying so hard to be a small town. Spend enough time there and you’ll realize the truth: it’s a big city. A beautiful and fun big city, but a big city nonetheless. The kind of place where you can never quite shake the feeling that you should be doing something, seeing something, optimizing your time.

So I ventured even further into the mountains of Northern Thailand, closer to the border with Myanmar, to the small provincial capital of Mae Hong Son. Population: roughly 7,000. But still somehow, the biggest city in the entire province, to put into perspective how quiet this place is.

Mae Hong Son is better known for being one of the 76 provinces of Thailand than for the city itself. It’s famous for housing a popular motorcycle loop:1,864 curves through mountain passes and valleys. And if you complete it, you even get a certificate at the Mae Hong Son Chamber of Commerce. A badge of honor for the two-wheelers that make the journey.

This loop is far less famous than the Ha Giang loop in Vietnam, another mountainous motorcycle route that’s become something of a backpacker rite of passage. Most people who’ve done both seem to agree that Ha Giang is more dramatic, more beautiful. But the Mae Hong Son loop has its devotees, people who speak of it like they’ve discovered something the rest of the world hasn’t quite caught onto yet.

And maybe that’s because if you can’t ride a motorcycle, you’re kind of out of luck with the Mae Hong Son loop. There are hardly any tour groups offering an easy-rider option, or for that matter any tour groups at all. It’s just for people to rise at their own pace. Which means it stays quieter. Less crowded. Less famous.

Now, I cannot ride a motorcycle. And I did not particularly want to learn on one of the harder motorcycle routes in the world. So I took a bus. Actually, I took a van — a six-hour van ride that’s notorious for making people sick, whipping around the corners of the hardest section of the Mae Hong Son loop.

Stepping off that van, still a little woozy from the twists and turns, felt like entering another world from the busy Chiang Mai where I got on the bus.

Famously, I get horrible car-sickness, so I decided that I needed the afternoon to recover. I let the mountain air and lying on my bed in my room heal me, and then to amp-up the healing even further, I went and got a massage. and let the mountain air heal me, and then I got a massage.

Afterward, feeling rejuvenated and human again, I decided to walk around town.

Without trying, or even prior knowledge that it existed, I stumbled upon the Mae Hong Son Walking Street, which is a path along the little pond in the center of town. During the day, it’s quiet and beautiful, but unassuming. Then at night, it transforms into a food market, with vendors selling all sorts of things. And unlike the markets in Chiang Mai, you can walk through without squeezing past other patrons, without feeling like you’re in anyone’s way. It was small. But then again, the customer base is much smaller than in Chiang Mai.

After discovering it on a whim, this became the spot for dinner. Jordan and I ate here each of the three nights we spent in Mae Hong Son, even squeezing it in when we didn’t really have the time. Even though we knew all of the food that would be there every night, it was so nice to peruse all the different vendors and decide what we would get (it kind of feels like a modern age version of foraging).

The first morning in Mae Hong Son was not as slow as the rest of our trip would be.

For some ungodly reason, I’d decided I wanted to hike up the hill behind the city before sunrise to visit the temple Wat Phrathat Doi Kong Mu. It was only a short hike, walking distance from where we were staying. But we still had to be out the door by 5:45am, an hour when nobody but the stray dogs should be awake.

After a gruelingly fast ascent with lots of stairs, we made to the top, which sat two Burmese-style temples. I was told by our homestay owner that it was a pretty popular spot to watch the sunset, but there were only four other people at the temple at that hour, and none of them sat down to watch the sun come up.

In their defense, there wasn’t much of a sunrise to be had.

Mae Hong Son and its entire province are famous for the mist that envelops the valleys during three out of four seasons. The mist is thick, opaque, a living thing that settles in the low places and refuses to leave until the day decides it’s ready. So instead of watching the sky turn pink and orange and gold, we watched something else: the slow parting of clouds. The way the city lights blinked on one by one as the mist thinned. And although it wasn’t a traditional sunrise, it was still beautiful in it’s own way, a nice quiet way to start the morning.

It reminded me of other times where I hiked up a big hill, to find the viewpoint at the top entirely obscured by clouds. It’s still beautiful, just not in the way you expected. Having gone through this before, instead of grieving the sunrise I didn’t get to watch, I was able to soak in the clouds and the mist and appreciate a different beauty.

We saw a few other things around town, walked to a few other temples in town like the two teak temples that reflect across the pond in the center of town, and the Guan Yin Chinese temple, all of which were stunning.

But honestly, other than all of the city’s different temples there’s just not that much to do within walking distance of the city.

Which I was in love with. Instead of focusing on seeing everything, instead of feeling like I had to make the most of the trip and justify the six-hour van ride, I was just enjoying the city. Enjoying my surroundings. Letting the days unfold without a plan.

One of the many reasons people love doing the Mae Hong Son loop is for all the nature and culture you can see along the way. Places like Ban Rak Thai, a Chinese village near the Myanmar border. Or Pang Ung, a serene lake surrounded by pine trees that looks like it belongs in Switzerland. Every viewpoint, every coffee stop, every hidden waterfall.

Unfortunately for me, in my chartered van, we did not stop at every pretty viewpoint where all the motorcyclists pulled over for photos and coffee. And although there are plenty of tour agencies in Mae Hong Son willing to take you to these famous places, it’s infinitely more convenient to just have your own motorbike than to follow the rigid schedule of a tour group.

So we didn’t.

Mae Hong Son is made for motorcyclists who can move at their own pace, though even they often end up crowding their days, trying to see everything, to make the most of this incredible landscape. Without the motorcycle, I had no nagging feeling that I was missing out on something. No voice in my head telling me I should be doing more, seeing more, optimizing my time.

I could just enjoy the quietness. The stillness of this small mountain city. I could see the few important sites, walk around to my heart’s content, and not feel the need to do anything more. I was happy just being, instead of feeling the innate desire to do more.

And it was really, really nice.