Muang Sing History

History

From at least the late 16th century until 1803 Muang Sing belonged to the Thai principality of Chiang Khong, after which it came under the control of the Nan Kingdom. In the early 19th century much of Muang Sing’s population was transferred to Chiang Kham district in Nan (now part of Thailand). Both the Siamese and the British subsequently laid claim to the area, but in 1896 France took Muang Sing as part of French Indochina.

As soon as the French left Laos in 1954, the area fell into the conflict between the Royal Lao Government and the Vietnamese-backed Pathet Lao. From then until the Pathet Lao takeover of Vientiane in 1975, ancient Muang Sing served as a setting for a series of international intrigues involving the Chinese, Vietnamese, Americans and Lao. The famous American ‘jungle doctor’ Tom Dooley, a pawn of the CIA in Laos from 1957 to 1961 and a man who courted Catholic sainthood until he was dismissed from the US Navy for his sexual orientation, founded a hospital in Muang Sing during this era. The town was virtually abandoned until after the 1975 revolution.