History
Mae Salong was originally settled by the 93rd Regiment of the Kuomintang (KMT), which fled to Myanmar from China after the 1949 Chinese revolution. After futile intermittent rearguard action against the Chinese communists, the renegades were forced to flee Myanmar in 1961 when the Yangon government decided it wouldn’t allow the KMT to remain legally in northern Myanmar. Crossing into northern Thailand with their pony caravans, the ex-soldiers and their families settled into mountain villages and re-created a society like the one they left behind in Yunnan.
After the Thai government granted the KMT refugee status in the 1960s, efforts were made to incorporate the Yunnanese KMT and their families into the Thai nation. Until the late 1980s they didn’t have much success. Many ex-KMT persisted in involving themselves in the Golden Triangle opium trade in a three-way partnership with opium warlord Khun Sa and the Shan United Army (SUA). Because of the rough, mountainous terrain and lack of sealed roads, the outside world was rather cut off from the goings-on in Mae Salong, so the Yunnanese were able to ignore attempts by the Thai authorities to suppress opium activity and tame the region.
Infamous Khun Sa made his home in nearby Ban Hin Taek (now Ban Thoet Thai) until the early 1980s when he was finally routed by the Thai military. Khun Sa’s retreat to Myanmar seemed to signal a change in local attitudes and the Thai government finally began making progress in its pacification of Mae Salong and the surrounding area.
In a further effort to separate the area from its old image as an opium fiefdom, the Thai government officially changed the name of the village from Mae Salong to Santikhiri (Hill of Peace). Until the 1980s packhorses were used to move goods up the mountain to Mae Salong, but today the 36km road from Basang (near Mae Chan) is paved and well travelled. The Yunnanese immigrants’ equestrian history, alien to the Thais, has led the latter to refer to them as jiin haw (galloping Chinese).
In spite of the ongoing ‘Thai-isation’ of Mae Salong, the town is unlike any other in Thailand. It’s not unusual for hotels and restaurants in Mae Salong to boast satellite reception of three TV channels from China and three from Hong Kong. Although the Yunnanese dialect of Chinese remains the lingua franca, the new generation of young people look more to Bangkok than Taipei for its social and cultural inspirations. Many have left for greater educational and career opportunities.
In an attempt to quash opium activity, and the more recent threat of yaa baa (methamphetamine) trafficking, the government created crop-substitution programmes to encourage hill tribes to cultivate tea, coffee, corn and fruit trees. This seems to be successful as tea and corn are abundant in the surrounding fields, every other shop along the main street is a teashop, and there are tea factories in and around town. In both you can sample the fragrant Mae Salong teas (originally from Taiwan).
The local illicit corn whisky is much in demand – perhaps an all-too-obvious substitution for the poppy. Another local speciality is Chinese herbs, particularly yaa dawng, a kind that is mixed with liquor. Thai and Chinese tourists who come to Mae Salong frequently take back a bag or two of assorted Chinese herbs.
