Mae Aw (Ban Rak Thai)

Mae Aw (officially Ban Rak Thai, "Village of Those Who Love Thailand") sits on the Burmese border about 45 km north of Mae Hong Son town, at an elevation that makes it noticeably cooler than the valley. The village of roughly 1,000 people is the remnant of a KMT military community that settled here 70 years ago and has maintained its Chinese identity through tea cultivation and cultural practice.

The village has a small reservoir with a wooden temple in the middle, tea shops serving Yunnan tea and Yunnan snacks, and a Chinese school. The surrounding hills are planted with tea bushes and fruit trees. The road north from Mae Hong Son passes through Karen and Shan villages and a Pang Tong Royal Project. Self-drive motorbike or jeep makes the best transport — songthaew pickups also run when enough passengers are gathered.

things to do sight
A story
Mae Aw was established in the 1950s by Chinese Nationalist (KMT) soldiers who fled across the border after the Communist victory in 1949. Rather than being repatriated to Taiwan, these soldiers and their families settled in the mountains of northern Thailand, Burma, and Laos, maintaining their military discipline and Yunnan Chinese culture. The Thai government eventually granted them citizenship. Today their descendants farm tea, Arabica coffee, and strawberries on the hillsides, and the village looks and feels unmistakably like a piece of rural Yunnan.