Rob’s Travel Blog

Eventually we became very bored with Chang Rai and even though Fabien was sick, we decided to check out Mae Salong (or Santikhiri), a remote village populated by a stranded Chinese military battalion left over from the 1949 revolution. The military refugees, their families, and a new generation of Thai-born children have made a life in a very pretty hillside village. The village and its people are famous for their tea. There were probably a dozen tea factories and farms there, all serving amazing local oolong or green tea. It was probably my second favorite town. Fabien was sick there, so I used that time to work and to read at the local tea houses. The food there was amazing, all Yunnanese dishes from China. When we ordered, we pointed randomly at five things on the Chinese menu. Every dish was amazing, making use of fresh, local ingredients like shitake and black mushrooms. It was the best Chinese food I have ever had. The village was decorated with red lanterns, and it felt very much as though we were visiting a Chinese hillside village. I really loved the calmness and quiet there and felt very at peace.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 12:03 am and is filed under Thailand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.