Thailand Hilltribe Holidays: Two Intense Days and A Lifetime Memory
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The smoke hits you first.
Not the polite, campfire-at-a-distance kind of smoke. This smoke fills a room and wraps around you like a wool blanket in July.
I am trying to get comfortable on the floor of a wooden hut raised ten feet above the ground somewhere north of Chiang Mai.
Around me, women my age and older squat with the effortless ease of people who have never owned an ergonomic chair. Some are chatting, some are sitting in stillness, and some are softening wax over iron cauldrons set atop open fires.
One woman wraps the wax around wicks and pulls, walking slowly backwards past me toward the one open door. She and her friends are making candles the same way their mothers and grandmothers made them.
A few of the women acknowledge my daughter Julia and me with a nod, but mostly they are intent upon their task. We’re not unwelcome, but nor are we interrupting them. Our visit brings income to the village, and helps them sustain their families.
In exchange, we get a glimpse into a way of life very different from our own.
It’s the afternoon of Day 1 of the two-day hill tribe tour I booked with Thailand Hilltribe Holidays, and it has taken me somewhere no amount of planning could have prepared me for.
In this post, I share my honest review of what we saw and experienced during our two-day private Thailand Hilltribe Holidays tour of northern Thailand that basically blew my mind.
Table of Contents
Why Take a Hill Tribe Tour — and Why This One Matters
Before I get into pomelos and baby bunnies and a teenage girl who wants to be the world’s first long-neck runway model, let’s talk sustainable tourism.
Hill tribe tourism in northern Thailand has a complicated history. The “human zoo” version during which bus tours deposit travelers in front of Kayan women wearing neck rings who pose for photos in exchange for a pittance that mostly goes to whoever organized the spectacle is exploitative and well documented. It’s the kind of tourism that turns people’s lives into a performance for someone else’s Instagram.
Thailand Hilltribe Holidays operates on a different philosophy entirely.
Founded by Chiang Mai local Pat Mongkron and his wife, Melissa, the company promotes tourism that is fair to locals while also offering travelers more authentic and real experiences.
Pat, who was also our guide for the two-day experience, is Shan (an ethnic minority group in Northern Thailand). His entire approach is built around what he calls sustainable tourism: making sure that the money tourists spend goes directly to the communities being visited, that the interactions are genuine rather than staged, and that the families we meet retain their dignity rather than trading it for a few baht.
Do I recommend booking a trip with Thailand Hilltribe Holidays? Absolutely.
Join me as I walk you through my two unforgettable days.
Thailand Hilltribe Holidays Quick Facts
- Website: thailandhilltribeholidays.com
- Contact: WhatsApp +66 855 480 884 | info@thailandhilltribeholidays.com
- Tours offered: 1-day, 2-day, 3-day, 4-day, and 8-9 day options, all private and customizable
- Tour I took: 2-day/1-night Authentic Hill Tribe Tour
- Pick up/drop off: Your hotel in Chiang Mai (airport and train station also available)
- Overnight options: Kayan Long Neck Tribe homestay (basic conditions — bamboo hut, minimal electricity, no hot shower) or local guesthouse
- Guides: Local guides who themselves are members of the hill tribes
- Group size: Private tours only; no large groups
- Booking: Contact via website or WhatsApp to discuss and customize your itinerary
- TripAdvisor rating: Excellent, based on 484+ reviews
- Best time to go: November to February (cool season); avoid June to October (rainy season)
- Ethical note: Payments for homestays and goods go directly to the families. No middleman.
- Pricing: Contact for a quote — tours are priced per group, not per person
Day One: North Toward Myanmar
Day 1 takes us from Chiang Mai all the way to the Myanmar border and includes spectacular scenery, a smoke-filled hut, and a riverside guesthouse complete with towel elephants on the beds.
Pomelos, Bamboo Rice, and the Road Getting Wilder
Pat picks us up at our hotel at 9 am, and not long after we leave the city limits, we pull over at a roadside stall where a man is dissecting what appears to be a football-sized lime.
These are pomelos, the world’s largest citrus fruit. Pat cuts one apart and offers us a piece. It tastes like a grapefruit crossed with an orange, minus the tartness, with a kind of pulpy sweetness I can’t quite describe. Delicious.
A few kilometers farther, we stop to watch a woman tending a fire piled with bamboo stalks stuffed with sticky rice and red beans. Pat buys several for later. By mid-afternoon, when they’ve cooled enough to handle, we peel a stalk and eat the plugs of sweet, smoky sticky rice.
The landscape shifts as we drive north. We stop frequently to photograph the views and Pat points out the crops — kiwi, apricots, kale, herbs I recognize from Thai cooking — growing in terraced fields carved into the hills.
Lunch and Donkeys
Lunch is in a tiny town surrounded by mountains. We are served a bowl of fried noodle soup that is a symphony of salty flavors that warms every crevice, followed by noodles with tofu.
A line of donkeys lumbers past. The ramshackle buildings look thrown together, with bamboo walls and egg cartons lining roofs of plastic and tin. This is an outdoor culture with obviously little need for warm homes and secure doors.
It does not feel prosperous but nor does it feel poor. It feels rooted, like the people have been there for decades and settled into a rhythm of life that suits them.
There are some tourists, but not many and most of them, Pat tells us, are Thai. Few Westerners come this far north.
Sui Thang View Point
On our way north to the Myanmar border, we drive up to the Sui Thang View Point in Doi Pha Hom Pok National Park to take in the jaw-dropping vistas.
If you’re into camping, you can sleep in blue tents and wake up to watch the mists settle into the valley at dawn. That would be a pretty cool experience!
At the Myanmar Border
Pat takes our photo in front of the sign marking the border between Thailand and Myanmar.
On the other side of a strip of no man’s land, a Myanmar army base floats in the haze. The mountain and valley views are stunning but the feeling is not entirely comfortable.
We are safe on the Thai side, but there’s an undercurrent of threat in the still air that’s hard to shake.
Pat explains that the local hill tribes have special arrangements that allow them to move between the two countries along a narrow pathway, accessed through what amounts to a secret gate. They bring goods and crops to sell in Thailand, then return. The guards look the other way.
It’s a pragmatic accommodation for people whose ancestral lands don’t recognize the lines drawn on maps.
We walk past market stalls, loaded with woven textiles, scarves and clothing, tended by women in traditional dress.
Many have teeth stained dark from betel nut. I want to stop and buy something, but Pat keeps walking, and I don’t want to offend the women I don’t choose to purchase from, although I manage to snap a few photos.
Into the Smoke: The Lahu Village
From the border we drive up a mountain road to a small village where Pat stops the car and points to an elderly woman ahead of us walking up a narrow ladder into a wooden hut raised about ten feet above the ground. He indicates we should take off our shoes and follow.
The rungs are narrow and slippery. The woman had mounted them with the steadiness of someone ascending a grand staircase. I make full use of the railing, which is clearly there for the benefit of foreigners.
The interior of the hut is full of smoke from iron cauldrons on open fires. There are no vents in the roof. Pat tells us to sit low to avoid the worst of the smoke, which surprisingly works. He explains that the smoke filters down through the slats in the wooden floor and also helps keep termites away.
The women in the hut are making candles, something they’ve likely been doing for decades. Many are my age or older and yet they squat and rise with complete ease, barely glancing at Julia and me.
They soften the wax over the fire and then wrap it around a wick and pull Here’s a video I took of the process.
The women don’t stop what they’re doing to put on a show. We are guests allowed into their working day.
Pat asks one of the women to bring him a lute leaning against the wall. He’s a musician and gamely tries to coax some sound out of it. The women offer instructions, but he doesn’t make a lot of progress.
We sit awhile longer and, soft Westerner that I am, I start to feel a bit faint. Finally, Pat rises and he and Julia help me back down the ladder. With the railing on my injured side, progress is slow.
As we clamber back into the car, I reflect that people are essentially the same the world over, and yet we are also so very different. My life bears almost no resemblance to the lives of the women in the smoky hut. And yet they, like me, have loved and grieved, hoped and cried, just as women have for centuries.
They, like me, are living the final chapters of their lives. My life has been full of privilege and western wealth; theirs with more hardship than I can imagine, but also community and connection.
The women making candles didn’t look like they envied me, or even really noticed me. I imagine they were content to receive the income the tour provides, but they were certainly not performing for anyone.
I left the hut feeling soft and humbled.
A Guesthouse Stay and Elephant Towels
Our driver skillfully drives us down an extremely steep series of switchbacks to the valley where we are to visit a market. Much to Pat’s surprise, the usual Saturday evening market has been moved to the next morning. He tells us we’ll return early, and that now we can go to our lodging for the night.
Originally, Julia and I had planned to spend the night with a hill tribe family. We were to cook dinner with them and sleep on mats on the floor.
The option to instead stay in a guest house with Western comforts was offered, but back home when we were planning the trip, we decided that spending a night sleeping on the floor in a smoky hut with no electricity sounded like a grand idea.
But after my fall a few days earlier followed by a weird cold that Julia had caught, we decided to forgo the cultural experience, and instead arranged to stay at a guesthouse.
Good call.
Pat drops us at a gorgeous riverside guest house complete with towels folded like elephants resting atop immaculate beds in the town of Tha ton.
Evening Entertainment
After a pharmacy run for Julia’s cold supplies, we settle in for the evening’s entertainment: a group of schoolgirls performing traditional Thai dances. The only other guests are a large busload of French tourists so all the commentary about the dances is in French.
The girls do a delightful job and look to be enjoying themselves so much. After several choreographed pieces to traditional music, the music changes to pop and they invite everyone up to dance.
I, of course, join in with great enjoyment! I never resist a chance to dance.
After the performance, we are served a Thai meal which we quickly finish before retiring early to bed in the hope that Julia will feel better in the morning.
Day 2: Markets, Mandarin Oranges, and Martha
After a fairly restless night, the kind that always happens to me when I know I need to get up earlier than usual, I rise at 6:15, leaving Julia to rest a while longer while I go out to the lobby to meet Pat and our driver for an early-morning visit to the market that hadn’t been open the evening before.
First stop before getting into the car is taking photos of the river and bridge in the pre-dawn light. The air outside is cool and clear, the sky going pink at the edges over the river and bridge.
I have absolutely no idea what the day will hold except that Pat will lead the way and we’ll follow. As someone who can be a bit of an overplanner, I find myself enjoying the serendipity of the unfolding day.
Market Visit
The market is swarming with sweaty young people running in from one direction and muscular runners coming from the other. All wear shirts declaring their participation in a local race—a half marathon and a 5k.
Pat leads me to an area beyond the market to show me crops growing. As I’m to discover over the course of the day, he is extremely keen to show off examples of just about every crop grown in this part of Thailand.
The well-tended field adjacent to the still quiet market brims with a delectable array of vegetables including kale, lettuces, and more. The early light perfectly shows off the vivid, saturated greens.
Inside the market, which is still mostly quiet, Pat shows me a cage full of gamboling rabbits. Big ones and baby ones.
“Do people eat the rabbits?” I ask.
Pat looks horrified, especially when I mention I was once served rabbit in Italy. The baby bunnies are predictably adorable because, well, they are baby bunnies.
I buy a cloth bag from the one stall that’s open, mostly because I stick out like a sore thumb and it seems like the thing to do. It will join the collection of vacation bags hanging off my office door at home.
The Mandarin Orange Farm and a Christmas Memory
Then, it’s back to the hotel where I rouse Julia and enjoy a pancake breakfast. The French tour group has left and we have the place to ourselves. The two women who run the place are delightfully helpful and friendly. Nothing is too much trouble.
They serve me a piping hot mug of tea that is just the ticket after the very strong Americano made from local Thai coffee I had at the market.
Thus fueled, Julia and I climb into the car and off we go for the day’s adventures.
We stop at a mandarin orange farm and each get a small bottle of freshly squeezed mandarin juice. It is sweeter and more layered than anything I’ve ever bought in a grocery store, tasting of actual mandarins, not the shadow of them.
I tell Pat that when I was a child, I got a mandarin orange once a year as a rare treat at Christmas, always nestled at the bottom of my stocking.
The Kayan Family: A Dream of the Runway
As mentioned, we had planned to spend the night with a Kayan hill tribe family. When I ask Pat to tell me what we missed, he immediately offers to take us to meet the family.
We drive along roads that get progressively narrower and steeper until I’m uncertain whether our driver will make the final bend. He does. We park on a plateau overlooking a view of green fields and blue mountains that in another country would anchor a luxury resort.
Instead, there’s a small raised house with a wide porch. A man comes forward to greet us. He is the father. His tribe is the Kayan, also known as the long-neck tribe — the Kayan people who practice the tradition of wearing brass neck rings that push their collar bone and ribs down, creating the illusion of a longer neck.
The elder daughter comes out to introduce herself. She is sixteen and is wearing several thick brass neck rings. Pat tells us that her dream is to be the first long-neck model on a fashion runway.
Why not? Dreams are dreams, and who am I to say what’s possible?
Her English is excellent. We talk about the weather — the universal opener — and she gets the requisite horrified thrill at the mention of Canadian winters.
We chat for a while and then she shows us a table of goods for sale: locally woven textiles alongside some standard tourist items. The difference here is that every baht we spend goes directly to her family, with no intermediary taking a cut.
We load up a bag with a good selection of scarves and other souvenirs.
She lets me photograph her, and then I take pictures of the house, the view, the dog, the chickens. Her younger sister appears. Both girls are neatly dressed and well fed and there is a general air of quiet joy.
I am anxious not to romanticize, and yet I can’t help thinking that their outdoor-facing life overlooking a million-dollar view on a land rich with fruits and vegetables must be preferable to the grinding boredom—and danger—of factory work or the noise and pollution of a city slum.
Thanks to the Internet and Pat’s help, the family can host travelers when they wish and use the money however they see fit.
Pat has built his business specifically to support situations like this one. In recent years, the family has found travelers independently through Google, which Pat considers a success.
His goal is for the communities to benefit directly, with or without him as a middleman.
Stunning Northern Thailand
After visiting with the Kayan family, we descend to the valley and continue through countryside that would make a landscape photographer weep.
We enjoy lunch at a lakeside restaurant where all of the other patrons are Thai and Chinese tourists. The cost for four people is 550 baht, which is roughly $20 Canadian. The food is fresh and excellent.
A Mongolian Market, Daggers, and a Shaman’s Work
Our next stop is a market whose vendors are from the Hmong tribe and primarily of Mongolian heritage. Most came to Thailand over eighty years ago to escape Communism.
This is not a tourist market. It’s a basic, no-nonsense outdoor supermarket of abundance packaged for use that evening in the family stew and not for tourists to snap pictures of.
We are the only non-locals, and we are met with waves and hellos and not a single indication that we are unwelcome.
Pat points out daggers hanging above each doorway, pointing downward. He explains that they are carved by the local shaman to keep evil spirits from entering. A woman sits on the curb working on traditional dress for the family’s New Year celebrations.
Children on old bicycles clatter past. Dogs fight. People sit in doorways and watch us go by. Many wave. There is no feeling that we are intrusive, probably because we are with Pat who greets everyone.
They know him and his mission to build sustainable tourism for the hill tribes in the north and tolerate the Westerners following in his wake.
Waterfall, Hot Springs, and a Creative Interpretation of “Spa”
We make a stop at Srisangwan waterfall at Pha Deng National Park waterfall. It’s not the famous sticky waterfall near Chiang Mai, but walkable and beautiful.
I watch a father and his young daughter climb directly up the slick rock face without slipping. There’s something in the geology of these rocks that makes them grippy even when wet.
We drive a little farther to a hot springs, which are not quite what I had pictured. I was imagining steaming jungle pools, mist rising romantically, monkeys watching from the trees. The reality is a small tiled pool for women and another for men.
I’m unable to climb down the ladder because of my injured arm, so the attendant takes us to a row of private rooms and fills a plastic bath directly from the hot springs. Julia and I both clamber in — it’s a tight squeeze — and enjoy several minutes of thermal therapy. It’s lovely in an entirely unphotogenic way.
I get a kick out of a sign warning campers to watch out for creepy crawlies.
Endlessly Stunning Scenery
Back in the car, we meander through a stunning valley where the only action is crops growing and 360-degree views of world-class scenery.
We stop by a lake and Pat tells us his dream of having a resort built that that is exclusively owned by and employs local people. The setting certainly is worthy.
A Visit with Martha and Her Family
Our final stop of the two days is to have dinner with a family of refugees from Myanmar. Pat tells us very little on the drive over. He leaves it up to the daughter, nineteen-year-old Martha, to introduce herself and talk about her family and her life.
We arrive at a concrete block house with a covered veranda and an outdoor kitchen. A woman is chopping vegetables. The view over the lake from the veranda is stunning — clouds flaring pink and orange as the afternoon tips into evening, a view worthy of any five-star resort.
But this is not a five-star resort. This is a refugee settlement for people who crossed mountains to escape the war in Myanmar.
Martha’s English is excellent and her manner is direct and warm. She tells us that when her family arrived here, there was nothing, just land with very little else. Her father built the house.
She and her family gather roots and leaves from the forest for cooking and grow crops on the few acres of land they have been given. Life here is not easy; surviving every day means hard work.
Early Evening Walk
Martha asks if we’d like to walk while her mother prepares dinner. We go down to the lake, and she points out trees and fruit and waves to neighbors from her community, people living in houses that are not quite as sturdy as hers. Most are sitting outside in the early evening stillness. There is a quietness about them that speaks of the hardships they’ve endured.
A group of boys throws rocks into the lake. One falls and scrapes his knee and runs off crying. Children everywhere are just children.
Martha shows us her community’s church. They are Baptist, following a translation of the Bible made by an American missionary at the turn of the last century.
A Simple Dinner
Dusk is falling and so we return to her home where her mother serves a simple vegetarian meal.
It’s tasty but very spicy and I fear I may have offended Martha’s mother by not being able to clean my plate.
Over dinner, I ask Martha what she wants to do with her life. Her answer surprises me.
She wants to go home to Myanmar where she can be with her friends, finish school and be able to come and go as she pleases.
I don’t fully understand this until we drive out to the main road and pass through a checkpoint manned by a Thai soldier.
Martha is a refugee. She cannot come and go as she pleases. With her future in Thailand not secure, her dream isn’t a career or a house or an adventure. Her dream is simply to be free to move through the world like a person.
This breaks my heart.
Getting Back, and Getting Perspective
We pile into the car for the last time. After several hours driving along dark roads, we’re back in Chiang Mai and the posh hotel Julia has booked for our last night there. I shower off two days of road dust and sink into a bed overlooking a pool.
I think about the women making candles in the smoky hut, and the teenager who wants to walk a runway, and Martha sitting on a veranda with a mountain view she can’t freely leave.
I’ve done nothing to deserve the hand I’ve been dealt in life. And yet I get to sleep in a hotel that probably costs more than many of the people I’ve met over the past two days earn in a month. Then I’ll fly home to a secure home far from the ravages of war, the scramble for survival, and a guard at a checkpoint.
It’s an age-old dilemma that is unsolvable.
I set my alarm to catch an early flight to Surat Thani and three days in Khao Sok ahead.
The adventure, as they say, continues.
Planning Your Own Hill Tribe Tour
The tour operator: Thailand Hilltribe Holidays is run by Melissa and Pat. They offer one-day, two-day, and multi-day tours, all private and customizable. This is not a mass-market operation, which is the whole point.
If you’re looking for an authentic experience that will teach you something about the lives of the hill tribes in northern Thailand and if you’re open to follow wherever the guide takes you, then a Thailand Hill Tribe Holiday is for you.
Ethical Considerations
Avoid any hill tribe tour that takes you to a “village” set up for tourists, where women in traditional dress wait to be photographed for a fee that goes to the tour organizer.
These exist and they are exploitative. With Thailand Hilltribe Holidays, the communities receive the income directly. When we had dinner with Martha’s family, we paid them cash.
Practical Notes
- The two-day tour involves a lot of driving, some of it on very steep mountain roads. Our driver was excellent.
- The homestay option which involves sleeping on mats in a hill tribe home is available and is said to be meaningful. I opted out for health reasons. No regrets, but if you’re mobile and keen, it’s the deeper experience.
- Bring cash for purchasing goods directly from hill tribe families and for paying your guide. This is genuinely one of the best ways to support the communities you visit.
- If you’re visiting Chiang Mai, this tour pairs beautifully with a sunrise temple tour, which I wrote about here.
When To Go
We visited in January, which is northern Thailand’s cool season and ideal for this kind of touring. The mornings are fresh and the days are warm but manageable.
Avoid rainy season (roughly June to October) for road accessibility.
Have you taken a hill tribe tour in northern Thailand? I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments below.
Keep Exploring Thailand with Artsy Traveler
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- Penthai Theatre Bangkok: the most distinctive cultural dinner show I found in the city
- How to Visit Elephants Ethically in Chiang Mai: Not all elephant experiences are worth your money.
- Sunrise Temple Tour in Chiang Mai: Getting up early has never been more worth it.
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