This is Not a Guide to Mae Chaem (But You Don't Need One Anyway)

A wat set at the endge of rice fields in Mae Chaem

Mae Chaem is a small town in northern Thailand. It had just started to pop up in guidebooks when we visited in 2015, and Travelfish only had a small amount of information about the place. Travelfish still ignores Mae Chaem.

You may find a bit of informaiton about Mae Chaem if you are researching the Mae Hong Son Loop. You may even run across my wife's blog post about it.

But there is not much out there about Mae Chaem.

But in our research before going, the most interesting question we came across was whether Mae Chaem would become the next Pai. At the time, we had been to neither town, so the question didn’t mean much to us.

Now that we’ve been to both? Please, please, please do not make Mae Chaem into the next Pai.

We did not like Pai. Even a little bit.

To us, Pai is a horrible place where tourists have overrun a small mountain town and turned it more or less into an outpost of Bangkok's Khao San Road. Party-till-you-drop tourists seem to outnumber the locals several times over.

We had one great experience in Pai (at Thom’s Elephant Camp) and one horrible experience (we got salmonella poisoning from some street chicken). But more than that, it was the atmosphere of the town that turned us off. It felt like a circus of Instagrammers, mushroom milkshake bars, and full moon party spillover.

Many people love Pai. We didn't.

But we loved Mae Chaem. We loved the quiet streets. We loved the locals who were excited to interact with us and went bat crap crazy when we tried to speak Thai. Seriously, sputter out a few words and the locals basically adopted you.

We loved the tiny hole-in-the-wall lunch place where we got khao man gai (chicken rice) and noodle soup every day.

We loved the kids who played with us.

We loved the green rice fields.

Mae Chaem has many wats set in the rice fields

We loved the amazing wats (Buddhist temples) set in the middle of the rice fields, or up on a hilltop, or beside a spring that produced the drinking water for the whole area.

We loved the morning market.

We loved the festivals we attended (Mother’s Day was national “Bike for Mom” day—not sure how biking helps mom out, but it must!).

We loved visiting the local schools up in the hills and in the town itself.

Daughter 2 dancing the stick dance

We especially loved the rural school that invited us to visit and taught us to dance a traditional dance, jumping and weaving through long bamboo sticks that students slid around on the ground.

Learning the Electric Slide dance

And we really, really loved that in return for teaching us the bamboo stick dance, the kids let us teach them the Electric Slide.

And don't even get me started on how much we loved the place on the edge of town that served surprisingly good cake.

Why This is Not A Guide to Mae Chaem

We spent several weeks in Mae Chaem and explored the area fairly well. My original plan was to write a detailed guide: how to get a hotel, where to eat, how to arrange transport to surrounding sights.

But I’m not going to do that.

Instead, I’ll just say this: go to Mae Chaem. Spend some time there. There are homestays and hotels. There are restaurants. There are amazing hikes and bike rides. And there are wonderful people.

You’ll figure everything out once you arrive.

Just go.

And if that sounds too vague for your comfort—if you want everything pre-booked and pre-planned and pre-sanitized—then maybe go to Pai. You’ll probably love it. Many people do.

But if you’re an explorer rather than just a consumer, go to Mae Chaem. And go quickly, before it turns into Pai.

I know why I travel to places like Mae Chaem. I know that I learned and grew while having a wonderful time.

Because travel.

I have no idea why I went to Pai. And I kind of wish I hadn’t. Because salmonella.

We met individuals from the local government that trained us to look for mosquito larvae in standing water. So we helped scour the area, checking for larvae, and killing them when we found them. This program has significantly reduced incidence of dengue fever in the area.