Day Trek: Exploring the Palong Trails of Chiang Dao

Day Trek: Exploring the Palong Trails of Chiang Dao

This is a private tour.No one else will join you. For the best time to go trekking in Chiang Mai, check out this page. Please read our blog “Family Trekking: frequently asked questions“.

Your guide and driver will meet you at the hotel at 0800 for your day trek “Exploring the Palong Trails of Chiang Dao”. We will drive to Chiang Dao, about 70km north of Chiang Mai. Today you will meet the people who call themselves “Dara-ang” but are known in Thailand as “Palong”. There are also people of the Akha, Lisu, Lahu, and Karen groups living in this area

It is an agricultural area encircled by forested mountains. Many crops grow in this area such as corn, cassava, and rice. There are lots of fruit trees as well, amongst others papaya, longan (lamyai), rose apple, and mango. The Palong people grow pineapples as well. Today you will taste some of the fruit of the season. Yummy!

Visit the Mae Malai local market

Our first stop is the fascinating local market at Mae Malai. Your guide with take you around and tell you about the herbs and vegetables, used in Thai cooking. He will also tell about the strange kinds of food and the other local products you can find here. We buy some of the ingredients for our lunch here, which we will prepare in the village.If you have any dietary requirements, don’t forget to inform our guide. After this we will continue to Chiang Dao, a charming town at the base of the majestic Doi Luang Chiang Dao, Thailand’s third-highest mountain.

Trekking from village to village: the Palong Trails

Here we will leave the main road to proceed further into the countryside, where we will stop at the Dara-ang village of Pang Daeng Nai. Most of the women in this village still wear traditional dresses. In this village, there is a small Royal Project as well as a Buddhist temple that we will visit before we start our Palong Trails hike today. Here you can find more about the history and background of trekking in Chiang Mai.

From Pang Daeng Nai we’ll hike through the protected community forest to Mae Chon, another Dara-ang village. We will pass through dipterocarp and bamboo forest and patches of evergreen forest. The trail goes up and down, but is not too steep. There is plenty of time for some explanation of flora and enjoy the tranquillity of the forest. The last part of our hike takes us through the plantations and fields of the Dara-ang village of Mae Chon.

Cooking at the home of Lung Bun

The last part of the Palong Trails takes us through the plantations and fields of the villages. Your guide will introduce you the village and will explain about the village shrine and the ‘huja rawl’, the ‘village heart’. The Dara-ang (Palong) people migrated from Myanmar to Thailand in the 1980s. The Dara-ang women are excellent weavers, who make beautiful textiles that are for sale in the village for very reasonable prices. We also will show you how to use a traditional rice pounder. At the house of Lung Bun we will cook and enjoy our lunch. Our guide is a master cook on a wood fire. You can help  him cut the vegetables and try your hand cooking in a wok. After this, we will consume our delicious lunch.

The Buatong Waterfalls, aka the “Sticky Waterfalls”

The Sticky Waterfalls are in the Sri Lanna National Park. We are in an area with a lot of limestone mountains. Limestone is partially soluble and therefore forms many erosional landforms. Doi Luang Chiang Dao, the third-highest mountain in Thailand (2175m), is a limestone mountain. Waterfalls are often slippery, but a limestone waterfall is not, hence the nickname “Sticky Waterfalls”.

After a day full of activities, it is time for relaxation. We will spend an hour at these delightful falls, which you can walk up and done. Be careful, though. Enjoy the cool and clean water before we head back to Chiang Mai.

We will arrive back in Chiang Mai in the late afternoon. It is the end of your “Day Trek: Exploring the Palong Trails of Chiang Dao”