Marvel Overland Holiday

At first glance Phrae is no Chiang Mai, but that in itself is a part of the appeal. It is a small town with enough to see and do to fill a couple of days, and if you’re visiting between November and February, the weather is beautiful, making the old town streets all the more pleasant to wander around in.

Phrae city is one of the oldest continually inhabited sites in this part of the country and was an important settlement in the ancient Mon Haripunchai kingdom that centred on Lamphun near Chiang Mai. It is thought to have been originally founded under the name Muang Phon in 828, long before the first Siamese migrated into the region. Although geographically blessed with a wide fertile valley and evidently a wealthy region, Phrae did also suffer from being surrounded by more powerful neighbours of Nan, Phayao, Phitsanulok and Chiang Mai’s Lanna Kingdom, not to mention those “perfidious Burmese”. Inevitably perhaps it changed hands many times over the centuries. A bad day in 1902 saw the city sacked—this time by a Shan army—whereupon Phrae’s last ruler, Chao Piriyathapawong, sought refuge in Luang Prabang,