Fang Attractions

Fang nowadays has little to show for the important position it once held during the Lan Na Kingdom as a trading center and point of strategic significance. Its fascination lies in its role as a meeting place for the peoples of the surrounding hill tribes, the Akha, Lisu and Meo, who come here to sell their market produce. The city also has the dubious distinction of being the gateway to the notorious "Golden Triangle" where the bulk of the world's opium is grown for the heroin trade. The frontier is guarded by former soldiers from Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang forces, some of whom were allowed to settle here by the Thai government after they fled from the Chinese Communists in 1949.

Nearby Chai Prakan, founded around 900 and thus one of the earliest settlements in present-day Thailand, was an important base for earlier Thai tribes in their resistance to the south-west expansion of the Khmer Kingdom.

Fang itself was founded in 1268 by King Mengrai, and from here the Thais embarked on their gradual capture of the Mon Kingdom. It later developed into an important trading center, and for a long time its people held out against conquest by the Burmese, only capitulating in 1732 after a lengthy siege (Chiang Mai had already fallen in 1556). The Thais managed to wrest the town from its captors in the late 18th c., and since the end of the 19th c. Fang has been part of the Province of Chiang Mai, and hence the Kingdom of Thailand. The oil that was discovered around here in the 1950s proved to be of little value, and the dream of "black gold" vanished as swiftly as it had arrived.