Lamphun & White Karen Hill-tribe Village

(8.30 - 12.00 am, or 01.30 -05.00 pm, minimum 2 persons)

Twenty kilometers south of Chiang Mai is the ancient city of Lamphun. Once the capital of the Mon kingdom of Haripunchai, it is among the oldest continuous settlements in Thailand, predating Chiang Mai by several centuries. As you enter the city, remnants of its city walls and the surrounding oval moat are still evident. We stop to visit Wat Prathat Haripunchai, which has remained the centre of the city’s spiritual life since ancient times, and we visit Wat Chamadevi to admire its square pagoda, the oldest in Thailand. We drive on to Pasang, a small northern Thai town famed for cotton weaving before continuing to a White Karen hill-tribe village situated amid rice paddies. The Karen, a rice-farming ethnic minority whose homeland is in eastern Burma began migrating into Thailand more than two centuries previously, bringing their own unique customs and culture with them. Around 80 percent of the Karen are Christians.