Chiang Khong

Chiang Khong occupies broad intermontane basins of the Phi Pan Nam mountains in northeastern Chiang Rai province. The Mekong bounds the district on the north and northeast and separates it from Laos, while the Ing River carries water from the interior toward the great river. West of the town, Doi Luang Pae Mueang rises 1,328 metres, forming a prominent massif above the settled lowland. This arrangement of river and mountain placed Chiang Khong among the river towns of the northern Tai country, where transport and exchange followed the Mekong and its valleys.

Chiang Khong lay about 35 kilometres downstream of Chiang Saen, the Mekong town founded in 1329 by Saenphu, a grandson of King Mangrai of Lan Na. The Chiang Saen area stood on a trade route toward Yunnan, and the river towns below it shared that frontier world. Lan Na was ruled from Burma from 1558 to 1774, and in 1804 Siamese troops took Chiang Saen. Farming on the river flats and trade along the Mekong sustained a town on the border between the Tai principalities of the north.