Muang Sing

Muang Sing lies in a fertile basin among the mountains of the upper Mekong country. Tai Lue communities cultivated its plain, while highland peoples lived in the surrounding hills. The basin formed part of the sphere of Chiang Khaeng, a Lue principality whose original centre lay beside the Mekong. In the late eighteenth century the widow of a Chiang Khaeng ruler established a walled settlement here and ordered a stupa built in 1792. The plain suffered raids during the wars and forced migrations of the early nineteenth century: forces from Nan and Chiang Mai carried people south, and Muang Sing was attacked in 1805 and again in 1814.