Nan Province

Nan Province occupies a long, narrow river valley in the eastern corner of northern Thailand, sharing a 227-kilometre border with Laos. The provincial capital, Nan town, sits at the base of the valley at 267 metres and is a well-preserved example of a northern Thai market town with intact wooden shophouses, a Saturday night walking market, and a concentration of Buddhist temples that reflect centuries of independent Nan Kingdom culture. The most famous is Wat Phumin, a late-fourteenth-century temple known throughout Thailand for its extraordinary mural paintings completed in the 1890s — a series depicting everyday Nan life during the period, with particular fame for the 'whispering lovers' scene in which a young man leans toward a woman's ear, a depiction of intimacy unusual in Thai temple art. The murals are in the Shan-Lanna style with significant Lao influence. A second important temple, Wat Phra That Chae Haeng (across the Nan River from town), houses a 55-metre gilded chedi that is the most sacred site in the province. The Nan National Museum occupies a 1903 building that once served as the residence of Nan's last feudal lord and contains excellent displays on Nan's history, its hilltribe communities (including the Mlabri and Mien peoples), and its traditional crafts. Beyond the town, the province's forested mountains hold Thai Lue and Mien villages, the Doi Phu Kha National Park with its rare endemic Chomphu Phu Kha tree (a pink-blossomed rhododendron), and the Nan River that provides the best whitewater rafting in northern Thailand during October and November.