Pang Tong Royal Palace

Many websites call it Pang Tong 2, which is wrong. The Pang Tong project has four parts: Pang Tong 1 at Huai Makhuea Som, Pang Tong 2 at Pang Ung near Ban Ruam Thai, Pang Tong 3 at Mae Sa Nga–Mok Cham Pae, and Pang Tong 4, the palace and its grounds. Nor is it a Royal Project Foundation station: it is a royal-initiative highland development centre run by several government agencies together with the Army.

Mok Cham Pae lies on the Myanmar border, opposite Shan and Kayah states. Before the project the area was known as dangerous, with armed groups, opium growing and processing, cross-border drug trafficking, illegal logging and shifting cultivation. Most residents were Hmong, Lahu, Lisu, Karen, Lawa and Tai Yai, and some were hired to carry drugs for border armed groups.

Further up the same road is the legacy of the KMT 93rd Division. Around 1967 General Kung Chao Long brought 180 Nationalist Chinese soldiers to set up a base near Doi Tong Mae Yot, and from 1973 their families founded Ban Mae Or Mai, later renamed Ban Rak Thai. Ban Rak Thai is not part of the Pang Tong project, but it is part of the border context that made the area important for security.

Sources disagree on the start date. The Land Development Department's royal-project document and Manager Online say King Rama IX gave the initiative in 1979, asking the Army to work with the agriculture and natural resources ministries, while most tourism sources say the centre was set up in 1980 as Mae Hong Son's second royal development centre. The best summary is: conceived in 1979, operating from 1980.

In the first phase of Mae Hong Son's royal projects, 1979–1981, four centres were created: the Pai Watershed, the Pang Tong Highland Centre, Nai Soi and Huai Makhuea Som. The provincial royal-development working group built the Pang Tong residence for royal stays, and King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit first stayed here on 19–20 February 1981.

Shortly before, on 16 February 1980, the royal couple visited Ban Huai Duea in Pha Bong subdistrict and asked the Royal Irrigation Department to build water wheels lifting water from the Pai River for mulberry and silk farming. The same year, at Pang Tong, the King remarked that the forest here should be kept for wildlife as an "open zoo", which led to the Pang Tong Wildlife Breeding Station in 1983, on 150 rai plus another 1,800 rai at Ban Pang Mu.

In the second phase, 1983–1987, the centres were merged into working groups. In 1984 the Mae Hong Son Land Development Station joined the Pang Tong group, and on 7 February 1984 the King asked for the forest around the Pang Tong reservoir and the Pang Ung weir to be restored to its natural state, giving rise to Pang Tong 2, or Pang Ung, on once-bald hills. The guiding ideas were "plant three kinds of forest for four benefits" and "where there are people, there is water".

The centre's approach was to gather scattered hill peoples into settled villages, allocate land for homes and farming, build reservoirs, promote cool-climate crops and livestock, and restore the forest to make the border secure. Target villages included Ban Pang Tong (Tai Yai, Karen), Ban Na Pa Paek (Hmong, Tai Yai), Ban Huai Makhuea Som and Ban Ruam Thai (Tai Yai).

King Bhumibol set out that the centre should work simply, without fuss and economically, with every agency planning and acting together for the people's benefit toward sufficiency and sustainable development. Its first role was to produce and promote cool-climate crops and livestock for the target villages. The Land Development Department puts the centre at about 5,400 rai, and the Ministry of Agriculture later upgraded it into an agri-tourism learning site under the "Rak Nam for the Mother of the Land" project, adding demonstration plots for highland land use, soil and water conservation, and organic farming.

In 1994 the palace and its grounds were developed as Pang Tong 4. The website 90route records royal visits to villagers and pupils of Pang Tong Romklao School on 24 February 1994, to the Pang Tong 2 reservoir on 15 February 1997 and to review the centre's progress on 22 March 1999, but does not say which royal, and no second source confirms them. The list of King Bhumibol's Mae Hong Son visits found ends in 1993, so these three were probably Queen Sirikit's; she came regularly to work here. The 21st Infantry Regiment, the Queen's Guard, is still stationed on site.

The Queen's work spread around the area: she founded the Mae Hong Son SUPPORT crafts centre in 1995, a food-bank project began at Ban Na Pa Paek in March 2000, and on 23 February 2005 she opened the centre's new three-storey building with a royal working room and a museum of six hill peoples. During a visit on 3–5 March 2006 she advised on land allocation, kitchen gardens, livestock, rice and the dangers of farm chemicals, and asked that bred wildlife be released back into the forest with villagers' involvement.

MGR Online records that in 1995 Queen Sirikit used funds from the SUPPORT Foundation to buy a building and about 5 rai of land in Mae Hong Son to set up the Mae Hong Son Arts and Crafts Centre, and that the community food bank at Ban Na Pa Paek began in March 2000 with ten pilot households before spreading to nearby villages, aiming at mixed crop-and-livestock farming as a natural food reserve. Lung Pala, a former headman of Ban Ruam Thai who came from Myanmar, recalls receiving King Bhumibol and accepting royal gift bags of clothes and blankets on the villagers' behalf.

Today the centre is divided into about 12 zones run by different agencies — fisheries, agricultural extension, land development, irrigation, agriculture, national parks, livestock, the Army and a school. Learning stations cover ferns, orchids (including a propagation centre for the local Dendrobium), sturgeon and Mekong catfish, bamboo, rice, coffee, vetiver, cool-climate vegetables and flowers, and a seedling nursery.

The favourite spot is the sheep meadow of the Livestock Department's Mae Hong Son research station, which tests about a hundred wool sheep for local weaving; wool scarves, shawls, soap and lotion are on sale, and there are horses and donkeys too. The wildlife breeding station keeps clouded leopards, Eld's deer, sambar, barking deer, sun bears, Asiatic black bears, gibbons, hornbills, kalij pheasants, green peafowl and black swans.

The wildlife station grew from King Bhumibol's remark at the residence in 1980 that "this forest should conserve wildlife on the model of an open zoo", with groundwork starting in 1983. On 3 March 2006, at the Bamboo Study Centre in Pang Tong, Queen Sirikit asked that many species be released back into the forest, with villagers helping to breed and care for them. By 2011 the station held 29 species and nearly 1,500 animals and had bred clouded leopards and silver pheasants. In 2023 the national parks department called it the province's zoo in effect, featuring green peafowl, kalij pheasants, Eld's deer, muntjac, sun and black bears and black swans.

Inside the centre are two shrines that sources name consistently, the Maharat shrine and the Thahan Suea ("tiger soldiers") shrine, where visitors usually pay respects first. Kapook and Paiduaykan say they honour King Naresuan, following a local story that some 400 years ago, after taking Hongsawadi, his army lacked men and supplies to attack Toungoo and returned via Pang Tong, Pai and Mae Malai to Chiang Mai and Ayutthaya. Some English-language sites say the Maharat shrine holds a statue of King Rama V, so the only open question is whom it honours.

On 7 March 2015 the centre was formally established as the Pang Tong Highland Service and Development Centre and an agro-eco-tourism learning site, and it is on TAT's "70 Royal Footsteps" routes. Visitors may enter the farming and learning zones free after signing in with the soldiers at the gate; the residence itself is not open, though it can be seen from outside.

The wildlife station still rescues animals: on 25 April 2026 firefighters near Wat Pa Tham Wua found an injured female pangolin and brought her to Pang Tong for treatment. A 2021 Maejo University study looked at community participation in fire prevention in the Pang Tong 3 area.

On 26–27 January 2026 Privy Councillor Palakorn Suwanrath, chair of the northern royal-projects subcommittee, reviewed work in Mae Hong Son, where the province reported 34 royal-initiative border-security villages in Pai, Pang Mapha and Mueang districts, including Ban Mae Suya on the road to Pang Tong.

Queen Sirikit died on 24 October 2025. Mae Hong Son held a 1,000-lantern tribute at Nong Chong Kham on 15 December 2025, and hill peoples travelled to Bangkok to pay their respects. Pang Tong remains one of the places most closely tied to her work in Mae Hong Son.