You'll be back at the hotel just before 7 a.m., with time for breakfast (the fried rice is particularly good) and a shower before meeting your guide again at 9 for the 45-minute drive north of town to the tribal villages. One feels in Chiang Mai the same sense of pride, of noblesse oblige, that one senses in other ancient cities with wealthy, royal pasts, like, say, Jaipur and Kyoto; this is a storied place. The city was founded in 1296 as the capital of Lanna Thai, the first independent kingdom in northern Thailand. An important trading post, it was annexed to Burma in 1558 and remained under Burmese rule until 1775, when it was reunited with the Thai kingdom. As you push uphill through wisps of torn clouds, it's not difficult to see why the land was coveted by so many: The landscape, with its velvety mountains, dense copses of teak trees, and profusion of flowers, looks like a Chinese scroll painting that's been reinterpreted by Gauguin. You are on your way to visit two hill tribes—the Lisu and the Karen—of the six that inhabit the northern part of Thailand. Historically nomadic and animist by religion, these tribes have moved around Southeast Asia for centuries, relocating when circumstances force them to do so. Because they are peoples without a state, they have been used as pawns at various points in these countries' strife-filled recent past. In exchange for their ceasing to grow crops—of which opium had, by the early twentieth century, become the dominant one—and for quitting the age-old but highly destructive practice of slash-and-burn agriculture, the Thai government has subsidized these groups' villages, promoting them as a tourist attraction. As exploitative as this sounds, there are no true villains here, only an imperfect yet relatively well-intentioned solution to a problem with long-term sociocultural and environmental consequences, as well as a way of providing income to groups that have never fully assimilated, and never will, into their host countries' societies.

On your way to see the Karen in the village of Mae Mae, your first stop, ask your guide to pause at one of the roadside stands selling rice steamed in a tube of bamboo. The rice—once peeled from the wood—is gluey and sticky-sweet and immensely satisfying. Buy another portion for the road or a quick lunchtime snack; by the time you drive past on your way back down the valley, they'll probably be sold out. There are about 400,000 Karen in Thailand today, of which the long-necked Padaung (pictured right), the group you'll be meeting, are probably the most famous. This community consists of 12 families, whose girls and young women sit at their looms, making their people's signature loose-woven, bi-color shawls and scarves, which cost around $10. Underfoot, small children—the girls wearing thick leg and arm bangles of beaten silver—and roosters play and squawk. During the day, these are villages without men—they must go down-valley for work.