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Muang Sing map

Muang Sing map

Muang Sing still holds a unique place in my memory. This is not only for the news I received just prior to arriving, nor the stray people I met in the town.  There was something about the locale itself.  At the time, it was the furthest I had ever gone and it was the first truly small Asian town I had been exposed to. Surin may have served as a dry introduction, but I felt I was thrown all-in in the mountainous fringes of Muang Sing.

 

By no means is it the most gorgeous or exciting place in the world.  And admittedly, I only explored the town when there was a vast area of hiking and nearby villages to explore.  However, it was a tangibly old place, contained still within its dilapidated city walls.  There was something about the atmosphere of people simply going about their daily business, acknowledging a traveller but still indifferent to them, near the looming edges of the giant that is China . . . this may well be the closest thing I have yet seen to the frontier.

 

Sunset from my guesthouse over the Muang Sing mountainscape.

Sunset from my guesthouse over the Muang Sing mountainscape.

Benjamin Williams

Hi all, my name is Ben. I’m a native Michigander with a passion for human culture and new places, and more than that, new experiences. I have degrees in archaeology and writing, pursuing a career in the latter. However, I never quite lost that fascination for archaeological theory. For the past 11 years, I’ve been living and travelling between Asia, Europe, and North America, documenting ancient sites and the peoples who built them, and then adapting them into practical archaeological travel information at PathsUnwritten.com. https://pathsunwritten.com/about-me/

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