Explore Soppong in Northern Thailand

By The Married Wanderers On April 22, 2020

Soppong is definitely one of Thailand’s hidden gems!! When people speak about how touristy and busy Thailand is, they clearly haven’t gone to explore Soppong in Northern Thailand. A beautiful mountain town near the border of Myanmar.

Soppong is the most Northern town on the Mae Hong Son Motorbike Loop. It is located between Pai and the town of Mae Hon Son. The pass between these three places were by far the most scenic. It was rolling luminous green mountains as far as the eye could see!

We added Soppong to our bucketlist for one specific reason,

Tham Nam Lod Cave

This ginormous cave is one of our top natural wonders in Thailand!

We arrived and were welcomed by a friendly female guide (who funny enough couldn’t speak much English). We were set up with some glowing lamps and off we went – into the pitch black cave!

It was extremely humid and dark. This is an insanely real cave adventure. The best we’ve ever done!

During our stay in Pai we heard of a few couples who drove in one day to Soppong to visit the cave and then straight back to Pai (1 hour, 40 minute motorbike ride one way).

Tham Nam Lod Cave gets a few tourist buses during the day (anytime from 10am until 3pm). The advantage of staying over in Soppong is being able to get to the cave before the buses. We woke up, had breakfast and headed over to the cave around 8am. We were literally the only ones there, the entire time!

Cave Lodge in Sopping

We booked Cave Lodge because it was a 10 minute walk along the river to the Tham Nam Lod Cave. It was such a great find.

We had a very rustic, affordable bamboo tree house that looked over the river. They do offer fancier rooms than this cheaper option ;)! The restaurant had a great communal area to chat over lunch or drinks and good wifi for us to update our travel blog.

We met some amazing travellers at this lodge. A family with three young children who were on a two year “gap year”, a solo doctor from France, a travel couple coming from teaching English in Korea and a fellow blogger from Ireland.

We’ve found that if you travel far enough outside the usual tourist spots you’re bound to find some really interesting nomads who can tell you a crazy story, or five!

Sunrise in Soppong

We don’t often have the will power to wake up early but this sunrise spot was worth it. We went as part of a group ‘Sunrise Tour’ offered by the Cave Lodge. You can definitely drive there yourself but we decided to join the group after making friends with the guests. It was only 100 Baht for the tour and the flasks of coffee was worth every scent.