7 Best Sights in Northern Thailand, Thailand

The cultures, ways of life, and crafts of the many hill tribe people that populate the Chiang Rai region are explained with extensive displays at this exemplary museum in the city center. The museum also supports its own travel service, PDA Tour, which organizes visits to hill tribe villages under the motto "We don't support human zoos!"

To get a sense of the region's art, visit the National Museum, which occupies a mansion built in 1923 for the prince who ruled Nan, Chao Suriyapong Pharittadit. The house itself is a work of art, a synthesis of overlapping red roofs, forest-green doors and shutters, and brilliant-white walls. There's a fine array of wood and bronze Buddha statues, musical instruments, ceramics, and other works of Lanna art. The revered black elephant tusk is also an attraction. The tusk, about a meter (3 feet) long, weighs 18 kg (40 pounds). It's actually dark brown in color, but that doesn't detract at all from its special role as a local good-luck charm.

Next door to Wat Phra That Luang, the National Museum exhibits artifacts from the Lanna period, as well as some Neolithic discoveries. The museum also has a good collection of carvings and traditional handicrafts from the hill tribes.

Lanna history and culture are vividly chronicled at this jewel of a facility on the outskirts of Chiang Rai. The museum, in an attractive complex of historic buildings, displays several centuries' worth of local artifacts, including the throne and coronation robes of a 16th-century Lanna ruler.

The region's most significant artifacts are in Bangkok's National Museum, and the many pieces on display at this fine facility demonstrate the gentle beauty of the Sukhothai era. One of several impressive exhibits reveals how refinements in the use of bronze enabled artisans to create the graceful walking Buddhas.

This fascinating museum of traditional tools, cooking utensils, animal traps, and handicrafts alone would justify a visit to Phitsanulok. In the early 1980s, Sergeant-Major Khun Thawee traveled to small villages, collecting rapidly disappearing objects of everyday life. He crammed them into a traditional house and barn, and for a decade nothing was properly documented. Visitors stumbled around tiger traps and cooking pots, with little to help them decipher what they were looking at. But Khun Thawee's daughter came to the rescue, and now the marvelous artifacts are systematically laid out, all 10,000 of them. You can now understand the use of everything on display, from the simple wood pipes hunters played to lure their prey, to elaborate rat guillotines. Thawee was honored with two university doctorates for his work in preserving such rare items. He also took over a historic foundry, which casts brass Buddhas and temple bells. The museum is a 15-minute walk south of the railway station, on the east side of the tracks, and the foundry is directly opposite.

This museum goes by two different names and commemorates the hundreds of Japanese soldiers who died here during a chaotic retreat from the Allied armies in Burma. Locals took in the dejected and defeated men, and a local historian gathered the belongings they left behind: rifles, uniforms, cooking utensils, personal photographs, and documents. They provide a fascinating glimpse into a little-known chapter of World War II.