Trekking tours 30 years ago in Thailand were simple affairs: the trek started in Chiang Mai and was based exclusively on walking in the hilly, forested areas, the hotels and facilities in the hill tribe villages were basic and the prices of tours low. The small "jungle tour companies" in northern Thailand offered primarily three to five day trips to several areas with a mixed tribal population, most of which were but recently penetrated by tourists; their "authenticity" had hence not yet been affected by past visits. Even the most frequently visited area, north of the Mae Kok river, in which trekking by "three-days-two-nights" tours was fairly routine, had been opened to tourism only in about 1973. Most of the villages on the treks were not yet accessible by car; trekking was therefore not merely an exercise, but also a necessity, the only means of access to remote hill tribe localities.

The hill tribe villages were virtually the only "marked" attractions on the tour: even though the tour led through forested areas, and was called a "jungle trek", the forest or "jungle" was not advertized as an attraction on the tour nor did the guides make an effort to draw the trekkers attention to it; "jungle tours" were in fact ethnic tourism, pure and simple. Tourists were brought to a village and stayed in it for a few hours or for a night in small hotel like accommodations, observing and photographing the locals at close distance, without the imposition of any barriers; nor was there a "tourist space", an artificial front behind which the tribals would conduct their "real" life; virtually everything in a tribal village was accessible to the "tourist gaze".

In the course of the 1980s and 1990s significant changes occurred in hill tribe tourism in Thailand; these reflect, on the local scale, some of the general trends of change in Thai tourism which have been reviewed above. The number of tourists visiting the highlands increased enormously; according to one estimate, about 100,000 youth tourists tour the region every year. Mass tourism, of an admittedly non-conventional kind, has thus penetrated the highlands. This penetration was facilitated by the development of the local road system in the intervening period. A growing number of hill tribe villages, even those on remote mountain ridges, became accessible to transport, and most of these enjoy some kind of transportation service.

These changes have had an impact on the manner in which young tourists tour the hill tribe area. The greater accessibility of the area enabled growing numbers of youth tourists to enter it individually, without the assistance of a trekking company. Some use local transport, primarily pick-up trucks plying the routes between the towns and the countryside. Others hire motorcycles in one of the major cities, mostly Chiang Mai or Chiang Rai, and travel the dirt roads of the highlands. Better-off tourists rent jeeps or similar four-wheel drive vehicles. The mountain bike has recently been introduced as the most economic means for touring the region.

Accommodations and hotels in the highlands of northern Thailand have also changed: throughout the lower ranges of the region, and along some high valleys, a number of resorts have sprung up, owned by non-tribals, which serve as local bases for the exploration of the surrounding area. In some cases, as for example in the Mae Sai Valley, close to Chiang Mai, these tend to be luxurious affairs serving mostly domestic tourists; in others, the resorts offer only simple bungalows and basic services, intended for shoe-string youth travellers. In several towns within the highland region, Mae Sarieng and Mae Hong Son in the west, Pai close to its center, hotels and guest houses have proliferated.

Despite the growth of individual tourism, the number of jungle tour companies has also proliferated over the years. Their precise number is hard to establish, since many are not officially registered. In 1978, there were fourteen registered trekking companies, and several unregistered ones. In 1993, there were 120 registered trekking companies and agents; their total number has been estimated at about 200. Over the years, however, the nature of the jungle tours offered by these companies has changed considerably. These changes are to some extent related to the far-reaching transformation which the mountain region underwent in the intervening period, under the impact of forces unrelated to tourism. In the last years the primary forest has all but disappeared; the lifeways and appearance of the tribal peoples themselves has changed considerably with their diminished isolation from the mainstream society. In particular, many have discarded their "colorful" tribal dresses, which was one of the principal sources of their attractiveness. A growing gap has emerged between the embellished touristic image of the tribal people and the realities of their daily life. Partly to countervail the declining attractiveness of the tribes and the mountain environment, and partly to attract potential customers in a situation of considerable competition, the trekking companies have added new attractions and hotels to their excursions. The two most significant ones are elephant riding along part of the trek, and rafting on highland rivers, both of which were rated higher by trekkers as a source of satisfaction in a recent study, than the visits to the hill tribe villages, even though the latter had been the principal motivation for going on the trek.

Jungle trekking in the early 1970s was initially largely confined to the area north of the Mae Kok river; but meanwhile many new areas were being opened up by the jungle tour companies in their quest for "non-touristic" treks to offer their authenticity-seeking clients. Consequently, the system of trekking routes expanded quickly; a wide variety of routes were established by the companies, but the limits of possible expansion of the system were soon reached, whether owing to the declining attractiveness of the remaining areas, such as the absence of an interesting variety of tribal groups, or to the constraints like lack of safety due to the presence of insurgents, such as the army of the notorious warlord and drug kingpin Khun Sa in the extreme northwest of the country.

Even though all accessible areas with a varied tribal population have been routinely visited by trekking parties for many years, the jungle tour companies still advertise their trekking areas as "newly opened" or "non-touristic". While the less experienced trekkers, or those who are less eager for authenticity, may be fairly happy with their encounter with the hill tribes, the more experienced or authenticity-seeking tourists are ever more repulsed by the gap between image and reality and by the routinized character of contemporary hill tribe tours. Here, the recent regionalization of tourism offers newly expanding horizons for authenticity-seeking ethnic tourists; they can now move into the tribal areas of Laos, China, and even Vietnam, which have been less penetrated by processes of acculturation and modernization, and thus offer more "authentic" experiences of tribal life. The type of tourists who opened the Thai highlands to trakking tourism in the 1970s, are in the 1990s moving into the surrounding countries, leaving the highlands of Thailand behind, to be gradually saturated by increasingly routinized mass tourism.