Hug Inn Phrae — A Steel-and-Glass Loft Building with Its Own Hug Mug Café

Hug Inn Phrae is a small stay designed with more intent than you would expect in a town like Phrae. The building is steel-framed with large glass panels in a loft style, finished in black and dark brown with bare-concrete and exposed-brick walls. At dusk the room lights glow through the glass and the whole structure reads like one big lantern. The detail guests mention first is the split-level Loft room — a bed and sitting corner downstairs, extra sleeping space upstairs. Travelling as a family, you can send the kids up top and keep the lower level for yourselves, which gives everyone privacy without booking two rooms.

Rooms come in a handful of types — a Superior with a king bed, a Superior twin, a Family Room that sleeps several, and the Loft Room that is the headline. The interiors are kept light and bright against the black steelwork, with polished-concrete floors, steel-frame shelving, a wooden desk and a window seat dressed with indigo Hom-dyed cushions — the local hand-dyed textile Phrae is known for. Each room has air-conditioning, a small fridge, a kettle and blackout curtains. Guests consistently describe the rooms as clean, the mattresses as pleasantly firm, and the air-conditioning as cold enough for a hot northern afternoon.

🛏️ Check availability

🛏️ Check availability

The other star here is the Hug Mug café on the ground floor. A dark wooden counter is draped with hanging ferns, industrial bulbs dangle overhead and the floor is laid with hexagonal terracotta tiles — good enough that it is the property's most-photographed spot. In the morning it serves an à la carte breakfast: a plate per person with coffee, tea and fruit. Several guests single out the coffee and the local sausage as particularly good. Worth knowing up front: there is no dinner service on site, so evenings mean heading out to eat, which is a short walk away.

The location works in your favour if you want to explore the old town on foot. The stay sits in Nai Wiang, central Phrae — the historic district inside the old city moat — a 3-minute drive from Kad Kong Kao, the Saturday-evening walking street that fills with market stalls, grilled food and local crafts from late afternoon. Khanom jin, sai ua northern sausage, and roasted coffee from Phrae's hill-grown beans are typical finds; the market runs roughly from 17:00 until goods sell out, so arriving early in the evening beats arriving late. Khum Chao Luang and Vongburi House, the town's two celebrated teak mansions, are a few minutes away by car or an easy bicycle ride through streets that are flat and mostly traffic-free. Vongburi House in particular is one of the finest examples of teak-mansion architecture in northern Thailand, blending Thai and European colonial detailing across two storeys of carved timber that has darkened to a deep honey brown over more than a century. There are local restaurants and noodle shops within walking reach for the evening — nothing fancy, but the kind of honest northern Thai cooking that you come to Phrae for in the first place, including khao soi and nam ngiao broth that the region does well. The property lends out bicycles free of charge: Phrae's old quarter is small enough to cover in an hour of gentle riding, and the roads inside the moat see very little through-traffic, making it one of the more pleasant cycling towns in the north. You can loop past Wat Luang, the oldest temple in Phrae with its ornate Lanna-era viharn and elephant-base chedi, then continue to Wat Phra Non, known for a reclining Buddha figure, and finish at the old city gate before swinging back for coffee. The streets are quiet enough that families with children ride them comfortably, and the flatness means even people who rarely cycle find the circuit easy and unhurried. The property also runs a free Phrae Airport transfer — the airport sits only about 2 kilometres from the hotel, which makes arriving by the short Bangkok–Phrae or Chiang Mai–Phrae flight particularly convenient. Landing mid-morning and being in your room before noon is entirely doable. If you are driving from Chiang Mai the journey takes roughly two and a half hours on Highway 101 through the mountain pass — a route that is scenic, especially the section dropping into the Phrae valley — and the hotel has free on-site parking. One practical note on timing: if you plan to visit Phrae during the city pillar festival in late November or the Loy Krathong period, the Nai Wiang area comes alive with lanterns and processions passing almost directly outside — the location that is quietly ordinary on a weekday becomes a front-row seat on those dates. All told, the combination of walkable heritage sites, free bicycles, free airport transfer and free parking gives Hug Inn Phrae a practical edge over quieter or more remote alternatives in the province, and the central position means you spend time actually seeing Phrae rather than driving to it.

🛏️ Check availability

The Trip.com score sits at 9.2/10 from 32 reviews, and it is ranked the #1 B&B in Phrae on Tripadvisor. The top sub-scores are cleanliness (9.6) and service (9.3); guests most often praise the design, the room size and the value. The honest caveat: a few reviews report an occasional drain smell in the bathroom, and as a small property there is no 24-hour front desk — check-in runs within set hours (14:00–21:00), so anyone arriving late should give notice ahead.

🛏️ Check availability

On price, a Superior room starts around ฿900/night, which is strong value for a design-led stay this central. The Family and Loft rooms that sleep several cost a little more, but split between a full group they work out to a few hundred baht a head — clearly cheaper than booking multiple rooms. Rates move differently across platforms by date, so compare Agoda, Booking and Trip.com before you commit. The property has only a handful of rooms and fills quickly over festivals and long weekends, so book two to three weeks ahead and pick a free-cancellation rate if your plans are not yet firm.

The bottom line: Hug Inn Phrae works best for travellers who want a good-looking, clean, affordable stay right in town that is easy to explore on foot, rather than anyone after a large hotel with a pool and round-the-clock service. If you can accept a small property with no dinner on site and you like a café-led, design-forward feel, it is one of the best-value stays in Phrae. Groups and families should look at the split-level Loft Room — it gives you separate levels and works out cheaper split several ways.