American Pacific International School (APIS).

The campus, and how you actually get there

Address: Main Boarding Campus: 158/1 Moo 3, Hang Dong–Samoeng Road, Ban Pong, Hang Dong, Chiang Mai 50230 · APIS Primary: Mae Hia, Mueang

Two distinct sites with two different characters. The Hang Dong main campus is a spacious semi-rural boarding campus in the foothills; the Mae Hia primary campus is a smaller, suburban school inside the city's ring-road belt. The split is deliberate — young children stay close to town, older students get the boarding estate.

Getting there: No urban rail, and this is the longest routine run of any Chiang Mai international school: the main boarding campus sits roughly 25 km from the city centre out along the Hang Dong–Samoeng Road, towards the hills. Allow 35–50 minutes from the city core and plan around the school bus rather than a daily self-drive if you can. The Mae Hia primary campus is far more convenient — a suburban site inside the ring road, close to Mae Hia's markets and the Canal Road corridor. Families with children at both campuses should ask hard questions about the two-campus morning.

Chiang Mai has no urban rail — no BTS, no MRT, no commuter metro. The city's railway station serves intercity trains to Bangkok, and the long-discussed Chiang Mai light-rail scheme remains unbuilt, so every school run here is a car, a motorbike, a red songthaew, a Grab or the school bus. Read the Chiang Mai getting-around guide and the Chiang Mai area guides before you commit to a neighbourhood.

Smoke-season air quality at this campus

American Pacific International School (APIS) does not publish detailed smoke-season filtration information that we could verify from primary sources, so we are not going to imply provision that may not exist. That is not a criticism of the school — most Chiang Mai schools handle this well and simply do not document it publicly — but it does mean you must ask directly. The due-diligence list below tells you exactly what to ask.

Northern Thailand's burning season runs roughly February to April, when agricultural burning and forest fires push Chiang Mai high into the global air-quality rankings — IQAir placed the city among the ten most polluted in the world on 4 March 2026, with AQI above 150 and PM2.5 the dominant pollutant. For a family with young children this is a legitimate school-selection criterion, not a footnote. Our Chiang Mai air-quality guide covers the season in full.

The curriculum pathway

How a child progresses through the school, stage by stage:

• IB Primary Years Programme (PYP) — Pre-Nursery through Grade 6, at the Mae Hia primary campus
• IB Middle Years Programme (MYP) — the middle years, at the Hang Dong main campus
• Grades 11–12 — American high-school pathway with Common Core-aligned English and maths plus Advanced Placement (AP) courses

Accreditation & memberships

Accreditation is the closest thing to an objective quality signal in international schooling — it means an outside body has inspected governance, teaching and safeguarding. BAANLYY does not rank schools, so this is what American Pacific International School (APIS) and its accrediting bodies publish, not our verdict:

• Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC)
• IB World School — authorised for the Primary Years Programme (from 2009) and the Middle Years Programme
• Registered with the Thai Ministry of Education
• Describes itself as Chiang Mai's first internationally accredited boarding school

Boarding and the size of the school

Boarding: Day and boarding at the Hang Dong main campus, from Grade 5 upwards; the Mae Hia primary campus is day-only. Alongside Prem, this is one of only two established boarding options in Chiang Mai.

Scale: A smaller school than Prem, CMIS or NIS, split across two campuses, with a genuinely international student body and a boarding cohort drawn from beyond Chiang Mai. Roll and nationality figures move every year and schools report them differently — treat these as indicative and ask the admissions office for the current numbers.

Who this school tends to suit

Families who want IB in the primary and middle years but an American diploma with AP for university applications to the United States, and families who need boarding from the middle years. The two-campus structure suits a family with a young child who wants a short suburban run now and a boarding place later.

This is our editorial read for relocation planning, not a ranking or a recommendation — and no school pays to appear on BAANLYY. Visit shortlisted campuses before you decide.

Living near American Pacific International School (APIS)

The southern and south-western suburbs serve both campuses. The BAANLYY area guides for this run:

Check the school's bus catchment before you sign. Chiang Mai's international schools cluster in two distinct belts — the northern one around Mae Rim and San Sai, and the far larger southern one through Hang Dong, Mae Hia and Saraphi — and picking a home in the wrong belt turns a fifteen-minute run into a daily hour.

What to confirm directly with the school

BAANLYY deliberately does not publish per-school tuition figures: they change annually, schools publish their own current schedules, and a stale number is worse than none. Take this list to the admissions office:

• Whether the IB Diploma Programme is currently offered in Grades 11–12. Sources disagree: some directories list APIS as running the full IB continuum through the Diploma, while the school's own description of Grades 11–12 is an American high-school pathway with Advanced Placement. We report both rather than pick one — ask admissions which pathway your child would actually sit.
• Boarding availability by year group, and whether weekly or full boarding is offered for the age you need.
• The practical logistics if you have children at both the Mae Hia and Hang Dong campuses — bus timings, drop-off windows and whether a single run is possible.
• Smoke-season filtration on both campuses — APIS does not publish the building-by-building detail that Prem and Panyaden do, so ask.
• The current fee schedule — tuition, application and registration fees, any refundable deposit or capital/development levy, uniforms, lunches, the bus and trips.
• Whether the year group you need has a place, or a waitlist, for your intended start date.
• Smoke-season provision in detail: which buildings are filtered, whether the sports halls and canteen are included as well as classrooms, whether indoor and outdoor AQI readings are published to parents, and the school's written policy for cancelling outdoor activities. This is the single most important Chiang Mai-specific question a family can ask, and provision varies enormously between campuses.
• School bus routes, catchment zones and pick-up times for the specific neighbourhood you are considering — several Chiang Mai schools sit well outside the ring roads, and a home ten minutes further out but on the route can be the easier morning.
• Entry requirements: assessments, interviews, English-language support and the school reports or transcripts you must supply.
• How far the school takes your child, and on which exam pathway — Chiang Mai mixes American/AP, Cambridge IGCSE and A-level, and IB Diploma routes, and switching between them mid-secondary is disruptive.

Visit the official American Pacific International School (APIS) website →

Sources & References

• Ministry of Education, Thailand

Primary and official sources are cited above. Government rules, fees and procedures in Thailand change over time and vary by office; always confirm current requirements with the relevant authority before relying on them. BAANLYY never takes paid placement in editorial content.