Kengtung is the largest, most mountainous, most easterly, and culturally the farthest from the Burmese, of all the Shan States. Geography makes approach to it from the rest of Myanmar difficult for it lies not only beyond the Salween across which no bridge has been built and whose eastern tributaries have cut no easy routes through the serried north-south ridges of the Daen Lao Range, but nearer again to the Mekong than to the Salween.