Sao Saimong was the first son of the fourth wife, Nang Daeng, of Saopha Kawng Kiao Intaleng (who had succeeded as ruler of Kengtung in 1895).

In the 1920s Sao Konkaeu Intaleng attended a durbar in India, and realized that all of his sons should be given a western education to be successful, so Sao Saimong was called back from Bangkok and sent to the Shan Chiefs' School in Taunggyi, a school founded by the British administration to train the sons of ruling families.

But he did so briefly on his return from India, since the heir apparent, his nephew, Sao Sai Long, had not yet finished his studies in Australia.

[1] Like most of the other former rulers of the Shan States, Sao Saimong was imprisoned when General Ne Win took power in 1962.

At Cambridge University Library, in 1982 and 1983, he worked with Wilfrid Lockwood and Andrew Dalby on the Scott Collection, formed by J. G. Scott, British administrator in the Shan States, whose activities he had already chronicled in his 1969 publication The Shan States and the British Annexation.