Travel Stories

Most people who visit Thailand visit the south for the beaches and the North (or I should say the North West) for the culture. Some other people for other reasons visit the Eastern Seaboard or Bangkok. It seems like most people do not know that there is also a very beautiful and rich of culture North East of Thailand, also called the Isaan.

A backpacker returns to Jakarta as a teacher and sees the city in a new light, not all is to his liking.

Seeing another white face in this town was a rare event, which was exactly why I chose it. I had work to do and frankly, I had little time and money to spend hanging around other foreigners, many of whom seem to have inexplicably flown halfway around the world to spend the majority of their time in westernized establishments, drinking imported beer and commiserating

Most of the travelers to Thailand visit the North of Thailand and specifically places like Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and the Golden Triangle. But a small place in between there is mostly skipped, a very nice laidback Thai town called Lampang, on the banks of the Mea Nam Wang.

"There" is not better than "here". When you're "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that will, again, look better than "here".

How to while away an afternoon – or at least some of it...

It is 12 o'clock in the night and I'm eating Phad Thai at Sukhumvit road. My girlfriend Si is working in her bar and I return to her apartment to go to sleep. Her apartment is one 16-sqm room (and a bathroom) which she shares with her "young sister" (who is not her sister of course) and Joy.

How to amuse Isaan ladies? Make off-colour jokes, of course!

An attractive young woman ... was dabbing at the blood on her knee with a tissue.

As I drive about the sois in rural Thailand I catch little glimpses of things that barely register on the mind as the scenery flies by; strange things, beautiful things, sad things, interesting things. Little snapshots of this stuff gather in the recesses of the brain and regurgitate themselves at the oddest times. ... Read more.

I lost my daypack with computer and camera. But this is Thailand. So I will get back everything.

My tortuous eighteen hour journey to the Kao Khor in the rainy season was rewarded by beautiful scenery, the tranquility of the environment, and the unbridled hospitality of the people that live there to scratch a living from the soil on this fringe of the Isan.

Obviously, farangs are thin on the ground in that part of Loei province. When the schoolkids see me bumping along their schoolyard, they forget their teachers, their exercise, their surprising discipline. 200 young ones scream: "Hello mistAAAH, farAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAng, hellOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"

It all happened very quickly: Within days my company was liquidated and we were sitting on Air Malaysia with a one way ticket to Phuket. Me, my (Thai) wife and our eleven month baby, Takkie.