Destination: Thailand

Interview With Lawrence Osborne: ‘Bangkok Days’

Interview With Lawrence Osborne: ‘Bangkok Days’ Photo by Christopher Wise

Frank Bures asks the author about why Thailand is so hard to capture in words and why its sex trade isn't really about sex

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Expat Tales: Wanderers, Starving Artists and Dissolutes

Expat Tales: Wanderers, Starving Artists and Dissolutes Photo by shashiBellamkonda via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Photo by shashiBellamkonda via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Novelist Malcolm Pryce rounds up his top 10 expat tales with heavy representation from Asia and the Pacific: novels and journals on Vietnam, Thailand, Tahiti and Sri Lanka make the cut.

Eurocentrics will appreciate Pryce’s inclusion of the Thomas Cook European Railway Timetable, but, for Asia travelers, the money quote can be found in his description of Bangkok: “The city is, in fact, a combine harvester for the ex-pat male heart.” Something tells me that line will come to mind next time I’m walking through Patpong.


Sneeze Your Way to Savings?

Sneeze Your Way to Savings? Photo by jurvetson via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Photo by jurvetson via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Remember when I told you guys how many deals there were to be had in Thailand? Well, the Practical Traveler now reports they’re even better thanks to the unrest there. If you don’t mind a little protesting, then run for the savings! The Anantara properties Michelle mentions, particularly at the Golden Triangle, are some of the nicest in the country. 

Same goes for travel and the SCHWEINE-GRIPPE—I use the German term for swine flu because it sounds much scarier that way.

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Eight Great Stories of Beaches, Islands, Travel and the Tropics

Eight Great Stories of Beaches, Islands, Travel and the Tropics Photo by Oscalito via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

To mark our eighth anniversary, we've collected eight favorite stories from our archives that celebrate and explore travel at land's end

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Interview with Newley Purnell: On Bangkok’s Political Crisis and Travel to Thailand

Interview with Newley Purnell: On Bangkok’s Political Crisis and Travel to Thailand Photo by interactimages, via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Photo of Bangkok on April 14, 2009, by interactimages, via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Bangkok is still reeling from the violent “red shirt” protests that swept the city last week. Though protesters surrendered to the government on Tuesday, an assassination attempt against a prominent protest leader on Friday kept Thais on edge. Several countries, including Britain, Australia and China, issued warnings against travel to Thailand last week, and a state of emergency remains in effect.

I emailed Bangkok-based journalist and World Hum contributor Newley Purnell to get his take on the situation and its impact on local tourism.

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Given the Dire Economy, Should I Travel Overseas This Year?

Vagabonding traveler Rolf Potts answers your questions about travel and the world

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Dhani Tackles Poetry: ‘The Punch’

Dhani Jones in Thailand Thom Stukas/Travel Channel, L.L.C.
Photo Thom Stukas/Travel Channel, L.L.C.

NFL linebacker and Renaissance man Dhani Jones hosts the new Travel Channel show, Dhani Tackles the Globe.

Like any good Renaissance man, he’ll be writing poems inspired by the travel experiences featured on each show.

The topic of tonight’s premiere: Muay Thai in Thailand.





The Punch

I begin with a journey a magnificent tourney around the globe to stop and see the sights ...
An inviting aroma of new things to discover a world to uncover never turning off the lights ...
It’s a challenge I tell you, to step
I beg you, into the ring I go, for the first not the last but the beginning it is for forty some odd days I will live ...
It’s the first some might say the last others might insist ...
It’s just that time ...
It’s that movement that caught you that spirit that bought you for me to unwind ...
Time and time again I just bob and weave, bob and weave and use what was given a chance to prove what was inside ...
Here’s a man
Here’s a man with the thoughts of a man that I am
Here’s a man living in a heartbeat of time trying to escape the breath and design
Up elbow, right elbow, left elbow, right kick ...
Down elbow, left kick, right punch, left hit ...
A plethora of ideas of power it takes, to control and direct to the right space it must not break ...
It must not disgrace, it must not let down for the eyes are watching me from all around ...
I’ve heard my name spoken not once not twice but the third time around ...
I heard my name ringing in my head when I looked around ...
I realized it was me repeating it time and time again ...
I realize it was me who was getting punched not them ...
On to the bell with great strides I took and put forth all the effort and with pride I was not shook ...
It was my time to use all that I was taught and leverage my voice and my mind for the ultimate thought ...
I must conquer ...
I must live ...
I must set forth to understand and give ...
Of myself and those around me ...
And if one punch I must take, I will take and not break but he who gives shall receive and with ease I decree that this moment ...
I will stand and deliver, bend not fold, yet tell the stories untold ...
I will finish what I started and finish I did ...


Ayutthaya, Thailand

Elephants Thailand REUTERS/Sukree Sukplang

Elephants chow down at Ayutthaya Elephant Palace & Royal Kraal during Thailand's National Elephant Day.

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Morning Links: Bowie’s Clown Suit, Cute Penguin Overload and More

 


Sawasdee, Golden Arches

Sawasdee, Golden Arches Photo by kennymatic via Flickr (Creative Commons).

Anyone who has frequented a suburban swimming pool or beach resort on the East Coast in recent summers should be familiar, by now, with the sound of consonant-heavy Eastern European accents piercing the salt air. That’s because thousands of college students from places like Moldova and Ukraine arrive each year to work summer gigs as lifeguards, waitresses or hotel clerks under the increasingly popular J-1 student visa program.

Now comes word that the next big J-1 wave could be from Thailand. GlobalPost reports that large numbers of Thai students have begun securing summer visas to work at U.S. fast food joints, with McDonald’s emerging as the workplace of choice. The story portrays the students as single-minded in their endeavor, trudging dutifully to the local Mickey D’s in unglamorous locales like Pittsburgh and Mobile, determined to parlay foreign work experience into hospitality-related jobs back in Bangkok. I hope they’re working in some fun as well. If the Serbian kids who staffed my sister’s pool outside Washington, D.C., last summer are any indication, I’d advise the Thais to consult their Eastern European counterparts on the finer points of letting loose.

I’m not in McDonald’s often (maybe twice a year), but I’ll keep an eye out this summer to see if the trend has reached the nation’s capital.


Making Tracks to Laos

Who says there are no new frontiers to cross? The Guardian reports that the first rail line into Laos is set to open Friday, connecting Nong Khai,Thailand, to the village of Tha na Lang, over a newly built bridge crossing the Mekong river. From Tha na Lang, it’s a 20-mile hop up to Vientiane, by bus or tuk-tuk, creating a new overland route from Bangkok to the Laotian capital. Laos has been on my list for a long time, so this is extra enticement to go, and the Thailand part of the route holds extra allure because it wends through the relatively untouristed (for now) Isaan region.

Maybe this is one train journey I’ll get to before Paul Theroux.


Morning Links: War Hotels, the Solas Awards and More

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The Cooler

The Cooler iStockPhoto

We romanticize the past and become nostalgic about our first time in a place. Karl Taro Greenfeld returns to Thailand -- to that place.

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Morning Links: Vegas to L.A. High-Speed Rail, ‘the Gifts of Travel’ and More

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Cut to the Quick

View from the LeBua. Photo by Alexander Basek

Where’s my cheap rate? Price cuts at hotels are not as common as you’d think these days. Many properties are afraid that when the economy bounces back, they won’t be able to raise their rates to pre-econopocalypse levels. So, the savings come in the form of add-ins: hello, bottle of cheap champagne that’s a “$30 value”! Hotels in warm destinations—where they count on Northeast winters slowly driving locals insane—are notorious for this little game. 

The flip side is the rate cuts are plentiful in destinations that aren’t typical winter holiday hot spots. Take Bangkok, where prices were falling last year thanks to a low-level hum of bad news and unrest at the airport. Couple that with the economic downturn and voila! Specials like the COMO Metropolitan Bangkok is offering: a $260 a night room for $99. Similarly, rooms at the LeBua at State Tower, another luxury property with great views of Bangkok (and balconies!) prices out to $140 a night over a weekend in March with a 30 percent discount offer. Even the Four Seasons is $200 a night with a system-wide third-night-free deal. Yes, there are cheaper hotels in Bangkok, but the value for these prices is staggering. When I stayed at the LeBua last fall, the staff was so eager to please they would have wheeled me to my room on a hand truck if I had let them. 

Of course, Bangkok is a tougher weekend getaway than St. Croix, but what’s the matter with a little jetlag on vacation?