Final stop Bangkok. Good place to replace the polarizing filter I broke a few days ago. Bangkok is into refrigerated malls bigtime, perhaps no surprise in hot and humid tropical weather. Traffic somehow managed to become even more dysfunctional than last year, and pedestrians have no rights even at zebra crossings and the rare pedestrian…

To hours west of banglok is a historic village that shows life in Thailand at the time of King Rama IV. The entrance is a wooden covered bridge with rows of stalls on both sides. Everywhere are costumed people doing period things, like theshing rice, and selling period products. They even have their own old…

Hua Hin, the beach town favored by the Thai Kings… I fondly remember a sleepy white city with wide boulevards and sandy beaches, where a rickshaw once took me to the train station. Well, no more. It’s a crowded mess of traffic and tangled power lines, and the beaches are mostly private and difficult reach.…

Ko Payam is one of the northernmost Thai islands off the west coast. It’s a little difficult to reach, which may be the reason why it hasn’t really been discovered yet except by Westerners who spend the winter here. No hordes of tourists, no fancy hotels, just a few quiet beach resorts. There isn’t much…

Change of scenery… I am following the sun and went to Ko Lanta. That’s an island south of the tourist epicenter of Phuket and Ko Phi Phi, and far quieter than these. The beach resorts are widely spaced along its west coast, and it’s all sand and not paved. To get there I had to…

This is what a proper four-course lunch looks like:… Read the rest

Some final photos from Ko Mook. Next stop Bangkok, via Krabi.… Read the rest

Another day on the islands. Relaxing! After the big tsunami in 2004 that washed away entire villages on the western coast of Thailand, they installed an earlty warning system, including signs on the islands that show which way to run when the tsunami approaches.… Read the rest

The beaches on Ko Mook aren’t quite as white as on the Parhentians, but the place is more authentic. Accommodations are more basic, and the locals live just around the corner in, for Thailand, very simple wooden houses. These people do not have much money. Otherwise it’s another tropical island paradise. They run long-tail boats…

Time to say goodbye to the Philippines, this was only a brief vacation and it’s time to get back to work. One last look at Manila from the plane, on my way to Bangkok. Bangkok is a convenient stopover on the long flight home, and I have friends here I can say hello to. Bangkok…

Sail Rock is a small rock pillar north of Ko Pa Ngan, and perhaps the most popular diving site here. Fish are so plentiful that they formed tornadoes around me so large that they obscured the light from the surface. I was hovering in huge clouds of silver and yellow fish, among them barracudas a…

Many of the best diving sites are around Ko Tao,  the smallest of the three large inhabited islands here. My dive boat was fairly large (larger than the one in the photo),  with a lower “wet” deck for the equipment and an upper “dry” deck for rest,  meals,  and sleeping. Diving is mostly corals, but…

Samui is all about beaches and water sports. Tomorrow I’ll leave on a dive boat for a few days, seeing various parts of the islands.… Read the rest

Last stop in Thailand: Chiang Rai is a smaller version of Chiang Mai without the traffic. It’s at the south end of the Golden Triangle in the border area between Thailand (check), Myanmar (check), and Laos, where I’ll be tomorrow. The attraction here is nature, with waterfalls, forests, mountains, and rivers, but this time it’s…

It’s a long train ride from Bangkok to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand, over 14 hours – in part because the tracks were damaged during the monsoon season this year. The first-class sleeper ticket was a good investment. Chiang Mai is Thailand’s second-largest city, after Bangkok, which is fifty times larger by population.…

<p dir=ltr>Back in Thailand. After a brief visit to Bangkok I went on down the coast to Pattaya. This town has a reputation for tourism gone wild, like Palma de Mallorca, Cancun, Vang Vieng, or Las Vegas, so I have always avoided it in the past. Time to change that. It’s true, the town has…

Left Vietnam on the last day permitted by my visa. The time passed quickly. Bangkok is easy to reach from anywhere in Asia, and I like it, so I’ll be spending a few days here. Although I have seen Bangkok Grand Palace before, it’s been a long time so I spent a few hours there,…

On the 6th of December, I got up at three in the morning and went to the international airport. Christmas is coming up and I want to be home. So this blog is going into hibernation again. As before, I am going to edit my notes, organize my thousands of pictures, and post a polished…

Wat Saket, the Golden Mount, is a steep and tall artificial hill north of the old town, with whitewashed staircases all the way up and a golden Chedi on top. A procession of monks in bright orange robes were marching up, beating a gong and chatting for a while, and then back down. The views…

This is my fifth visit to Bangkok and I have done all the usual sights before, most several times (see here and here). So I decided to visit the modern parts of Bangkok, like Silom and Sukhumvit where few tourists go, to see how the city works. It’s quite modern and clean, lots of malls,…