Scrivenings of the King-Beyond-The-Wall

Western World #48

One of my favorite countries to visit so far has been Thailand. My wife and I took a trip there in 2018, which was intended as our “babymoon” before we started the foster-to-adopt process with our kids. We had originally planned to spend half of our time at a beach resort on the island of Phuket, and half our time in the capital city of Bangkok, but after just a few days in Phuket we fell in love with the place and changed our plans so that we spent the majority of our vacation there.

Thanks to a hotel discount my brother hooked us up with (he worked for a hotel chain at the time), we were able to get one of those fancy independent suites with a private deck and plunge pool right off the bedroom for not much more than a regular hotel room would have cost. The resort we stayed at had three different restaurants, multiple pools, and was literally steps from the beach facing the Indian Ocean.

The thing that impressed us more than the beautiful location, though, were the people. We came to learn that tourism accounts for nearly twenty percent of Thailand’s entire GDP, and much of their culture is geared toward the service industry. Every morning we would go to the hotel’s breakfast buffet and be amazed at the variety of foods they had. They not only had traditional Thai breakfast offerings, but they had stations where you could find traditional breakfast offerings for Americans, Brits, Australians, Chinese, and Japanese. They catered the breakfast buffet to the places where the most tourists visit from, ensuring that everybody would have something familiar to eat.

Similarly, Thai culture is very respectful and polite. We signed up for a group cooking class and everyone ended up canceling except us. We told them that we’d be happy to reschedule to another time, but they were adamant that they not inconvenience us, so they brought a chef out from one of the restaurants on site to help teach us how to make basic Thai dishes. We essentially got a private cooking lesson from who we later discovered was the head chef of the nicer restaurant on site, which was actually one of the fanciest restaurants on the island and where the locals went for special occasions.

Bangkok was fine, but in comparison to Phuket, it felt a little impersonal and Westernized (although that could have had a lot to do with where we stayed in the city). My wife and I often talk about going back to visit and checking out some of the other places in the country, both the many islands on both sides of the country, as well as further north like Chiang Mai. One of the most interesting things about Thailand is that their cuisine is actually quite different from region to region, so it feels like a country that we could spend the rest of our lives exploring.

Thailand is definitely one of our favorite countries!


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Prompt: Write about a State or Country you like. Highlights, culture, etc.