I am writing this after spending six months in Thailand over the course of three years, doing one two-month trip each year.
Though I hope to keep traveling extensively and not settle in a single place anytime soon, if I were forced to settle anywhere today, it would undoubtedly be Thailand. Thailand is my favorite country.
I don’t like saying things like that because I haven’t been to that many countries. Probably only around 30, and of those I think there are only four that I’ve spent more than one month in (yeah, I know, “only”). So, I don’t feel very qualified to make any serious claims for one country over another. All I can say is that I really love Thailand!
I’m not alone in my love for Thailand, though. Bangkok, my favorite city in the world, makes the top 10 list of the most visited cities in the world, and Thailand was in the top ten most visited countries before the pandemic and will probably be back on the list any year now. Tourism is a major part of the economy, contributing to 12% of GDP and 20% of overall employment, according to a 2024 speech by the Governor of the Bank of Thailand. There’s a large number of expats. Most people I talk to who have passports seem to have been there at some point. It’s hardly a hidden gem or an unusual travel destination.
With that said, I hardly see tourists when I’m there. Really. Other than the Grand Palace and like two other places, I don’t know where they go, what they do, or why they come. I see so many white people in the immigration line at the airport, but by the time I get to my Airbnb in Bangkok they’ve all but vanished, only to magically reappear in droves a month later when I go to extend my visa at some random crappy mall on the outskirts of Bangkok (I’ve been there three times now and love that place).
I always fly to and from Thailand via India, and I’m generally the only non-Indian on the flight, but then for the two months I’m there I don’t see any Indians other than my wife except for when I go see movies at Icon Siam and walk by the VAT refund line at the entrance of the mall. What’s a VAT refund? I have no idea, but lots of Indians are willing to spend their precious vacation time lining up for it. I thought I’d see some Indian people at the famous Hindu temple in Bangkok, in a neighborhood with a lot of Indian restaurants, but the only Indians I spotted were the priests giving blessings to the many Thai people who come there to pray. Where does everyone go?!
My wife tells me that people come to Thailand for beaches, shopping, and partying. I’m very confused by all of this. I can’t stand beaches and lack the empathetic reasoning abilities to understand why anyone would ever go. That they are popular makes me despair for humanity. The shopping part is even more confusing to me. Presumably these people have Amazon in their home countries, and if you can afford a plane ticket to Thailand you can afford Amazon Prime. The best things to shop for in Thailand are perishable fruits that they won’t let me get through customs, or, in the case of The King of Fruits, won’t let me take on any public transportation, let alone an airplane, so I don’t know what people are shopping for that they can’t get back home.
And I’m not totally sure what partying is? I went to some birthday parties as a kid and hated them. As an adult I went to some film production wrap parties. Those were alright. I don’t get the concept of going to another country to party. Don’t you have to be invited to a party? “Thailand has really nice bars,” my wife adds, but this confuses me even more. Don’t they have bars everywhere? Don’t they have beaches everywhere? Don’t they have shopping everywhere? Why fly to Thailand for these things? My head hurts. I need a coconut water. On every level, this whole “Thailand is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world” thing is a real puzzle to me.“
I do understand on some level why certain types of male travelers frequent Thailand, but I’m going to pretend those people don’t exist, and I hardly see them either. I’ve had people tell me they dislike how prominent all of that stuff is in Thailand, but unless you voluntarily choose to go to one of those neighborhoods it isn’t very prominent at all. Your choice. I also understand the point of medical tourism more than I understand regular tourism, and Thailand does get a high number of medical tourists, but I never seem to meet any, granted I don’t hang out at hospitals and most of my social network is under 40. (I actually did try getting some medical work done in Bangkok, but the first hospital I contacted was way too expensive and the second one was free but needed proof that I already had two children before they’d give me a vasectomy. So much for its sin city reputation!)
Am I exaggerating some of this? Okay, fine, you got me. I see more tourists than I’m putting on, and I’m not so naive about the tastes and preferences of the average person (I am still perplexed, though). But really, I’m consistently struck by how popular of a tourist destination Thailand is and how few tourists I see in most of the country. I’m not trying to brag about how I only go to cool hidden places, because I don’t think I really do, a lot of places I go aren’t that obscure. I’ve gone to upscale but reasonably priced (under $10 per person) Michelin starred Thai restaurants in popular neighborhoods in Bangkok expecting them to be pretty touristy but it mostly seemed to be Thai people eating there. Such experiences are normal. Where are people eating? Do people not know that the Michelin guide has an app you can download with a location detecting map you can pull up? What’s wrong with people? My wife tells me highly implausible, unbelievable stories of people who come to Thailand and eat most of their meals at 7-Eleven. This can’t be true, can it?
I feel a sense of sadness at seeing a place I love commodified as a cheap exotic “party” destination (like it’s Chuck E. fucking Cheese, seriously what’s with this party stuff?), or reduced to its beaches. I don’t like most tourism and find it sad in general, even if I’m happy on some level for the economic benefits that it brings. I guess I like that it’s pretty ghettoized in Thailand. Anyway, just remember that I’m the Travel Grinch and you should ignore me when I rant like this.
Even though my reasons for loving Thailand are very different from most people’s and I might hate why people like it, I do think some of the same things that appeal to me appeal to most people that come, like there’s some ineffable quality of Thailand that calls to us all like a siren. For the next several thousand words I’ll try to convey what it is that I love about Thailand, and maybe I can help people realize that there’s more to the country than whatever other people are up to there. Thailand is a wonderful, amazing place even if, or rather, especially if you have no interest in beaches, resorts, massages, selfies, alcohol, prostitutes, shopping, dental work, and etc. (Totally coming to Thailand if I ever need dental work, though.)
I do sometimes ask myself why I like Thailand over other countries. Does it have to do with anything uniquely great about Thailand, or is it just because Thailand was the first country other than the U.S. or India that I spent more than a month in on a single trip? Because I kept returning, kept learning more, kept immersing myself in it so I’ve developed an attachment? Could I have done this anywhere with the same results? I should at least compare Thailand to other countries in Southeast Asia so I can make a proper mangoes to mangoes comparison, but I’ve only been to a few and haven’t spent enough time in them. People periodically ask me why I like Thailand over Vietnam. I don’t know, maybe because I did a two week touristy Vietnam trip while I got to know Thailand much better? (Nobody ever asks me about Indonesia even though I spent three weeks there. Awesome place. It was a whole week better than Vietnam.) I think everything works like this.
I’ve thought about this with dogs. Every dog I’ve had has been the best dog ever. What luck my family has at picking dogs. But I usually don’t feel that way about a particular dog until having it for around a year, it takes time for that attachment to build, and in all likelihood the dogs are to some extent interchangeable and we would have gotten equally attached to whichever dog we picked. All love is like that. Romantic love (as cultures that believe in arranged marriages will know), familial love. Love for interests and hobbies. Love for places. It’s mostly not so special. There’s some personality matching required, but beyond that you just get attached to things based on timing and exposure, and then you tell yourself stories to act like they have more significance than they actually do. It could have been something else, someone else, somewhere else, it’s all just a coincidence.
Except for Thailand. Thailand is special. Thailand is destiny. The gods have chosen it. The Chakri dynasty has willed it to be.
I never imagined myself living in Thailand. In 2010 I went on a 2 week trip with my family and our Thai friends and loved it. It was my first time in Asia and it was radically new for me. I would have gladly spent more time there if some opportunity came up, but I’m sort of a travel minimalist and never really go out of my way to go anywhere without some excuse (odd for a travel blogger, I suppose, thankfully I’m good at coming up with excuses). I went back to Thailand for a few days in 2019 after a family trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. It was easy and inexpensive to go to Bangkok by bus from Siem Reap before going back to India, and I decided I would do so if I could get a highly coveted reservation at Gaggan, which seemed like a necessary expenditure in order for me to understand the full spectrum of possibilities of Indian cuisine, a totally reasonable life goal to have. I got the reservation, we spent a few days in the city, and I again loved my time in Thailand even though we spent half the time on the toilet. If a place is amazing even when you’re down with food poisoning, there’s obviously something special about it. Still, I didn’t have concrete plans of returning.
In September 2022, my wife planned a trip to Thailand with her friends. With my minimalist ascetic mindset, I thought it would have been overindulgent for her to fly to Thailand and then fly back to India a few weeks later, so the plan was that I would fly along, stay on my own while she traveled with her friends, and then we’d stay for as long as our visas allowed, which was two months. Though I was more or less happy to go, I wouldn’t say I really wanted to (I’m not sure I ever really want to go anywhere, this also seems odd for a travel blogger but there’s probably a life lesson here about doing things you don’t really want to do, though maybe this has no applicability to anyone but me). At the time, I had been back in India for less than six months after an extended stint in the U.S. due to the pandemic. I wanted to stay in India and really get to know it in a more in depth way, which I felt I was just starting to do. I wouldn’t say I was upset about it, but going to Thailand was an act of Indus interruptus that I didn’t ask for. We had to buy a return flight for the visa, and we chose Kolkata, the shortest and cheapest flight to India from Bangkok and a good excuse to finally visit the city. I was more excited about going to Kolkata than I was about going to Thailand. That’s like being more excited for a root canal than a massage, but the heart wants what it wants (unintentional, but it’s a surprisingly literal analogy).
I really loved Thailand, though, more than I ever expected. I don’t remember at what point in the trip it happened, but at some point it occurred to me that this might be my favorite place I’ve ever been, and my wife felt the same way. I went back again in the summers of 2023 and 2024 for two months each (I assure you I had very good excuses) and each trip really just deepened my love for and interest in Thailand. And now I don’t need an excuse to go back. Thailand is home. Exploring Thailand is its own excuse. I hope to spend, at a minimum, two months a year there for the rest of my life.
That all goes back to the question: Why Thailand? What’s so special about it to me?
I think it boils down to Thailand being a blend of both very comfortable and incredibly stimulating in a way that I haven’t felt to the same extent anywhere else, and in a way that feels uniquely, distinctively Thai.
The comfort part is both subjective and relative (and maybe I should note that I place a lower value on comfort than most people and am thus not a trustworthy source). I like to tell people about how when I first visited Thailand in 2010, experiencing Asia for the first time, it was a shock to the senses and my thoughts were basically “This is so crazy, chaotic, and dirty. How does such a place possibly function?” But when I came back after spending many years in India, I had the opposite reaction. “This is so calm and organized and clean! Can India ever be as nice?” I’m sure Thailand did get nicer in the span of nearly a decade, but it’s likely that the bigger change was in my standards. Most of my readers won’t be coming from India so I don’t want to spend too much time pointing out how in Thailand cars don’t honk pointlessly and endlessly, car rides don’t make me nauseous, there’s not a mass excess of dust and smoke everywhere, I don’t feel a need to wear an N95 whenever I’m outside,