Bangkok Nights

by Neil Woodburn on

One night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster. Or so the saying goes.

Bruce Wallace, writing for the LA Times recently tested out the lyrics of this old 80s song by spending a night bar-hopping and drinking it up in the Thai capital.

Bangkok sports all sorts of vice and indiscretion, but Wallace was bent on experiencing only the liquid kind. He partnered up with a couple of local Thais and dove right into the fray. I was expecting a far more debaucherous evening, but Wallace actually seemed to have some difficulty locating the better bars and cheaper drink deals. It took him a while to get into his groove but when he finally does, we start learning about some of the cooler bars and watering holes populating the seedy capital.

I was hoping for some twisted, Lost Weekend ending, but Wallace just merely faded into the night. Some more aggressive participatory journalism would have helped, but I guess we can all be happy that he at least didn’t wake up the next morning next to some Bangkok she-male!

Wordhum Wins Gold

by Erik Olsen on

Big time hats off to one of our favorite travel Web sites Worldhum for winning the gold medal in the Internet publication category. The 2006 Lowell Thomas Awards were held on Friday at its convention in Santiago, Chile. That’s a very big deal for the Worldhum guys and we offer them congrats. We link to them often, so its been obvious to us for a long time that they are doing something right…and this is exactly the kind of recognition they deserve.

If you want to catch the whole list of winners and runners-up, you can check out this page. I should add that the two runners up were Lonely Planet, edited by Helen Souness and Amy Langfield’s Newyorkology.com, which we actually blogged about just the other day.

Photo of the Day (10/21/06)

by Adrienne Wilson on


Seeing amazing pictures from Thailand often gets me a little heated and tells me it is time to start planning again for a great Thai adventure of my own. (The tsunamis stopped me from going three days before my flight out. I know I’ve mentioned it a million times.) Sorry. Anyhow, this awesome sunset with water skier shot comes from weegolo who spent time in the Koh Samui area back in 98′. Great shot and thanks for the added inspiration! Hope to see more from this set.

Thai Market Slideshow

by Neil Woodburn on

Foreign outdoor markets are often overlooked by tourists. And yet, they provide a wonderful glimpse into the very heart of the region you happen to be traveling through.

We’ve posted a number of times about this phenomenon and have often included shots of such markets in our Photo of the Day feature. The markets are always so very colorful, and bizarre–especially in Asia–and usually empty of tourists.

For a better idea of what to expect, pop on over to the New York Times and check out the nice little slide show they’ve put together of Or Tor Gor market in Bangkok. The multimedia show, complete with voiceover, follows journalist Jane Perlez as she shops for curry ingredients with a local celebrity chef and then heads back to his apartment to cook it all up. Yum!

Bangkok’s New Airport

by Erik Olsen on

Worldhum alerts us to some rather interesting news out of Thailand. Even though the coup there has disrupted the political climate a bit, the Thais were nonetheless able to open a new airport. And not just any airport, but the largest airport in Southeast Asia…no small feat, that.

I’ve traveled to Thailand a number of time over the years and I can tell you with assurance that the old Bangkok airport was heinous. I have a picture of it on my own Website here. The new airport (pictured here) appears to be a gleaming modernist structure resembling rolling waves…no wait, a centipede…or, um, a snake that just ate a bunch of ping pong balls…aw, heck, I don’t know. But I DO know that the country was in need of a new airport and it’s nice to see they got one.

The new Suvarnabhumi Airport was built on an area known as “Cobra Swamp,” a positive omen if ever there was one, and it officially opened its doors Thursday, more than four decades after the project originated (hey, better late than never). As Worldhum points out, the International Herald Tribune, has a piece saying that the airport can handle some 45 million passengers a year, and will “surpass Hong Kong as a regional air hub.” Maybe, but I doubt it.