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Helpful & Interesting Links

A work in progress, as you can see. We'll be adding new sites as fast as we can. If you'd like to recommend a site, or find one of these sites unworthy, please do e-mail us. We haven't been to most of the listed places, and can't vouch for the accuracy of any of the information. All links will open in a new window.

WEB Ko-Sichang.com

 

Our favorite guests' sites

	Masseria Santa Lucia	Max Kreijn	Nikom U-aksorn	Julia Ashby-Smyth	Breaking Bread

 

• Masseria Santa Lucia, luxury B&B in a walled farmstead near Santa Maria di Léuca in the Salento region of Puglia, way down in the heel of the Italian boot, may have the most beautiful rooms a traveler ever sees--they're certainly our all-time favorites--and for sure, you'll never get a warmer welcome than Luciana and Danilo provide. The surrounding region, still little visited, offers scenes of olive groves, medieval castles, sheer cliffs and grottoes of clear blue water. Towns' narrow streets open onto relics of Roman, Byzantine, Norman and Turkish invaders, while the strange windowless conical buildings of the original inhabitants punctuate the countryside.
• Nikom U-aksorn visits Ko Sichang often, always finding something new to capture in his extensive portfolio of island scenes. Look at these and other landscapes currently available on his website.
• Max Kreijn is a renowned & widely exhibited artist who paints marvelously evocative still lifes, architectural and landscape vignettes of his teak house on a Thonburi canal... Palermo... Mumbai.... Sevilla... The site is beautifully designed, too. Not to be missed.
• Julia Ashby-Smyth, Illustrator Enchanting illustrations from one of our very favorite visitors, all the way from the Isle of Man.
• Breaking Bread is the excellent cooking school of our dear friend from the Good Old Days, Prisna Boonsinsukh. The site's mainly in Thai, but the photos will set you drooling, and you can find her recipes and wise reflections on eating in English in every Sunday's Bangkok Post Outlook section.
• Artesjok, where our fondly-remembered friend Jan Snick works in Antwerp, has a very minimalist site: 1,314 bytes of HTML and a single small Flash file. If you can figure out what they're promoting, David will stand you a beer.
• Brad Brace, who stayed on the island for a couple of months in late 2004, has an intriguing Global Island project, which includes this extensive multimedia appreciation of Ko Sichang. Broadband connection pretty much essential.
• Skaar's photos and notes offer a good personal take on lots of aspects of Thailand, tons of photos, plus many useful links. And it's in Norwegian as well as English.

Thailand

General info for travelers

• Thaipro.com has links to more English-language sites about Thailand than we'd care to try counting.
• A couple of thick books worth of information on just about anything a visitor might wonder about is waiting for you at lostinthailand.com.
• Another 11,171 (their count) links about Thailand at e-thailand.com.
• And a further, uncounted collection of Thailand links is at ThailandWebDirectory.com.
• Lonely Planet Thorn Tree Thailand branch bulletin board with some useful and some amusing posts from travelers in the Kingdom
• The site thailandroad.com offers engagingly personal accounts of a lot of the better places to visit in Thailand. One of those rare sites where you think you'd like to meet the person who wrote it, in this case Bangkok Joe. Or, as they describe themselves:
  "Thailand alternative travel, leisure and traveler tales, Insider information on the best of Thailand's alternative and small resorts, destinations, cultures, and adventure: resort and restaurant reviews, travel stories, interviews and local insight on cultural events."
• Australia-New Zealand Women's Group Bangkok Guide: informative site for Bangkok expats of interest to visitors, too.
• thaiwebsites.com has a very extensive, easy-to-search catalog of English-language websites about Thailand.
• Sawadee.com has lots of ads & rates for the bigtime destinations: Bangkok,Phuket, Pattaya (yeah, well), and quite a few of the more moderately-visited places.
• Escape to Thailand, Dennis Peacock's blog authored from up North in Phayao, gives a much more personal view, and covers an interesting assortment of topics--destinations, flying lessons, travel tips.

Times & numbers

• Bangkok Bank foreign exchange rates
• Royal State Railways of Thailand timetables and photos

Culture & People

Islands & Beaches

Pattaya

• Lots of well-organized information, with plenty of the better places to stay can be found at Lost in Thailand 's Pattaya travel guide. They cover the rest of the country pretty well, too.
• Get away from city bustle and l eave the land behind with Gulf Charters Thailand, who arrange cruises throughout the Gulf on a variety of good-looking sailing yachts.

Ko Samui

Phuket

• Phuket-phuket.com a locally-generated site with all sorts of information for the visitor.
• Phuket.com Another site for the general tourist

Ko Chang

Elsewhere

Popular Inland Destinations

Kanchanaburi

• Kanchanaburi-info.com provides considerable information on the province of the Bridge over the River Kwai and the world's smallest mammal, in English and German.
• Sawadee.com plenty of info on transport, accomodations, etc.

Ayuthaya

It must be possible to get bored with the city that was Siam's capital from 1353 to 1767, but in 40 years of visits, we haven't. Atmosphere, space, scenery... it's all there. The one-baht ferry from the railway station has gone up to two baht, but Phae Krung Kao Restaurant's food is still great, and Uncle Than's still running his boat. Go!

• Deva Deep has over 100 photos of all Ayuthaya's major temples, and lots more on other aspects of Thailand.
• A good, brief (scholarly, too) introduction to the city is at everything2.com
• Q.T. Luong's terragalleria.com also has some good photos of temples.

Chiangmai

Sukhothai

Offbeat Destinations

Sangkhlaburi, Kanchanaburi Province

• Travelfish gives a good intro to the quiet little town of Sangkhlaburi, up away near Three Pagodas Pass, at the head of the big reservoir. Good for canoeing, birdwatching, al sorts of stuff that doesn't need crowds and bright lights.
• P Guesthouse Our good friends and vastly experienced travelers Richard and Barbara had very good things to say about this place--the welcome, the accomodations, the food. You can see even more by clicking here.
• The Burmese Inn got a thumbs-up from visitor Roger.

Buriram

• Khao Phanom Rung a beautiful Khmer sanctuary

Nong Khai

• Big Snake Guesthouse a comfortable guesthouse in rural Phonphisai district near the Mekong River
• A lot closer to the railway station, and looking like the sort of place that's getting hard to find, is the Take It Easy Bar. If you get there before us, drop us a line to say how you like it

Transport & Travel Info

Activity Sites

Diving

• Larry's Dive: diving trips & a good hangout on Sukhumvit 22 in Bangkok

Accomodation Listing Sites




Elsewhere in Asia

Burma

• Allmyanmar.com A pretty comprehensive and, as far as we can see, genuinely independent site.

China

• China Travel Service: China Tours and China Hotels - Small group and private China tour packages and China-wide discount hotel reservation service, and of equal interest, good, succinct descriptions of a lot of places we'd like to see, like Jinghong in the Dai (Thai) Sipsongpanna region, and, in the shadow of Jade Dragon Mountain, Lijiang.

India

General

• Maps of India good info on all sorts of places
• Hill stations and hill country: http://www.indyahills.com/