The Other Half of Thailand

Away from beaches that sell spectacle and cities that chase scale, Thailand is beyond itineraries and Instagram, where travel becomes less about travelling and more about exploring; writes Vinod K

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I left Singapore on a morning that felt undecided about rain, the sky a dull sheet of grey stretched thin over Changi. It was the kind of morning that doesn't ask questions, only allows departures.

For once, I wasn't flying to Thailand for the obvious reasons. No checklist of temples, no beaches already conquered by influencers, no rush to prove I had been somewhere. I wanted to see a quieter Thailand, the one that continues even after the tour buses turn around. As an Indian traveller, I carried the usual baggage—expectations, comparisons, a habit of measuring value in experiences packed tightly together. Thailand, it turned out, had other plans.

The flight curved north toward Chiang Mai, and from the window the land softened—greens deepened, roads thinned, buildings stopped trying to outgrow one another. The immigration officer glanced at my passport, smiled, and asked if it was my first time here. When I nodded, he said, almost as advice rather than courtesy, "Chiang Mai is not for rushing." It was the first sentence that landed differently.

Inside the old city walls, I stayed at a small guesthouse run by an elderly couple who spoke almost no English. Communication happened through smiles, gestures, and cups of tea that appeared exactly when silence began to feel awkward. On my first morning, I followed the sound of bells and found myself sitting cross-legged inside a temple courtyard, beside a young monk who looked barely out of his teens. We shared a long, unhurried silence before he asked where I was from. When I said India, he mentioned Bodh Gaya with the familiarity of a place he carried in his mind. "Some day," he said, not as a plan, but as a hope.