What do we think about Thailand?
From the beginning we both were sure: After we had seen Laos, the landscape of Thailand couldn’t really thrill us. A lot was quite similar to Laos. What was different was that there were masses of Tourists, wild traffic and even more garbage in Thailand. The good thing was that compared to Laos Thailand was quite Western, so it was nice to find a 7/11 in nearly every town.
Until Chiang Mai cycling was pretty nice though as there wasn’t so much tourism and the landscape was quite pretty. Chiang Mai itself is very touristy but somehow still friendly. The way to Sukothai was still a bit exhausting and therefore nice to look at. In Sukothai we enjoyed the beautiful historic surroundings and the Loi Krathong festival. We definitely recommend going to Sukothai, although accomodation is a bit expensive there.
From Sukothai to Bangkok the road was boring, so we just wanted to get over it. Bangkok itself we found quite likeable, even though it might be the biggest city we have entered on our bicycles.
Although we enjoyed the beach and the sea the Southern part of Thailand wasn’t really our cup of tea. Some years ago it might have been pretty nice there but now everything should be made for tourists and is therefore ugly as hell. Why do Thais think that tourists like these kind of things, like hideous boards everywhere and yelling into their ears “massaaaage, massaaaage” all the time?
The Thais seems to believe that they have created a great infrastructure for tourists. In reality a lot works worse here than in any other country we have seen before. Everything is unnecessarily complicated and often we had to ask ourselves if the Thais are just extreeeeemely lazy or simply stupid. In addition, nearly everybody who has been to Thailand several times told us not to mess with the Thais. To say it in a more drastic way: The Thais will keep smiling at you until they kill you in rage. You never know what to think about them and their mood can change in a flash and turn into pure hate. That’s not a comfortable environment, although we still tried to look at the characteristics of Thais in a light way.
Anyhow, we really don’t know if this country will ever see us again.
Leave a Reply