Isaan - Northeast Thailand Region Guide

Isaan is a third of Thailand’s land and a third of its people, and it receives a tiny fraction of its visitors. That is the reason to go.

The region has the country’s best Khmer temples outside Cambodia. Phanom Rung, on an extinct volcano in Buriram, is a sandstone sanctuary aligned so that the sun shines through all fifteen doorways on a handful of mornings each year. Phimai is older than most of Angkor and was connected to it by road.

At Ban Chiang, excavations found a Bronze Age farming culture going back some four thousand years — a UNESCO site that rewrote the prehistory of Southeast Asia.

Then the Mekong, which forms the northern and eastern boundary, with river towns, French-influenced Nong Khai and the strange rock formations of Phu Pha Thoep.

And the food, which many Thais consider the country’s best.

The Khmer temples

Phanom Rung in Buriram, approached up a long processional causeway to a sanctuary on a volcanic hill, with some of the finest carved lintels in Southeast Asia. Nearby Muang Tam with its L-shaped ponds. Phimai in Nakhon Ratchasima, restored and possibly a model for Angkor Wat rather than a copy of it.

Prehistory

Ban Chiang near Udon Thani, a UNESCO site where burials with distinctive red-painted pottery and early bronze pushed the region’s known history back several thousand years. The museum is excellent and the excavation pit is left open.

The Mekong

Nong Khai for the riverfront, the Friendship Bridge to Laos and the extraordinary sculpture park at Sala Kaew Ku. Then the river road east through Bueng Kan and on to Khong Chiam, where the Mun meets the Mekong and the two colours of water run side by side.

Landscape

Phu Kradueng, a table mountain climbed in a day with pine forest and cliff edges on top; Pha Taem’s prehistoric rock paintings above the Mekong; and the sandstone mushrooms of Phu Pha Thoep.

Village crafts

Silk weaving at Chonnabot and Pak Thong Chai, pottery at Dan Kwian, and the bronze village of Ban Pa Ao.

Isaan is culturally Lao as much as Thai, and understanding that explains most of what makes it distinctive.

A Lao region in Thailand

The majority language is Isaan, a set of dialects essentially the same as Lao and written historically in a related script. The food, the music, the festivals and the Buddhist practice all belong to the Lao side of the Mekong rather than to Bangkok, and the border drawn in 1893 cut through a single cultural world rather than between two.

Migration

Isaan is the source of much of the labour that built Bangkok and staffs it — taxi drivers, construction workers, restaurant staff, and a very large share of the workers who go abroad. Money sent home is a pillar of the regional economy, and families are frequently split for years.

Politics

The region’s political weight and its sense of being economically neglected have made it central to Thai politics for two decades, and it has been the base of the movements that clashed repeatedly with Bangkok. This is discussed openly and with feeling.

Khmer south

Surin, Sisaket and Buriram have Khmer-speaking populations and their own traditions, including the elephant-keeping of the Kuy people.

Warmth

Isaan people have a reputation across Thailand for being straightforward, funny and hospitable, and it is deserved.

Isaan is the poorest region in Thailand and the one most dependent on money sent home from elsewhere, so visitor spending here goes further and matters more than almost anywhere else in the country.

Stay in local guesthouses and eat in local markets. There is very little international tourism infrastructure, which is the point — the money goes straight into households.

Community-based tourism is well developed here through village weaving, pottery and farming cooperatives, several supported by royal projects. These are among the better arrangements of their kind in Thailand.

Silk bought at a village co-operative rather than a city shop pays the weaver directly, and the difference in price is small.

Temples and ruins: the Khmer sites are lightly supervised compared with Angkor. Do not climb on the stonework, and note that looting has been a real problem historically — buy no antiquities.

Water is scarce in the dry season across much of the plateau, and drought is a recurring hardship.

November to February is the cool, dry season and by far the best time: days around 30°C and nights that can drop to 12°C or lower on the plateau, which is genuinely cold by Thai standards. This is when the Khmer temples are comfortable to walk around.

March to May is severe. Isaan is the hottest part of Thailand, regularly exceeding 40°C in April, with the plateau baked hard and the reservoirs low. Sightseeing is an early-morning activity only.

June to October brings the monsoon and transforms the region — the rice goes in, the plateau turns green, and the Mekong rises. Rain comes in heavy afternoon bursts rather than all day.

The festival calendar is the real reason to time a visit. The Rocket Festival in May, the Candle Festival at Ubon Ratchathani in July, the Naga fireballs on the Mekong in October and the Elephant Round-up at Surin in November are all worth planning around.

Phanom Rung’s solar alignments fall in April and September.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the region

A week in Isaan costs roughly what two days on Phuket do.