Isaan - Northeast Thailand
Discover Isaan - Northeast Thailand
Introduction
Isaan is the north-east, a sandstone plateau taking up a third of Thailand’s land area and holding about a third of its people, and it is the part of the country foreign visitors almost entirely skip. The Mekong runs along its northern and eastern edge, dividing it from Laos, and the language spoken here is closer to Lao than to Thai.
It is poorer and drier than the rest of the country, which is why so much of Bangkok’s workforce comes from here — and why Isaan food, som tam and grilled chicken and sticky rice eaten by hand, became the street food of the whole country. The region also has the best Khmer architecture outside Cambodia: Phanom Rung and Phimai are eleventh- and twelfth-century temple complexes built by the same empire that built Angkor, on the same sandstone, and they are almost empty.
Ban Chiang, in the north, produced bronze work and painted pottery going back several thousand years and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Add the Mekong towns, the sandstone cliffs of Pha Taem, and some of the largest and least polished festivals in Thailand — the rocket festival in May, the candle festival in July, the naga fireball night on the river in October — and it is the most rewarding part of the country for anyone who wants fewer foreigners around.