Chiang Mai is no longer the quaint, picturesque, town of a bygone era so often depicted in documentaries and postcards. The temples are more numerous than any other place in the kingdom and are a draw to some of the 2 million Thai visitors and 2 million international tourists that visit the city every year for the numerous activities. Development in the area has mushroomed and remote villages are now easily accessed and considered part of the growing city.

Being on the gulf, sporting opportunities abound both on land and water, and include golfing, game fishing, and scuba-diving. Theme and amusement parks, offbeat museums and lush botanical gardens offer numerous forms of leisure activities and cultural entertainment. And after dark, Pattaya offers all the allure and magic of a truly vibrant nightlife with a spectacular variety of restaurants, night clubs, bars, discotheques, cocktail lounges and cabarets. Pattaya can be brash, bold, beautiful and offers everything an authentic international beach resort can.

Learning to speak some basic Thai will go a long way.

Although word order in Thai is very significant, we are not going to give you a lesson in Thai sentence structure. We will offer some basic points for introductions and meeting people with most of our information will assist you when visiting a restaurant.

Thai temples appear in an infinite number of shapes and sizes, so it might be quite surprising to learn they all have the same set of elements. Every temple must have a bot, surrounded by eight Sema boundary stones, and will often have one or more wiharn housing an important Buddha image.

Thai temples are places of prayer and worship. When visiting temples, you should adhere to the accepted etiquette for visitors. Thais are forgiving in nature, but if they are offended by a foreigner, one might find themself, in an uncomfortable situation.