Th Provinces in Thailand
Suphan Buri Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Suphan Buri spreads across the western side of the central plain, along the Tha Chin River. For Thais it is a place of stories: King Naresuan's e…
Samut Sakhon Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Samut Sakhon sits where the Tha Chin River meets the Gulf of Thailand, a short drive from Bangkok. Its main town, Mahachai, is one of the country'…
Samut Songkhram Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Samut Songkhram is the smallest province in Thailand, a delta of canals, orchards and coconut groves where the Mae Klong River reaches the sea. Its to…
Nonthaburi Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Nonthaburi lies just north of Bangkok on the Chao Phraya, and for many people it is simply where the city continues. Yet a boat ride away from its pie…
Pathum Thani Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Pathum Thani means 'city of lotus'. It began as a Mon settlement on the Chao Phraya north of Bangkok and is now a busy province of universit…
Phichit Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Phichit lies on the plain between the Nan and Yom rivers, a land of rice fields, swamps and slow water. Every Thai child knows its legend: Chalawan, t…
Uthai Thani Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Uthai Thani is one of the least visited provinces of central Thailand, and its town on the Sakae Krang River still has floating houses and a slow pace…
Chai Nat Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Chai Nat sits at the head of the Chao Phraya delta, where the river leaves the hills behind and spreads across the central plain. Here, the Chao Phray…
Sing Buri Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Sing Buri is a small province on the Chao Phraya, north of Ayutthaya, but its name is tied to one of the most famous episodes in Thai history. At Bang…
Ang Thong Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Ang Thong means 'golden bowl', a fitting name for a flat province of rice fields along the Chao Phraya and Noi rivers. It is small, but it h…
Phayao Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Phayao is built on the shore of Kwan Phayao, a broad lake ringed by mountains, and its evenings are spent on the lakeside promenade watching the sun s…
Uttaradit Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Uttaradit's name means 'port of the north'. It grew up as a trading town on the Nan River, where goods from the northern hills were loa…
Kamphaeng Phet Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Kamphaeng Phet means 'diamond wall', and its old town on the Ping River was a fortified outpost of the Sukhothai kingdom. Its walls, moats a…
Nakhon Sawan Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
At Nakhon Sawan the Ping and the Nan rivers meet, and from that point on the river is called the Chao Phraya, the great river of Bangkok. The town at …
Chaiyaphum Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Chaiyaphum sits on the western edge of Isan, where the Khorat Plateau climbs towards the Phetchabun mountains. In the rainy season its high meadows tu…
Trang Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Trang is the quieter neighbour of Krabi on the Andaman coast. Its islands, from Ko Kradan to Ko Mook and Ko Libong, are known for clear water and calm…
Phetchabun Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Phetchabun fills the Pa Sak valley between the Phetchabun mountains and the edge of the Khorat Plateau. Its hills, from Khao Kho to Phu Thap Boek, dra…
Ranong Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Ranong is known for two things before anything else: rain and quiet. It is one of the wettest places in Thailand, with a monsoon that lasts much of th…
Roi Et Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Roi Et sits in the middle of Isan, on the flat plains that stretch towards the Mun River. Its name means 'one hundred and one', and its town…
Si Sa Ket Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Si Sa Ket lies along the Dangrek mountains, which form the border with Cambodia. Its most surprising sight is Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaeo, known as the Mil…
Lopburi Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Lopburi is one of the oldest towns in central Thailand. As Lavo, it was a centre of the Dvaravati and then the Khmer world, and its laterite towers, P…
Sakon Nakhon Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Sakon Nakhon sits on the edge of Nong Han, the largest natural lake in Isan, with the Phu Phan mountains rising to the south. Its best-known landmark …
Phrae Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Phrae lies in the Yom River valley of northern Thailand, an old moated town whose streets are lined with teak houses from the days when the forests ar…
Chumphon Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Chumphon is often called the gateway to the South: it is where the Malay Peninsula starts, and where many travellers change from train or bus to a boa…
Surin Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Surin is the province of elephants. Every November its town fills for the Elephant Round-up, and in the village of Ban Ta Klang the Kui people have tr…
Loei Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Loei does not fit the image of flat, dry Isan. Its districts are folded into mountains, and in the cool season it often records some of the lowest tem…
Tak Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Tak is one of the largest provinces in Thailand, and most of it is forest and mountains along the border with Myanmar. Its most famous name belongs to…
Phetchaburi Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Phetchaburi is only a couple of hours south of Bangkok, and for more than a century Thai kings have used it as a retreat. King Mongkut built a palace …
Nakhon Phanom Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Nakhon Phanom looks across the Mekong at the limestone mountains of Laos, and much of its life happens on the riverbank. Its best-known site, Wat Phra…
Ratchaburi Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
For many visitors Ratchaburi means one thing: the floating market of Damnoen Saduak, where women in straw hats paddle boats full of fruit and noodles.…
Phitsanulok Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Phitsanulok sits where the northern hills meet the central plain, on both banks of the Nan River. Thais know it first for Phra Phuttha Chinnarat, the …
Lamphun Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Lamphun is only half an hour from Chiang Mai, yet it is the older of the two by several centuries. As Hariphunchai, it was the capital of a Mon kingdo…
Nakhon Pathom Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Nakhon Pathom means 'first city', and the province takes the name seriously. Its orange-tiled Phra Pathommachedi, about 120 metres high, ris…
Prachuap Khiri Khan Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Prachuap Khiri Khan is where Thailand is at its narrowest: in places, only about a dozen kilometres separate the Gulf of Thailand from the border with…
Nong Khai Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Nong Khai lives along the Mekong. Across the water lies Laos, and a short drive upstream the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge, the first bridge over the low…
Rayong Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Rayong is a province of contrasts. Its coast hides Ko Samet, a small island of fine white sand beloved by Bangkok weekenders, while inland lie durian …
Trat Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Trat is the last stop on Thailand's eastern coast before Cambodia. Most visitors pass through on their way to Ko Chang, the country's third-…
Ubon Ratchathani Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Ubon Ratchathani sits at the far eastern corner of Thailand, where the Mun river meets the Mekong and Laos and Cambodia are just across the water. It …
Buriram Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Buriram has two reputations that rarely meet. For history lovers it is the home of Phanom Rung, a Khmer sanctuary built on the rim of an extinct volca…
Phang Nga Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Phang Nga is where many of Thailand's most famous postcards come from: the limestone needle of Ko Tapu, better known as James Bond Island, the st…
Songkhla Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Songkhla is a province with two faces. Hat Yai, its biggest city, is a busy market town where shoppers from Malaysia come for the weekend, while the p…
Nakhon Si Thammarat Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Nakhon Si Thammarat was a great city long before Bangkok existed. Pilgrims from all over the south still come to its white stupa, one of the most reve…
Udon Thani Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Udon Thani is best known to many foreigners as a city of expats and Vientiane visa runs, but the province holds some of the oldest human history in So…
Lampang Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Lampang is the north without the rush. Horse-drawn carriages still carry visitors along the Wang river, teak mansions line the old streets, and the ro…
Kanchanaburi Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
For many visitors Kanchanaburi means one thing: the Bridge over the River Kwai. The bridge is part of a much larger and darker story, the Death Railwa…
Nan Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Nan is the north as it was before the crowds: a quiet riverside capital, temple murals that people travel across the country to see, and valleys where…
Mae Hong Son Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Mae Hong Son sits at the far north-west edge of Thailand, closer in feel to Myanmar's Shan State than to Bangkok. Mist fills its valleys most mor…
Khon Kaen Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Khon Kaen is where Isan goes to study, trade and do business. Sitting in the middle of the north-east, it has the region's oldest university, a g…
Nakhon Ratchasima (Korat) Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Most Thais simply call it Korat. The province is the doorway to Isan: drive north-east from Bangkok and it is the first big province you reach, with K…
Chanthaburi Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Chanthaburi smells of durian in May and of cut stone all year round. It grows more of Thailand's durian than any other province, and its gem mark…
Ayutthaya Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Ayutthaya was the capital of Siam for 417 years, a river city that traded with China, Japan, Persia and Europe and was said to rival the great cities …
Sukhothai Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Sukhothai means 'dawn of happiness', and Thais see it as the place where their nation began. The kingdom founded here in 1238 gave the count…
Kalasin Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Few travellers stop in Kalasin, and that is exactly why it is worth a look. The province holds Thailand's largest dinosaur site, one of the bigge…
Surat Thani Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Most visitors see Surat Thani only from a ferry pier on the way to Ko Samui. But the province is one of Thailand's largest, with the rainforest o…
Krabi Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Krabi is the postcard of the Andaman Sea: limestone cliffs dropping into turquoise water, longtail boats on the sand and islands like Phi Phi and Ko L…
Chiang Mai Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Chiang Mai is where many visitors fall for Thailand and some never leave. Behind the cafés and co-working spaces sits a province older and wilder than…
Chiang Rai Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Chiang Rai is where Thailand ends and three countries meet. Standing at the Golden Triangle, you can see Laos and Myanmar across the Mekong, and the h…
Bangkok Guide: History, Districts and Local Products
Bangkok is the city everyone passes through and nobody fully knows. Behind the skytrain and the malls sits a river capital founded in 1782, a Chinatow…
Phuket Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Phuket sells itself on beaches, but the island was rich long before tourism. For centuries its tin mines drew traders and workers from China, Malaysia…
Chon Buri Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Most people know Chon Buri by one name: Pattaya. But the province is also Thailand's main seaport, its highest-ranked province for human developm…
Samut Prakan Province Guide: History, Towns and Local Products
Samut Prakan is the province most travellers cross without noticing. They land at Suvarnabhumi, ride the expressway into Bangkok and never realise the…