Couchfish

A while ago I was in Phnom Penh and revisited Tuol Sleng, the Khmer Rouge-period torture centre. I’ve visited a half a dozen times over the years, and if you’ve been there, chances are it is not something you’ll forget. If you’re not familiar with it, Tuol Sleng was once a school , then the Khmer Rouge turned it into an “interrogation centre”. One of almost 200 such centres across Cambodia, over 1...

You may recall the other day I mentioned that someone had recommended I check out Empire on Teluk Dalam . It turned out to not be great advice, but it takes a few bits of bad advice to ignore all something someone has told me. This is lucky. Another tip they gave me was for Kuala Terengganu (KT among friends). “Go to Awi’s,” they said, “it isn’t for everyone one, but I think you’ve got the right k...

Is there a better time to introduce a tourism tax than as you’re staggering out of a once-in-a-lifetime Covid-induced hiatus? Those at the Tourism Authority of Thailand brains-trust think the answer is no. Yesterday the Bangkok Post covered their latest initiative here , which involves increasing the already approved 300 baht tourist tax to 500 baht. If you haven’t read the story already, go read...

In September Google announced they wanted to build a sustainable future for travel. Don’t we all? Well, many of us anyway. You can read Google’s announcement here . To boil it down, what they’re doing is adding an “eco-verified” tag to “accredited” properties listed on Google. Readers can then click on the link to get the wrap on which boxes the property is ticking. This was right around when they...

Just a short entry today as I got my second vaccine shot yesterday and I feel like I’ve been kicked by a horse. The other day I came across a Travel & Leisure story titled “Top 10 Southeast Asia Resort Hotels”. If you’d like to read it, click here , then close both pop-ups, the autoplay video and the full-screen interstitial, and you should be set. The list is typical of Travel & Leisure —predicta...

I’ve written before about how a silver lining to Covid19 is for destinations to rethink how they “do” tourism . When you think back to 2019’s travel headlines, there isn’t much better a candidate than Cambodia. It didn’t matter if it was the crowds at Angkor Wat or the madness of Sihanoukville , you didn’t need to look too far for the bad news. Thanks to the kleptocracy that runs the place, the ba...

I am a beach person, but I am also a walking person. I can laze on the beach with the best of them, but I’m also one to climb over the headland. You know, to see if there is another beach, a better beach, out of sight. Sprawling Senja Bay. Photo: Stuart McDonald. As I mentioned the other day , on both the Perhentian islands you can walk to almost all the beaches and so today I walk. Starting at Co...

First two announcements. I missed yesterday’s free post so am running it today instead—apologies for any confusion. Also, the free podcasts, including the past ones (all 120 of them) are now available on other platforms. This includes the usual suspects— Apple , Pocket Casts and Spotify . If you use one of those services, search for Couchfish and you can subscribe there. Please do vote them up and...

If you’ve ever seen a baby learning to walk, the phrase “baby steps” will need no explanation. The baby starts off crawling, then, with wobbling not in short supply, takes their first steps. Then, more often than not, falls flat on their face. They do get up though, and try again, and again. Eventually, they walk, then run, then dance. Well, some never quite manage the last bit. And so it is with...

KB Backpacker’s Lodge has a dorm or two, but they also have private rooms. I’m so over dorms it isn’t funny, so when I checked in, I went with a private, despite me being the only guest. My room opens onto the common room and kitchen and I’m surprised to stumble out in the morning and see another guest. She gives me a friendly wave as I dart back into my room to put some more clothes on, and then...

Dear reader, I’d like you to cast your mind back a few years—to 1993 to be exact. By chance, that year was the first time I visited Thailand, but that isn’t why I’m highlighting it. In that year the Environmental Conservation Section of the Tourist Authority of Thailand (TAT) sent a memo to the government. The title was “An Outline of Problems and Remedies of Tourism Impact on the Environment” . I...

Back when travel was still a thing, I had a sideline in travel consulting. People would pay me to help them plan out their holiday. They’d come to me with a date and a wish list and I’d help them fashion it into a trip that would hopefully be better than it would otherwise have been. They’d send me what information and thoughts they had, then we’d have some to-and-fro by email. Perhaps a Skype cal...

As it is about time to say goodbye to Thailand, I thought today I’d take a look at where we’ve been. Given this is a summary piece, I’m making this one free-to-read, as I have with any of the Couchfish posts I’ve linked to below. Enjoy! On paid-for Couchfish, if I counted them right, I’ve had 85 days in the country . On the free-to-read Couchfish, I touched on Thailand in another 36 entries . Now...

Years ago, I was at the Jolly Frog Guesthouse in Thailand’s Kanchanaburi . The guesthouse was a backpacker haven. It had a lawn garden and rooms running around the edge with a few more down floating on the river. The lawn had hammocks strung and deckchairs scattered. The restaurant was cheapish and the beer cold. Many a stay was extended. I was travelling with a Swiss girlfriend at the time, and s...

Back many years ago, just after the dinosaurs had a rather bad day , I co-wrote a couple of guidebooks. The first was to Vietnam, published in 1995, and the second, published in 1997, covered Thailand. According to Google Street View, it hasn’t changed! Photo: Stuart McDonald. Paging through a copy of the latter—I still have (cough cough) a few copies left—I turn to the pages on Narathiwat. At the...

When you’re travelling at the budget end of the stick, it isn’t unusual to hear what is going on in the next room. You’ve seen The Beach right? This isn’t restricted to cheap dorm rooms and thatch beach bungalows though. My favourite story came to me second hand from some good friends staying at a luxurious hotel in Phuket . Their neighbour was a European and one evening they returned to their roo...

We were playing cards on a train from Tangier to Rabat in Morocco when the two local guys sat down. In no time they struck up a conversation with the five of us. Slipping between French and English, they joked and we all laughed. When we said we were bound for Casablanca after Rabat, they nodded and said something about us being tourists. Oh no, we replied in unison, we’re travellers—not tourists....

Betong lives up to its name come the morning . A wet and chilled mist envelops the city as I jump into the Mercedes for the run back to Yala . We’re running by the side of the reservoir, by the time the sun burns through. Unlike the other day, today Yala is only a transit point in my travels —no lingering allowed. My driver drops me off with a wave and a “Chok dee” (good luck) at the minibus stand...

Sidenote: As I was writing this piece I asked on Twitter for people’s favourite knick-knacks—I’ve pasted some of them in below. First used way back when in 1682, the Oxford Dictionary of English defines knick-knack as “A small worthless object.” The dictionary is one hundred percent wrong on this. Knick-knacks are invaluable. My knick-knack hoarding began when I picked up a pocket-sized black idol...

Travel writing is often a flurry of buzzwords. They come and go like the seasons, more often than not losing all their meaning in the process. “Travel like a local” hit the scene a few years ago, but I’ve always felt it missed the mark. Why travel like a local when you can travel with a local? Onto day two of my planned one day in Yala , I wake on the floor, to see the two kids perched on the loun...

Those who follow me on Twitter will know I now have a dog. A Bali dog, around four months old. Friends found her litter on a building site, they cleaned up the pups and housed them with friends. So it is that Skye Govinda came into our household. A few nights ago I was sleeping in my office as I’d been working late. Skye was snoozing on the floor beside me. Around 2 am, she went off her head barki...

Side note: This story kicked off on a train trip I took from Sungai Kolok on the Thai Malaysian border to Yala. So please set aside the transport realities for a moment! If you’re wondering, the most comfortable way from Songkhla to Yala is a bus to Hat Yai and the train from there. If you’re in a hurry, there are vans from Songkhla to Yala via Pattani. Travelling alone, it doesn’t take long for m...

Heading south from Phattalung , the obvious next stop is Hat Yai, the transport hub of the far south. A sprawling city—the largest in southern Thailand—Hat Yai is far from close to my heart, so I skip it and head to Songkhla. While Hat Yai is better known (and more visited), Songkhla is the provincial capital, and far more to my liking. The town traces its roots back to the 12th century and relics...

The other day I gave a short talk to a travel organisation on lessons from Phuket’s Sandbox experiment . At one stage, I said short stay tourism will be the last segment to come back on stream. Today I’m going to expand on why this is an opportunity—not a cost, but it needs a change in governmental thinking. By short stay tourism, I mean international weekenders and that sort of thing. People trav...

Nakhon Si Thammarat sits at the terminus of a spur on the southern Thailand railway, with only the occasional train south to Phattalung . Given I only have a short jaunt south planned, I grab a minibus for the trip. Now if you thought Nakhon was devoid of tourists , you’ve not seen anything yet. While Phattalung sits on the main north–south train line, few foreign travellers get off. This is a sha...