Thailand north to south

Before there was a Thailand, the northern valleys belonged to Lanna, the kingdom of a million rice fields. Its founder, King Mangrai, a Tai ruler from the upper Mekong, built Chiang Rai in 1262 and then moved south to found Chiang Mai in 1296 on the Ping River, a fertile plain with the mountain Doi Suthep at its back. The square moat and brick walls you walk past today trace that plan, rebuilt many times since.

Lanna was a separate state for most of its history, with its own script, calendar, temple style and dialect. Its golden age came in the 15th century under King Tilokarat, who hosted a great Buddhist council in 1477 and enlarged Wat Chedi Luang into the tallest structure in the kingdom. An earthquake in 1545 brought the top of that chedi down; the broken silhouette in the Old City is the result.

From 1558 Burma ruled Lanna for about two centuries. Burmese influence is still visible in teak temples with tiered roofs, in the curry-rich northern kitchen and in the many Shan-style monasteries around Chiang Mai and Mae Hong Son. In the 1770s local lords allied with the Siamese general Taksin to drive the Burmese out, and Lanna became a vassal of Bangkok. Over the next century Siam tightened control, and by the early 1900s the north was governed as ordinary provinces; the last prince of Chiang Mai held a largely ceremonial title until 1939.

The best-travelled object in Thai history started here. The Emerald Buddha, a small green jade figure, was found in 1434 when lightning split a chedi in Chiang Rai. It went to Lampang, then to Chiang Mai's Wat Chedi Luang, then with a Lanna prince to Luang Prabang and Vientiane, until Siamese forces carried it off to Thonburi in 1779; it was installed in the new Bangkok palace temple in 1784. It now sits in Wat Phra Kaew inside the Grand Palace, and the king changes its robes three times a year.

The north still feels different. People speak kham mueang, the northern Thai language, and eat sticky rice with chilli dips rather than the jasmine rice of the plains. Hill peoples — Akha, Lahu, Hmong, Karen, Lisu and others — live in the mountains towards Myanmar and Laos, many of them without full citizenship until recent decades. Chiang Rai also became world news in 2018, when twelve boys and their football coach were trapped for 18 days in the flooded Tham Luang cave and brought out by an international team of divers.

Ayutthaya was founded in 1351 by a king known as U Thong, on an island where three rivers meet. The site made it a natural port: ships could sail up the Chao Phraya from the Gulf, and rice, forest goods and deer hides came down from the interior. For four centuries it was the capital of Siam and one of the largest cities in Asia.

Foreign traders crowded into the city. The Portuguese arrived in 1511, followed by Dutch, English, Japanese, Chinese and Persian merchants, each with a quarter outside the island. In the 1680s King Narai exchanged embassies with Louis XIV, and a Greek adventurer, Constantine Phaulkon, rose to become his chief minister before being executed in the palace coup of 1688. Europeans who visited compared Ayutthaya to Paris and London in size.

Wars with Burma ran through the city's whole history. In 1767, after a siege of over a year, Burmese armies broke in, burned the palaces and temples, and carried off thousands of people and much of the royal library. The headless Buddhas and scorched brick you see in the historical park date from that sack. Ayutthaya was never rebuilt as a capital; the ruins were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1991.

The recovery was fast. A general of Chinese descent, Taksin, regrouped the army, expelled the Burmese within months and set up a new capital at Thonburi, downstream on the west bank of the Chao Phraya. In 1782 he was deposed, and his general Chao Phraya Chakri became King Rama I, founder of the Chakri dynasty that still reigns. Rama I moved the capital across the river to Rattanakosin island, built the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew, and deliberately modelled the new city on the memory of Ayutthaya.

Bangkok grew into the capital of a modern state. Kings Mongkut (Rama IV) and Chulalongkorn (Rama V) signed treaties with Britain and France, reformed the government and gave up border territories to keep the core of the country independent; Siam is the only country in Southeast Asia never colonised by a European power. A 1932 coup ended absolute monarchy, and in 1939 the country took the name Thailand.

There is no single Thai cuisine: this route crosses four kitchens. The north eats sticky rice rolled into balls by hand, with grilled pork sausage (sai ua), pork crackling and chilli relishes such as nam prik noom, made from roasted green chillies. Dishes are less sweet and less coconut-heavy than in Bangkok. Khao soi, egg noodles in a curry broth topped with crisp noodles, came south with Muslim Chinese traders from Yunnan and is now the dish of Chiang Mai.

The north-east, Isan, is not on this line but its food is everywhere, carried by migrant workers into every Bangkok street. Green papaya salad (som tam), grilled chicken (gai yang), minced meat salads (larb) and fermented fish sauce (pla ra) come from a culture closely related to Laos, eaten with sticky rice. If a stall has a clay mortar and a wooden pestle, it sells Isan food.

Central Thailand, the Bangkok plain, is the kitchen most foreigners know: jasmine rice, coconut curries, tom yum soup and stir-fries. Chinese migrants shaped it heavily, bringing the wok, noodles and pork. Pad thai is younger than many think. It was promoted in the late 1930s and 1940s by the government of Plaek Phibunsongkhram as a national dish that saved rice and used local ingredients. The palace kitchens in Bangkok also produced refined dishes and carved fruit that still turn up at weddings.

The south is the hottest kitchen in the country. Curries skip the coconut milk in favour of turmeric and shrimp paste, as in the sour gaeng som and the dry, fiery kua kling. Muslim communities along the Andaman coast add massaman curry, biryani-style khao mok and roti. On Phuket, a large Hokkien Chinese community, brought by the tin-mining boom of the 19th century, adds its own noodles and braised pork. Seafood is sold by weight, and most restaurants will cook it to order.

A few habits help. Thais eat with a spoon in the right hand and a fork in the left, using the fork to push food onto the spoon; chopsticks are for noodles. Dishes are shared, and each person takes a little at a time. The caddy of fish sauce, dried chilli, sugar and vinegar on every noodle-stall table is there so you can season your own bowl.

The peninsula separates two very different seas. The Andaman coast faces west onto the Indian Ocean: deeper water, tall limestone karsts rising out of Phang Nga Bay, and islands such as Phi Phi, Lanta and the Similans. The Gulf of Thailand on the east is shallow and sheltered, with granite and coconut-palm islands such as Samui, Pha Ngan and Tao. The karsts are old coral reefs lifted up and eaten into towers and caves by rain.

Their seasons are opposite because two monsoons take turns. From about May to October the south-west monsoon blows off the Indian Ocean and hits the Andaman with rain, big swells and rip currents. From about October to January the north-east monsoon brings rain to the Gulf's east-facing coast, with November usually the wettest month on Samui. That is why the sensible traveller picks the coast by the calendar, not by photographs.

On 26 December 2004 an earthquake of about magnitude 9.1 off northern Sumatra sent a tsunami across the Indian Ocean. It reached the Andaman coast of Thailand in about two hours. Khao Lak, north of Phuket, was worst hit; Phi Phi's low isthmus was swept from one bay to the other; Patong and Kamala were flooded. Thailand recorded over 5,000 deaths, about half of them foreign visitors, and thousands missing. The Gulf coast was untouched.

The coast rebuilt within a few years, but the event left marks. Tsunami warning towers and blue evacuation-route signs now stand along the Andaman beaches, and schools run drills. At Khao Lak a police patrol boat carried nearly 2 km inland still sits where the water left it, now a memorial, and a museum nearby tells the story. If you ever feel a strong quake on the Andaman coast or see the sea pull back suddenly, go uphill or inland at once.

Mass tourism brought its own damage. Maya Bay on Ko Phi Phi Leh, made famous by the 2000 film The Beach, was closed from 2018 to 2022 so its coral and sharks could recover; boats now drop visitors at a pier on the far side, swimming in the bay is banned, and the bay closes each year in the wettest months (check dates). Several marine parks, including the Similan Islands, close from mid-May to mid-October.

More than nine in ten Thais are Buddhist, of the Theravada school shared with Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Sri Lanka. It stresses the monastic community: most young men traditionally ordain as monks for a few weeks or months, often during the rains retreat, to make merit for their parents. Monks do not handle money in strict monasteries, eat only before noon and walk the streets at dawn to receive food; giving it is one of the everyday ways lay people make merit.

Belief is layered. Next to the Buddha stand Hindu gods absorbed through the Khmer empire — Brahma at Bangkok's Erawan Shrine, Garuda on government seals — and every house and office has a spirit house on a post outside, where the land spirits get daily offerings of flowers, water and even red soda. Amulets are worn for protection and traded like collectors' items at markets near Wat Mahathat in Bangkok.

A wat is a compound, not a single building. The ubosot, or bot, is the ordination hall, marked by eight boundary stones called sema around it. The wihan is the assembly hall where most visitors see the main Buddha image. Bell-shaped chedi hold relics; the corn-cob-shaped prang is a Khmer form, as at Wat Arun. Northern temples in Chiang Mai use low, layered roofs and gilded wooden fronts; Ayutthaya's ruins show the older prang and chedi in brick.

The body carries meaning. The head is the highest and most respected part, so do not touch anyone's head, even a child's. Feet are the lowest: do not point them at a Buddha image, a monk or another person, and when sitting in a temple, tuck them behind you. Women should not touch a monk or hand him something directly; place it on a cloth in front of him. Remove your shoes where you see others' shoes piled up, and cover up as you would for any royal or religious site.

Buddha images are treated as sacred objects, not decor. Do not climb on them or pose in a way that puts your head above theirs; Thai law restricts taking Buddha images out of the country without a permit, and signs at airports warn against Buddha-head tattoos and souvenirs used carelessly. On the main Buddhist holidays — Makha Bucha, Visakha Bucha, Asanha Bucha and the start of the rains retreat — alcohol sales are banned nationwide for the day (check each year's dates).