Khon Kaen-the Doorway to Isaan



Khon Kaen-the Doorway to Isaan by Juan Farrell
Most Thailand travelers have heard of Bangkok, Pattaya, and Phuket, but few venture to the northeast and head for the area know as Isaan. This is in the northeast and comprised of Khon Kaen, Korat, Udorn Thani and others.

This is primarily a rural area with many rice farms. It is also the home of many expatriates who have settled down with their Thai lady and have made this their new home.

I was in Korat twice during exercise Cobra Gold and only got to see this city briefly. Working 12 – 16 hour day didn’t allow much time for sightseeing. But, I did notice that the cost of living was a lot less than the bigger tourist cities and the people were a heck of a lot friendlier.

I visited Khon Kaen for the first time in 2007 to visit a lady that I met online. I immediately fell in love with the lady and also with the city of Khon Kaen.

Khon Kaen is only a 55 minute flight from Bangkok departing from the old international airport – Don Muang. The airport in Khon Kaen is very small and only has two departure gates.

The city is a pleasant mix of old and new. We would go out for lunch or dinner and sit in small bungalows along the lake or one of the rivers and dine in pure bliss. Three or four plates of excellent food, a couple of beers and some water and the bill would be about $10 – $15.

On the flip side, there is also KFC, Pizza Company and other fast food places. Western influence at its worst.

Shopping again is a mix of old and new. You can visit the food market or the night market or head to the Fairy mall or the electronics mall. From cheap T-shirts to current movies on DVD to bootleg software, Khon Kaen has it all.

I stayed at a small hotel called Cactus Resort. It was in the city but not in the heart. It would take us about 5 minutes to go to the mall or out to dinner. The price of the room was about $16 per night. The room was a decent size with cable TV, free Internet, hot and cold running water with a shower, and big bed and refrigerator. Of course, the room was air conditioned.

The staff was pleasant and helped me set up my computer to access the Internet using their IP address. The maid even saw that I was drinking more than my allotted 2 free bottles of water and increased my free water to four bottles.

The hotel didn’t have a restaurant, but there was one right next door. This was not problem for me as my girl would cook my breakfast at her apartment and bring it to me and pick me up some food for lunch. We would then go out every night for dinner and drinks.

Khon Kaen is a very relaxed and inexpensive place to live. I plan to retire there and will be looking to get a house on my next visit.

Next time you plan a visit to Thailand, take a side trip to the northeast and experience all that Isaan has to offer.

163 thoughts on “Khon Kaen-the Doorway to Isaan”

  9. I know this is really boring and you you want to skip to the next comment, but I just wanted to throw you a big thanks – you cleared up some things for me!

  10. You require to go to a university library and ask a expert librarian to help you locate this type of subject. He or she is a expert researcher and will be able to aid you in your quest to locate literature, biographical information, new articles and other types of publications about this subject. Then you can see if there is some thing like this out there.

  12. There are certainly a lot of details like that to take into consideration. That?s a great point to bring up. I offer the thoughts above as general inspiration but clearly there are questions like the one you bring up where the most important thing will be

  15. i am writting to you just to let you know that i have got my website. They are lovely, but I will never be able to afford one,And if I could afford one, it would be the Cupcake, that was the best.

  17. Hey – nice blog, just looking around some blogs, seems a pretty nice platform you are using. I’m currently using WordPress for a few of my sites but looking to change one of them over to a platform similar to yours as a trial run. Anything in particular you would recommend about it?

  20. Hey – great blog, just looking around some blogs, seems a really nice platform you are using. I’m currently using WordPress for a few of my blogs but looking to change one of them over to a platform similar to yours as a trial run. Anything in particular you would recommend about it?

  23. Advantageously, the post is actually the sweetest topic on this registry related issue. I fit in with your conclusions and will thirstily look forward to your future updates. Just saying thanks will not just be enough, for the extraordinary clarity in your writing. I will immediately grab your rss feed to stay informed of any updates.

  28. Thanks for taking the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and love learning more on this topic. If possible, as you gain expertise, would you mind updating your blog with extra information? It is extremely useful for me.

  29. Keep up the amazing work!! I love how you wrote this and I also like the colors here on this site. did you create this yourself or did you outsource it to a coder??

  31. You’ll need to install the VPN client, probably something like Cisco VPN, on your computer at home and point it to the correct IP address for your school. Then you’re going to need an account to log into the VPN connection.

  33. Hello, Lydia here. I fully trust what you said in the primary part, however I can’t say that I agree with the entire post in general. Could you please tell me what study material you have used when writing this weblog post (magazines, guides, articles etc.)? Nice looking weblog you have here. Anyways I am subscribing to your blog, cya!

  41. Thank you for share very nice info. Your website is so coolI am impressed by the information that you have on this blog. It shows how well you understand this subject. Bookmarked this page, will come back for more. You, my friend, ROCK! I found just the information I already searched everywhere and just couldn’t find. What a perfect site. Like this website your website is one of my new favs.I like this site given and it has given me some sort of commitment to succeed for some reason, so thank you

  45. Located in the Port Discovery area of the park, it is notable as being the second of only two attractions in the world (the other being Pooh’s Hunny Hunt at neighboring park Tokyo Disneyland) to use a new trackless ride system designed by Walt Disney Imagineering.

  47. Found your blog using bing and as a movie lover, thought it was pretty cool. I don’t know about you but I can’t wait for the award season to begin and all the good films to come out.

  50. Good writing here I really really like the way you write your blogs. I will continue to visit your site in the future to read more great blog posts like this one! This is an awesome post here. love on web fighters 🙂

Leave a Reply