Phu Pha Singh News Today

Isaan road trip: Searching for normalcy in Thailands northeast CNN 19th December, 2020 03:41:18  An overweight dog naps by an open-air som tam (papaya salad) shop. The scent of chicken grilling over charcoal fills the lane. A chorus of childrens voices rings out from a schoolhouse. No one is wearing a mask, though an old man dons a straw hat on his bicycle. Here in the village of Ban Nong Doen Tha on the Mekong River in northeast Thailand, its almost like the pandemic never happened. A week ea...

David Luekens/CNN Despite delivering an intensely flavorful cuisine to go with serene Mekong valley scenery and a strong list of natural and historical attractions, Isaan drew only a small fraction of the numbers of foreign tourists who flocked to other Thai regions before the pandemic. It is not on the "banana pancake trail." The lack of interest from foreign tourists may partly explain why the coronavirus barely touched Isaan, when infections surfaced frequently in provinces like Bangkok, Ch...