I got the idea to make this list from a ham radio blog posting I read, which was itself based upon a list of essentials for backcountry hikers on the REI website. At first I thought of this as something I could dash off quickly, with a rather jaded thought that postings with top ten lists are supposed to be good click bait. But as I started to write it, the idea grew on me as a possibly useful article and a way to introduce my writing to people.
Here are some things to bear in mind about this list.
It is written based upon my own experience traveling in Thailand. I am currently on my fifth trip in Thailand since October 2012. By the end of this trip, I will have spent over 34 weeks, or about eight months, in Thailand during those three years. We have been to Bangkok numerous times and have been in 33 of the 76 provinces so far. So I have quite a lot of recent experience with traveling in Thailand, though I don’t claim to be a travel expert.
Some of the items on the list are unique to travel in Thailand. It is not meant to be a general list for all world travel, though some of it might apply to other countries.
These are MY ten essentials, they may not be your own. But maybe my thoughts will be useful when you go about making your own list.
I have tried to get down to what is really ESSENTIAL for me, not just a nice idea, especially someone else’s nice idea; like REI, or the Boy Scouts.
Like the REI list, I am grouping items under ten essential “systems” or categories of things, so there are actually more than ten individual items on the list.
Unlike the REI list, I’m not trying to sell you anything with this list. It is offered as free information that you might find useful, in the same spirit that first created the web, before the days of turning information into something to sell, a way to make a living. I make my living as a tax accountant. I created my first website (a Bob Dylan bibliography) by hand coding the html in a text editor, which I read about in a book made out of bound paper. That was in 1995, a few years after the World Wide Web was invented, but long before anything was called “social media” or “blogging”. I made my living as a tax accountant back then too.
So here goes . . .
It all begins with my frame of mind, which has always been to approach my trips to Thailand as adventures, ready to experience whatever comes along with curiosity and interest, setting aside preconceived notions and expectations, and learning as much as I can along the way. Thailand delivers in a big way for someone who has only known America before, as it is so very different in many ways from the West. There is a lot to experience and much to learn. After living for many decades in California, I was ready for change, having gotten rather bored by a life that had become very predictable. That ended from the very first day I was in Thailand, with amazing surprises coming along with great frequency.
From the age of fourteen, when I first discovered shortwave radio and then ham radio, I had been exposed to the huge variety of cultures around the world, but only from a distance. I knew the American Way was not the only one and the worldwide spirit of cooperation and communication that is a fundamental element of ham radio had become deeply embedded in my approach to people from a very early age. It has served me very well in my travels to Thailand, a spirit that is essential to my travel there.
To really experience what a country has to offer, one needs to have access to it, with the freedom to look around. The first aspect of that is regulatory, as one must first fill out all the forms to get a passport and then a Thai Visa, which then gives one access within certain time limits. Since I am a tax accountant, preparing government documents is not difficult for me, so getting the passport and visas has been easy.
The only difficulty came right after the military coup in Thailand in May 2014. Even though the military actually made the country safer for those visiting the country, as it immediately stopped protests in Bangkok that had become violent at times, the US State Department tried to bully the new leaders into acting the way the US wanted by issuing a Travel Warning for Americans traveling to Thailand. Rather than making it any safer for me, this meant that I could no longer buy travel insurance for a trip to Thailand, which had the adverse consequence of making my access to Thailand less free. Although the military is now still in control, the US State Department quietly lifted their warning long ago, so I can once again get proper insurance for travel to Thailand. Of course the warning had nothing to do with my safety, it was just a rude political maneuver by the US, an attempt to control the Thai government, and one that failed.
Besides government restrictions, which are minor, a trip to Thailand requires me to carve out some free time for such a trip. This can be even more challenging, but fortunately my line of work is seasonal, so mid October to mid January is generally a slow time for my work and free time for travel is easier to arrange during those months. But it still requires a lot of preparation in advance, as I make every effort to bring my affairs into order, so my mind is really free during the allotted travel time. I make sure my bills are all paid properly during my absence, my mail is collected while I am gone, and my clients can actually reach me, if some unusual reason should arise. If I’m in Thailand, but my mind is cluttered with attention stuck on things back in California, then my mind is not free, which means I don’t really have free access to experience Thailand in such a case. Before I get on the plane to come to Thailand, I do everything I can to make sure this won’t happen, as free access to the country really is essential to me.
I’ve always been pretty goal oriented, so it is essential for me to have specific purposes in mind for each trip, including some destinations in Thailand that I want to visit. The purposes must be specific and achievable, like “Meet some Thai hams and do the paperwork to get my Thai ham license.” Something like “Become a Buddhist and achieve enlightenment,” while laudable, would not be achievable in one trip to Thailand, so it would not qualify as a valid purpose in this category.
Destinations might be as specific as the Royal Palace in Bangkok, or as general as visiting a particular province, such as Mae Hong Son or Phuket. But these purposes and destinations are just starting points. I try to be very open to experience whatever comes up along the way. Besides, my friends in Thailand always know more than I do about what is fun to see in the country. Often times the main destinations I’ve had in mind at the start of a trip were ones first suggested by my Thai friends. And then new things can pop up along the way that no one was expecting, but which end up being great destinations that we have visited.
I don’t start a trip with a specific itinerary planned for the whole trip. We mostly have our own transportation, so we don’t have to book specific tour packages in advance. We often have road trips with friends scheduled for specific dates, but there is always plenty of free time before and after those dates to do other things.
Backpackers use a map and compass for navigation. I’m not a backpacker, nor do I take bus tours from Bangkok to the most popular tourist spots in Thailand. I carry no map, nor compass.
Instead, for all my trips in Thailand, I have had a private guide who (a) has driven me around the country in a nearly new air conditioned Isuzu pickup truck, (b) selected where and what we ate in restaurants and what hotels we stayed in and (c) translated for me when necessary. Now you’re probably thinking I must be very rich or very lucky. It’s the latter. A mutual friend from Thailand introduced me to one of her grade school friends from childhood who wanted to improve her English. We agreed to chat for about an hour every day with text messages in English and after more than four months of this daily contact, I flew to Thailand so she could show me her country. She became my guide, my best friend, then my fiancée, and now my wife.
I have been incredibly fortunate that everything worked out so well for us. I have never had to figure out how to get from point A to point B in the country using public transportation. I’ve never had to struggle with a menu in Thai script and a waitress who speaks no English to get good food to eat. We have always stayed in nice accommodations at very affordable prices. Both the restaurants and hotels have been the same places that the Thai people use, not places that cater to tourists at inflated prices. I have been able to live like the ordinary Thai people live in their country. Is it any wonder that this is my fifth trip to Thailand?
From our very first chat session more than three years ago, we have gotten along together really well. She had worked for the same company for 21 years, beginning right out of college, and for the last eight or more of those years she was constantly traveling around the country managing a team of people in a fairly large territory in central and northern Thailand. That’s why she knew all the good places to eat and to stay at night. I never could have dreamed up such an ideal scenario for travel on my own. Out of pure luck I found the perfect guide for Thailand and now on my fifth trip, she is also my wife, a really good one!
She is totally essential for me to be able to travel in this way. I wouldn’t have any idea how to advise someone who wanted to duplicate my success in this regard. But I will say that it was not all luck, just handed to me on a golden platter. Looking back, my spirit of adventure has helped a lot along the way. And pretty early on, I recognized that there was an opportunity for an outstanding lifelong relationship and I’ve done everything I could to make it happen, and we're succeeding in that regard.
When I first decided to travel to Thailand, I bought a Thailand travel guidebook, something I thought would be essential in my travels. As you might imagine, it turned out to be totally non-essential and I didn’t even bring it along after my first trip to Thailand. On my first trip, two of the most interesting temples that we visited were not even listed in my newly revised highly touted guidebook. Both of them we just spotted while driving down the highway nearby. One of them included the largest Buddha, the largest statue, in Thailand, and the ninth largest statue in the world! Nope, not in my guidebook which was published three years (and reprinted four years) after completion of this statue, which was built over the course of 16 years. A slick guidebook may not be essential in any travel scenario, but certainly not for me in Thailand. I would rather rely on the advice of the locals, rather than an editor in a skyscraper in New York City.
But I haven't completely disposed of the Thailand guidebook I bought. Now that I've visited many places in the country, these guides can be helpful for looking up some of the details of a destination, such as the year the temple was built, its distance from other places, the correct name for a national park, and so on. I would always check Wikipedia first, but it can be spotty with coverage on Thailand, in which case a guidebook can be helpful, but not what I would consider essential.
There is one other navigation aid I’ve found useful at times. That is a small LED flashlight. Sometimes it helps to be able to put a little extra light on the path ahead. Have just one time when you need to navigate (and fast!) in the pitch black in unfamiliar surroundings, as nature calls in the dead of night, and that tiny flashlight will win a place in your heart too as an essential navigation aid.
Number Five: Data Gathering Tools
The first data gathering tool that comes to mind is a good camera, for both still photography and for making videos. I have always used a Sony NEX-F3 with the electronic viewfinder and an SEL55210 zoom lens. Of course everyone will have their own preference for what camera to use.
In addition, I have taken thousands of picture with my Android cell phone. If we are at a location worthy of taking a lot of pictures, my wife and I will be typically using four cameras: my Sony, two cell phones and my wife’s Samsung tablet.
No one should travel in Thailand without a camera handy. It may be the most essential travel tool there is. But don’t try to capture everything with the camera. For one thing, some things are just too big or too awesome to be adequately captured with photography. For another, there will be times when you want to take a picture, but you left the camera in the hotel or the battery has gone flat, such as the time I missed getting some close-up images of a Brown Hawk-Owl in Bangkok.
Then there are times when it is better to just fully enjoy the experience, without trying to capture it with pictures or video. On my first trip to Thailand, I took a lot of video out the truck windshield as we were driving down the highway. But these never came out that well and now I usually skip it and just enjoy the ride, fully experiencing everything without a camera. Sometimes it’s better to just stay in the moment and experience it, without interrupting it to fiddle with a camera. Sometimes our visual memory is better anyway.
The next obvious essential is paper for taking notes. For some things, notes on paper are still better than notes in a computer. For my first four trips I used pocket sized Moleskin notebooks, which were always nearby, as they would fit in a pocket in my shirt or shorts. I always use a mechanical pencil with an eraser, rather than a pen, as I often need to make corrections, especially if I am writing as the truck bounces along down a road. At Goodwill this year, I stumbled onto a leather padded portfolio with a 4 x 6 inch notepad inside and I’ve been using that instead of the Moleskin on this trip. A stack of the replacements pads was pretty cheap at the office supply store. I like having a larger sheet to write on and it’s not too big to carry along as I walk, or to have tucked beside me in the truck. It also has a small pocket on the inside of the padded front cover, for saving receipts or destination brochures, as well as a loop for holding the mechanical pencil inside. So far I’m liking this alternative better than the small bound Moleskins, and later I will be able to tear out individual sheets from the pads and scan them, turning a paper record into a digital one, the best of both worlds!
Currently I use two other data gathering tools: a Sony PCM-M10 digital audio recorder and a Tecsun PL-880 portable AM/FM/SW radio. These are both terrific devices, the best in their respective classes, and reasonably affordable, especially considering the high quality of audio they produce. They can work together, with the Sony recording the line out audio from the Tecsun radio, fed into the line in of the recorder. By itself, the Sony does a great job of recording conversations or interviews with its built-in speakers and I have used it to record outdoor concerts and shows. Dedicated tapers have also been known to use it with expensive microphones to record Bob Dylan shows. I have been using the radio to listen to Morse Code on the ham radio bands, as it has a narrow 500 Hz filter which is very helpful for such uses.
Are these last two devices essential? Perhaps not in most cases, but it depends upon the purposes of the travel (Number three above). For this trip I wanted to work on some taping projects that made them essential.
For a while I considered getting a GoPro video camera, but in the end, decided it was not essential for my purposes. Someone who wants to do a lot of diving at the many excellent diving spots in Thailand could easily arrive at a different decision on this one.
In this category, a computer of some kind is an obvious essential. I have used a Chromebook on every one of my trips for writing, reading on the Internet, exchanging emails and even for voice communications with friends and clients back in the US. Others may prefer other devices in this area, which is fine, but I can’t imagine not having a computer of some kind when I am in Thailand, especially because I always stay for months at a time when I’m here.
Because I always carry an Android cell phone on my belt when I’m in the US, I assumed it would be essential in Thailand as well. As it turns out, it has not been, except for its usefulness as another camera. But my wife has a cell phone with a Thailand phone service on it, and I get the benefit of that, and so I would agree that a cell phone is essential, at least one in your travel group.
Wi-Fi service is essential for my purposes as well, particularly since my Chromebook is much less useful without an Internet connection. This requirement has mostly not been a problem for me. Nearly all hotels we have stayed at have free Wi-Fi included in the room price. In the beginning, my wife’s family home did not have Wi-Fi, but there was a coffee shop a few miles away with good Wi-Fi service, so I used that. Now we have Wi-Fi at the family home, which has been a nice upgrade.
When we’re driving about the country, we can generally do without an Internet connection, and we just wait until we get Wi-Fi at the hotel at the end of the day. In the meantime, my wife has good cell phone service nearly everywhere, which was a big surprise to me. You will see cell phone towers wherever you go and it is a major part of the communication infrastructure in Thailand. You will see that nearly every Thai person has a cell phone in their hand, their back pocket or nearby. Social media is very popular in all of Southeast Asia, including Thailand.
Another tool I found not to be essential in Thailand was an English-Thai dictionary. Of course that is due in part to the fact that my wife is native Thai, totally fluent in the Thai language. If she has trouble finding the English words for something, we use Google Translate, which is far from accurate and comprehensive, but it can help in a pinch. I have gradually learned some Thai for the common requirements of being polite, such as for greeting people and thanking them. But in general, language has not been a major barrier for us. Body language, writing out words in English, drawing pictures, or showing images from a Google search have all been used at times. Often my wife will know the correct English word, but I will not recognize her pronunciation of the word. Spelling out the word usually takes care of that, as she can read and write English better that she can speak it. Her English skills are always getting better at a faster rate than my Thai language skills are improving.
A possible language barrier was my biggest fear when I first came to Thailand, but it has rarely been much of a problem at all.
Thailand is nearly always sunny. Even during the “rainy season,” it might dump buckets of rain for an hour, but then blow over and become sunny again. I have fair skin and sunburn easily, so mostly I avoid a lot of direct exposure to the sun. A baseball cap is essential for keeping the sun off my face when walking in the sun. Often I will wear my Rayban sunglasses during the really sunny parts of the day. And when we went to the islands in Phuket, I wore sunscreen on all my exposed skin. These are just normal sun precautions, but maybe a bit more important because the sun can be so hot here.
Some people carry an umbrella when walking in the sun. I’ve done this only a few times and don’t consider an umbrella essential. I certainly wouldn’t bring an umbrella to Thailand, you can always buy one here, if you decide you want to use one. Making colorful bamboo umbrellas is the main activity of one village near Chiang Mai. But mostly we travel everywhere in the truck, so we don’t have all that much direct exposure to the sun.
We haven’t spent a lot of time at the beach communities in Thailand, but I once read that the way to spot the Thai people at a beach is to look for those with the most clothes on. I have seen this attributed to modesty by the Thai women, but I think it is just as likely that they want to avoid direct exposure to the hot sun, as light skin tones are favored by the Thai people. Unlike in the West, I don’t think the Thai people are going to the beach to get a tan. They’d like to keep their skin as pale as possible and skin whiteners are big sellers in the drug stores in Thailand. I never knew that such products even existed, before I came to Thailand.
It’s usually hot in Thailand, so dress to stay cool. For me that usually means shorts and a short sleeve shirt, even just a tee shirt. I was used to wearing an undershirt under my short sleeve or long sleeve shirt in the US, so I did the same thing in Thailand for my early trips. But this trip I’ve been mostly wearing just one layer of clothing on top, a short sleeve shirt and/or a tee shirt. I’ve never needed to dress very formally, so casual wear is fine.
During my early trips to Thailand, I wore long pants a lot, because that was what I was used to in California. I also had REI convertible pants that would easily convert to shorts by zipping off the bottom half of the legs. But this trip I’ve been wearing shorts almost exclusively, casual and cooler.
But what matters to me the most in pants is having big pockets with snaps or buttons for closing, as I always carry my passport, as well as my wallet, which can get fat with cards, receipts and such, and I want all that stuff stored securely, so I don’t have to think about them. So it’s keeping my passport and wallet secure that are the essential elements of the clothes I wear in Thailand. Now that I’m no longer carrying a Moleskin notebook in a pocket, this requirement is easier to meet. All the pants and shorts I wear have a large pocket on the front of each leg that closes with a button or snap. I like that a lot. One holds my passport and the other my wallet, easy and secure.
Which brings me to footwear. In California I always wear socks and usually some really sturdy hiking shoes from REI. Before I came to Thailand I didn’t buy any special footwear, as I figured I could find some really good sandals in Thailand. That was a mistake, because I never found any sandals I really liked in Thailand and suffered with two kinds that I didn’t like. Before my second trip to Thailand I went to REI and bought some expensive Ecco leather sandals with Velcro fasteners for easy fastening and removal. They are very comfortable to wear, but I had never worn sandals much in my life, so if I thought we might walk a lot one day, I would wear my socks and hiking shoes. Sometimes I would wear socks with the sandals. My wife was cringing. Well this trip, I have finally accepted the sandals and I have worn only the sandals, and no socks, the entire time I have been here, with the exception of one strenuous hike up a mountain. I have been taking hikes around the block wearing the sandals. Inside the house and inside temples I am barefoot and I’ve gotten used to that and accepted it. Having bare feet a lot is just part of living in Thailand, so now I’m fitting in better with the culture here. But to get to this stage it was really essential that I found those sandals that fit well and are comfortable to wear. Because of their amazing lifetime guarantee, REI is the only place I would buy such things. I recommend them very highly. It is essential that you have really good sandals when you arrive in Thailand!
Another essential provision for such a hot place is bottled drinking water that you can take along wherever you go. We buy Namthip, as it is a product of Thainamthip, the company where my wife worked for 21 years. But there is another good reason to buy it. It comes in a really thin bottle that is entirely recyclable and crushes down to a super small size when you’re done, which is very cool when you first see it and it is eco-friendly in terms of the amount of energy needed to produce it and transport it. I’ve seen nothing like it in the West, a really good product!
When I first came to Thailand I was worried about getting sick from the local tap water. I drank only bottled drinks. I brushed my teeth with bottled water. When I showered, I was careful to not let the water from the shower go into my mouth. I never got sick. But did my precautions really matter? I think it was on my second trip that I decided to find out. I tried brushing my teeth with the tap water first and I didn’t get sick. Gradually I relaxed all my restrictions on the use of tap water and I never got sick. I still drink bottled water, but mainly because it’s handy to carry around in a plastic bottle and because it tastes good.
Of course #1 in this category has to be toilet paper. This is supplied in some public places, like the airport and newer malls. But in some temples, restaurants and small shops, it might not be. You have to be prepared. On my fifth trip to Thailand, I finally have a great solution to this potential problem. When we went to the Loy Krathong celebration in Sukhothai I found it. Early in the evening, I walked over to one of the toilets, but when I got there I realized I had forgotten to bring our roll of toilet paper. As it turned out, no problem, they were selling paper for people like me, the first time I had seen that done! You could buy a whole roll, OR you could buy small packets of paper in plastic sleeves for two baht each, a bit more than one nickel. Having discovered this idea, I bought nine more packets when I came out, just for the plastic sleeves really. Now I refill these from a full roll and always carry several in my back pocket. I will never ever be caught without tissue again!
A week or so later, we had lunch at a nice restaurant where our forks and spoons were delivered in long plastic sleeves. I took those home and filled them up with tissue too. The plastic in them is stiffer and probably more durable than the original ones, so they may become my favorite for holding the toilet paper. They are more narrow than the original, but that isn’t really a problem. These packets of tissue have become a major essential for my travel in Thailand. I love that I always have them with me and now I never worry about getting caught unprepared.
Nearly as essential, if you take a lot of photographs and video as you travel, is a USB battery pack to recharge your camera and/or cell phone during the day between photo rich locations, when you have no access to regular AC outlets. I use the Anker Astro E4, which was the top pick of The Wirecutter, when they did an extensive review of such devices. It has a very large capacity and you can charge two devices at the same time. This is the best new tool I added to my travels this trip.
In the past it was not unusual to completely run down the battery in my camera on a busy day. Then we could only get pictures with our cell phones or tablet after that. The Anker has solved this problem and really proved its value on 8 December 2015. We drove 350 km that morning from Mae Hong Son to Chiang Mai with a lot of pictures being taken on the country roads along the way. When we reached the stunning twin royal chedis near the top of Doi Inthanon, my camera showed 60% battery remaining, which seemed like plenty at the time. I took a ton of pictures and videos to capture the beauty of the two chedis and all their striking murals, the carefully manicured gardens all around, and of course, the obligatory selfies with our friends. The battery had dropped to 23%. But from the walkways on the chedis, the gorgeous views of the mountains in the distance called out for more videos to capture those as well. When we were nearly done with our visit, the camera was showing a zero with a line through it, the battery was nearly dead!
But we were not done for the day by a long shot. We still wanted to drive up higher to the top of the mountain, the highest place in all of Thailand. Surely we would want pictures of that! We got in the car and immediately put the camera onto the Anker for some more juice. By the time we got parked after the relatively short drive up the rest of the mountain, the battery was already back up to 19%, plenty for pictures of the highest spot in Thailand, as well as the digital thermometer reporting 10ºC, our coldest temperature in Thailand. The Anker had saved the day.
A related essential for using the camera is to have a blank SD card to pop in the camera when the one you're using is full. Once the card is full, you won't be taking any more pictures, unless you have another one ready to go in its place. I learned this the hard way when I started to take pictures at lunch on a floating restaurant near the Ubol Ratana Dam northwest of Khon Kaen, Thailand. My card was full, so I got no pictures of the huge platter of prawns and other dishes, nor the smiling faces of my friends. On the drive back to the city, a huge tourist bus sped past us just before crashing into a small white car, which then caused crashes with a pickup truck, a large utility truck and another bus before everything came to rest in the 50 meters right in front of us. Fortunately no one seemed to be injured, but I got no pictures of the scene of destruction (image by our friend driving the SUV) or the police and emergency responders who arrived as we were stuck at the scene over the next hour. When we finally got back to town, I immediately went to a camera store in the mall and was able to buy the exact same SD card (950 Baht) I'd been using in my camera. Except I bought two; one went into the camera and the other is waiting in my camera bag for when it is needed. See, I learn from my mistakes! Now I have the essential spare SD card with my camera at all times. Next, I will buy a spare for my digital audio recorder, which uses the smaller mini SD card. If my cell phone used a removeable SD card (it does not), I would buy one for it as well.
Next essential is an AC voltage converter, to convert a 220 volt Thailand outlet to take a 120 volt device from America. There are many varieties of these available at Amazon. Get one before you come, to make sure it accepts the type of plug on your 120 volt devices you will be bringing. Actually this device has almost become unnecessary for me, because all my charging devices will plug into any voltage from 100 to 240 volts AC and output the correct voltage needed for charging their device (applies to my laptop, my wife’s tablet, cell phones, camera, Kindle and radio). The only thing I bring that still requires a 110-120 volt outlet is the charger for my Sonicare electric toothbrush. I have used it for three weeks on one charge, but I will need to recharge it before the end of my trip and then I’ll need that converter. I actually forgot in an earlier trip and killed off a Sonicare charger by plugging it into the higher Thailand voltage. Yes, I could just use a regular toothbrush, but my dentist insists that I use the Sonicare. Okay you say, then the Sonicare should be on the essential list. Well, I suppose it is now.
There is one other fact of life in Thailand that needs to be addressed: mosquitoes. They love to bite me and when they do, I’ve been known to get large red welts. I try to avoid them like the plague, mostly because of the welts and the scratching, but also because it is possible to get diseases from their bite, especially dengue fever in Thailand. Both of the articles I just linked to are from a world famous hospital in Thailand, sort of the Mayo Clinic of the country, so I accept their data and advice as accurate.
We regularly practice some avoidance techniques. The main part of the family home is open to the outside during the day, but we close the windows around 4:30 to 5:00 pm, and I stay in the closed area, as the worst attacks come around sunset. The bedroom doors are always kept closed, day and night, so they are always free of mosquitoes and we don’t have to use mosquito netting when we sleep. If I went out at night, I always used to wear long pants and long sleeves (a jacket). Now that I nearly always wear shorts and sandals, I will have my wife apply mosquito repellant to my bare arms and legs, if we go out at night. I brought DEET from REI for this purpose, but this trip we’ve been using a product from Thailand with a label in Thai script. I suspect it probably contains DEET too. There are some who advise against using DEET, but I fear the bite more than the side effects of the repellant.
Because of the heat, I also sit in front of a fan a lot at home. Besides cooling me off, it also serves to keep away the mosquitoes, which are unable to fly against the wind created by the fan.
There is one bright spot about mosquitoes. When my wife’s mother saw the sometimes gigantic welts I would get from mosquito bites, she had me start applying a yellow liquid in a small bottle with a roll-on applicator to the area of the bite, as soon as I realized I had been bitten. This stuff is amazingly effective! The welts don’t develop, not even much redness, and I never need to scratch, as the area just doesn’t itch at all. Except for the risk of dengue fever, this pretty much eliminates the worst things about mosquitoes!
So what is it? I don’t know! I call it “That magic stuff.” It has a menthol smell, so it may be in the category of treatments mentioned in the first hospital article above, but its label is in Thai script. When I ask my wife what it is, she says she doesn’t know how to say it in English. Sorry, this stuff is totally essential to me, but I can’t tell you where to get it, other than my wife says it comes from Trat Province. My wife’s mother, the one who got it for us, has passed on.
So I play detective. I go to the Wikipedia page on Trat Province in hopes of finding a clue. Under Local products I find this entry:
Namman Lueang (yellow oil) (น้ำมันเหลือง) is a herbal rubbing oil produced out of folk wisdom since ancient times. The aromatic vapourizing oil helps to relieve muscular pain, stiffness, dizziness, congested nose and cold.
Excited, I show it to my wife. “Is this it?!!” Big smile, “YES!!!” and a big thumbs up.
There are many brands of น้ำมันเหลือง and we are trying to sort out exactly which one is That magic stuff that has helped me so much. The label on the bottle says “Phranarai See Korn Yellow Oil” and the flyer enclosed with the product has that name and says, “Indication: For the relief of dizziness, insect bites and rashes. Direction: Rub or smell to relieve the symptoms.” The flyer gives a street address in Thai script (but no website address) and phone numbers for the company as 089-9365927 and 082-2188090.
It’s nice to end on an important mystery solved!
Any questions or comments about travel in Thailand are welcomed, as they could lead to a useful edit to this document. I have written other articles about Thailand, which you might find interesting. You can reach me on Twitter or send an email via my about.me page. Thanks for reading!
Text & banner image - Copyright 2015 by Ron Chester, 5 to 12 December 2015.
