Thailand, Laos Travel News

PHUKET CITY: Carved wooden ornaments, stylish cloth bags and Lanna-style garments are just some of the hundreds of hand-made products from northern Thailand currently on sale at an OTOP market fair at Saphan Hin until tomorrow.

Centara Hotels & Resorts is offering a programme at each of its 21 properties throughout Thailand in which guests deposit money with the hotel and the hotel adds a further amount of between 50 and 100 percent of the deposit for the guests to use during their stay.

THE FIRST TIME I ate at Burma Superstar in the Richmond District of San Francisco, it was like taking a culinary tour of Southeast Asia.

When you walk into Lazy Boy Saloon in White Plains, the first thing that you notice is the beer menu.

Chiang Mai is my favorite city in Thailand, it's also my favorite place to drink coffee.

Tourism may be down worldwide, but Thailand has been especially hard hit due to political problems, closures of international airports, double pricing scams, taxi ripoffs at the airport, and blatant discrimination against the tens of thousands of expats who call Thailand home.

The first Bangkok-Yala train arrived in Hat Yai, pulling into the normally bustling rail station Wednesday morning after a five-day hiatus of southern rail services, Thai News Agency reported.

The suspension of all local trains from the Hat Yai junction in the South continued for the third day on Sunday amid calls from the local people for the government and State Railway of Thailand to quickly solve the problem.

Trang train abruptly stopped at Lamae railway station in Chumphon province on Sunday morning and about 2,000 passengers were told to get off, a State Railway of Thailand source said.

Fourteen train s travelling to and from Hat Yai district in Thailand's Songkhla province suspended service yesterday , with malfunctions of a safety system and poor conditions of a number of locomotives cited as the reasons.

Different takes on one dish from Thai and Lao restaurants. People often come back from visiting northern Thailand with a yen for the creamy, curried noodle soup dish khao soi .

Go on, have a hit! A bottle of Thai whisky is circulating in the bus, there is a sing-song in progress, and bottles of beer flow over.

Recently, it seems like an explosion of Thai restaurants have opened up in virtually every city in the Inland Empire.

Nine domestic tourism associations and two related bodies have recently formed the Federation of Thailand Tourism Network Associations to boost local tourism.

First lady Michelle Obama meets with members of her staff at the White House in Washington.

The Federation of Thai Tourism Associations is urging the government to extend its visa-fee waiver to next September in order to lure more tourists.

BOTTOMS UP: A woman wearing a traditional Bavarian Dirndl drinks a beer during the opening ceremony for the 176th Oktoberfest in Munich.

Bangkok is so populated that you wouldn't notice that it's the end of rainy season and thus low season for tourism but Chiang Mai, an hour flight north, close to Burma is far less populated.

The government should get the airport rail link operating as soon as possible as it will help boost the tourism sector, Thongyoo Supphawitthayakorn, a member of the Association of Thai Travel Agents , said on Thursday.

There has been a significant rise in hotel bookings at popular tourism destinations in Thailand, Tourism and Sports Minister Chumpol Silpa-archa said on Tuesday.