Isaan road trip: Searching for normalcy in Thailand s 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 children s 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, it s almost like the pandemic never happened.
A week earlier, as our first chance to travel beyond Bangkok in six months approached, my partner and I asked ourselves questions that never would have crossed our minds before the pandemic.
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, Chiang Mai and Phuket back in April. Despite being in Thailand s most populous region with more than 22 million residents, Isaan s 20 provinces have reported just over 100 infections since the pandemic began.