The park reopened on 15 October after five months shut. The ticket, the sunscreen law and the choice of island all matter more than the choice of boat. More than 400,000 people visited the Similan Islands last season, and over 90% of them came from abroad. Tourism there brought in more than 215 million baht
The Lao capital is planning new routes, night-time shows and a city pass to turn a one-night stopover into a proper stay. Some of it you can use now. Some of it is still on paper. Updated 25 September 2026. This article was first published in December 2024, the week the Vientiane Heritage Route launched.
A Few Words From Me Some good news from the Mekong to start with, and it’s been a while since I could write that sentence with a straight face. In Kratie, up in Cambodia’s northeast, the Irrawaddy dolphin count is heading the right way, and after writing in August about the Laos side of the
A new EU law bans vague sustainability claims from 27 September, applies to Southeast Asian hotels marketing to Europeans, and already has a real court case behind it. From 27 September, hotels marketing to European travellers can be fined for making sustainability claims they can’t back up. It’s a new EU law, the Empowering Consumers
A banned trade, a protected river, and the ambitious reclamation plan quietly depending on both. The Trapeang Rung River isn’t somewhere most people have heard of. It flows through Koh Kong province in southwest Cambodia, past mangroves and lowland forest, home to one of the world’s least understood otter species, the endangered hairy-nosed otter, before
A Few Words From Me… Money keeps surfacing as the theme this week, or rather the question of where it actually ends up once it’s left your hand. Marriott Bonvoy’s new partnership with the orangutan foundation in Perak is about as clean an example as you’ll find: scan a QR code at check-in in Malaysia
Cambodia’s discount campaign has split the tourism industry down the middle, and the divide says something uncomfortable about who gets to hold out for quality Cambodia’s Ministry of Tourism launched the 2026 Siem Reap Tourism Service Mega Sale on the first of August, offering discounts of 10 to 50 percent at more than fifty hotels,
A Few Words From Me Lampang doesn’t get that much attention – even from people like myself who’ve spent years in Thailand. This week its lac-dyed textiles earned official protected status, the same kind Champagne has, which feels overdue in the best way, a craft that could easily have been left to fade (no pun
A Few Words From Me Three governments seem to have landed on the same idea this week: that how people move through a place matters as much as where they go. Thailand has started training its first proper hiking guides, launched at Khao Yai, one of the national parks that together see more than ten
Angkor’s visitor numbers have fallen by a third, for reasons that have nothing to do with the temple itself. Turning up still matters. I have stood in front of Angkor Wat at sunrise exactly once, shoulder to shoulder with several hundred other people, all of us holding phones over each other’s heads trying to catch
The Similan Islands Took 400,000 Visitors Last Season. Before You Book This One, Read the Rules.
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Malaysia and Vietnam Just Added Six Parks to an Exclusive List. The Badge Is the Easy Part.
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Da Nang Just Wrote a 219-Point Rulebook for What “Green” Actually Means. Here’s What’s in It.
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