Honest Thailand Writing From People Who Live Here.
A small publication about travelling and living in Thailand, written from Bangkok, by someone who grew up here.
What Is a Farang in Thailand?
Farang is the Thai word for a Westerner.
Land at Suvarnabhumi and you will hear it within the hour, on the street, at the market, in the back of a taxi. It is not an insult. It is just the word, the way you might say tourist or foreigner back home. Knowing what a farang in Thailand actually is and how the word is used takes most of the awkwardness out of hearing it pointed in your direction.
In practice the label follows you everywhere. A farang in Bangkok is the person paying the tourist price, reading the English menu, working out the BTS map. Most of Thailand is farang friendly in the plain sense that you will be met with patience and good humour, though friendly is not the same as familiar. The country runs on its own logic. The quickest way to stop being treated as a passing farang is to learn a little of how it works.
That gap is the reason this site exists. Most writing about Thailand is made for the farang abroad, the version that sells temples and beaches and never mentions the journey there. We write for the people who have already arrived or are about to. The word will follow you here. What you do with the time after that is the part worth getting right.
Farang Travel is for people who already know they do not want the brochure version of Thailand. Expats deciding whether to make the move. Travellers who would rather understand a country than tick it off. Returning readers who come back for the voice, not for an algorithm.
We write only when there is something worth writing. There is no publishing schedule, no SEO-driven calendar, no listicle factory. If a place is overrated we say so. If a route is rough, we say that too.
The site exists because the version of Thailand sold to outsiders is mostly fiction. We would rather be useful to a few hundred careful readers than chase a million bored ones.
- Not a publishing schedule
- New posts when there is something worth saying, never on cue.
- Not for sale to the highest bidder
- Editorial decisions are made in the room where the writing happens, not the room where the money is.
- Not a listicle blog
- Long-form when long form is needed, short when the answer is short.
I was born in the UK and raised in Thailand. I went back to Britain for GCSEs through university and I am now back in Bangkok again, working in digital and writing this site on the side.
I started Farang Travel because the way Thailand is sold to people abroad does not match the country I actually live in. The same five temples. The same beach. The same "hidden gem" everyone has been told about.
What I want this site to be is the version a friend would give you. Honest. Specific. Sometimes critical. Written in English because most readers need it that way, but I speak Thai too, which means the information here is not filtered through a translator and a guidebook.
If something on the site helps you travel here better, that is the whole point.
Firsthand Only
Every piece is written from experience. If we have not been to a place, eaten the food or taken the train, we do not write about it.
Editorial Is Separate
When something is named here it is because we rate it. If commercial relationships ever sit alongside the writing, they are labelled and they do not change what we say.
Plain Voice
We avoid the language of brochures. If a place is loud and chaotic, we say so. If a journey is uncomfortable, we say that before you book it.