Road Trip Northern Thailand, July 2025

Driving north out of Bangkok, there doesn’t seem to be any way round the wacky races traffic that heads towards Saraburi and on to Korat on Highway 1. Jockeying for position across four lanes which sometimes become six, before unexpectedly reducing to two due to roadworks, are the Boulder Brothers writ large. The main danger comes not just from the size of the vehicles, with articulated lorries seemingly de rigeur in these parts, it is the complete lack of lane discipline. On one occasion I counted three of the four lanes crawling uphill full of just lorries and nothing else, thus relegating the speedier cars nose-to-tail to the outside lane. Ridiculous! On top of that, in clearer sections there will be a pickup, overloaded with used car-tyres piled high, pootling along in the middle lane without a care in the world. Overtake or undertake? The choice is yours, but you really do need to concentrate hard and be fully up to date in real time with what both of your wing mirrors have got to say on the matter.

Proceeding beyond Saraburi, a dip followed by a rise in the motorway reveals extensive cement works towering above the forest canopy on the left, and belching clouds of smoke-steam-dust over the treetops. Such an ugly sight. As you draw closer you register the huge Buddha statue on the opposite side on the right, positioned so that it is staring straight back across the six lanes at the factory complex. This must have been deliberately planned, the pitting of the spiritual world against the physical world as their gazes are locked in unflinching battle. While reflecting on this and carefully considering appropriate thoughts in my inner mind’s cosmic attic, my outer limbs grapple with gears and brakes in an entirely necessary worldly enterprise. Wishing to stay worldly for a bit longer, Nirvana can wait!

There is relief of sorts in the shape of an elevated motorway towards Korat which siphons off much of the traffic, allowing you to relax (in the midriff section only as arms and legs remain primed for action). Finally, heading off on Highway 2 towards Chaiyaphum, it is relatively calm, even if the road surface is that of unending gravel fixed haphazardly with patches of tarmac. Approaching the district of Chaiyaphum you drive under one of those big blue signs that straddle roads and show images of the best three features of the upcoming province. And presto – the road surface is instantly smooth and slick. It looks like the district council spent their budget wisely, while the previous outfit spent it all on lollies, kites and space-hoppers.

When driving in the interior of Thailand the road signs reveal place names that you never seem to hear about in any other context. Places that are probably quite sizeable like Chaiyaphum, Uttaradit, Prae and so on. The first task is to see if the English spelling captures the Thai pronunciation of the place (something to do as you pass, then decode road signs). It almost always doesn’t, being hidebound by the rules of direct transliteration, which is nigh on impossible for a tonal language without adding diacritical marks to indicate the tones as they do in Vietnamese. The second task is to look the place up later to see if it has any features of particular interest. You can bet that there will be a rather splendid wat or two, even if there is nothing else of note. Anyway, that’s why Chaiyaphum made it onto this itinerary, by playing its road sign curiosity card. The province, as well as the town, boasts a couple of National Parks, which are bound to be brimming with local campers at this time of year. The mountain top at Sai Thong National Park is true to form as you try to squeeze your car into the overflowing car park without recalibrating your sump or selecting the striated doors option as you edge between tree stumps and skew-whiff vehicles.

I’ll say this much, there is some serious kit on show on the campsites in Thailand. Oddly enough, it isn’t an RV or an actual tent that catches the eye, it is a purpose-built awnings attached to the side of the SUVs with a ladder up to the roof where there are sleeping quarters tailored especially for the size and exact shape of the car. Under the canvas shelter, members of the family clan are invariably huddled over a steaming pot of something that probably qualifies as lunch (just about). Still, you’ve got to like camping a lot to put up with these kinds of crowds, it being a long-weekend Buddha holiday and all. The temperature is cool at this elevation and the strong breeze reminds you that there’s quite a drop as you pose teetering on the cliff tops at Sut Prae Din. Park Rangers are on hand to courteously help you on and off the ledges, in a nod to H&S. I guess falling into the abyss would dent the Parks Dept’s bonus rate rather. An incentive of sorts.

Walking along adjacent to the cliff you reach fields of bright red Kratchiao flowers. I so wanted these to be called something exotic in English, like ‘Fairy Lillies’ or ‘Dragon’s Tonsils’, but they were finally tracked down and revealed to be no more than ‘Ginger Flowers’. Not that it deterred the hundreds of campers and that other invasive species, the weekend car driver. The track to the flower fields was graded easy-peasy but that didn’t take into account that the return was almost all uphill. A sweaty five kilometres there and back was thus ticked off. As for the flowers, they are advertised on huge roadside billboards from over 40kms away in all directions. Like moths to a flame, visitors wend their way… You can’t beat the combination of a field full of flowers and a smartphone. What did we do before these phones and social media came along? Likely, we all have some slightly blurred, square-shaped photos of faded colours in a trunk somewhere, commemorating that trip to Brittany or Rhyll.

How to spot the good wats? Go onto Google Maps, jot down the names of anything with a 4.7 or more average review rating and look at the pictures to see if you like the look of it. Go back to the map and see how far apart they are in order to make a driving plan. Even having done all that you can sometimes pick a dud, as was the case with Wat Phra Putthabat Phufaet (4.6) and Wat Udom Kongkha Kiriket (4.7) between Chaiyaphum and Khon Kaen on the same day. The first because it was ‘shoes off’ right at the entrance, ensuring miles of bare-foot walking over a huge area of grubby concrete, and the second for seemingly being closed for business. Often these places are some distance from each other; timewise it is a bit like driving from Cambridge to Norwich to look at two churches, before continuing on to Lincoln. Having said that, Wat Phra That Chaiyaphum (4.7) the day before was superb – I’d have given it at least a 4.9. If something gets a 5.0 score by the way, it means that only one person has ever reviewed it – true of wats and also of restaurants.

Khon Kaen night market seemed to be mostly 100m down past the stalls, then back up again on the other side with food being the only option, but nowhere to sit. So, I guess the idea is to take your winnings home, or else munch on your takeaway while walking past things you could have had if you had been a bit more patient. Always better things, as it happens. The market is on every Saturday, and this one had stall holders packing up hastily and skedaddling in the face of an hour's worth of stair-rod monsoon rain. The same thing happened the previous Saturday we were told. What do they do with all the food that likely took all day to prepare? Two weeks running, too! I’m sure they wouldn’t appreciate being asked. There’s a guy walking along with trifle, mini sausages and tom yum kung sliding down his face. He must have asked.

It's pot luck sometimes with hotel selection whether using Agoda or Booking dot com. As much as you read all the reviews you can still get a good hotel in the wrong place or a disappointing hotel in a great place. For both Khon Kaen and Udon Thani it was a case of fairly good hotels in downtown areas where the buzz was happening about thirty years ago. These former key streets in Thailand now consist of rows of shophouses that haven’t been whitewashed in years and upstairs residences that look abandoned, with widow frames hanging off. Walking at street level there are a few motorbike repair shops, rice stores and noodle places, but mostly it’s all shuttered up. Oh well, at least there are hail-a-ride apps like Grab or Bolt to get you moving in the right direction.

In Udon Thani the right direction leads to UD Town where the covered area with open seating and cash card system means that you can choose from a wide selection of food and drink stalls. Add to that, the live music and creature comfort stops such as Swensen’s for ice-cream, and you have the makings of a highly satisfactory evening. Leaving UD Town you muse along the lines of, ‘I could live here’. To be fair, this is always a false take on any town that you visit. It is obvious that the novelty of splendid eateries, though beguiling, would wear off soon enough if you actually lived there. There might be an equivalent stretch of evening options in Khon Kaen although we didn’t happen upon it. Definitely a ‘couldn’t live here’ sort of town.

Just outside Udon is another Uncle Ho house where he stayed for seven months in 1928. It is well preserved and similar to the one in Nakhon Phanom. The large exhibition building was likely funded by the Vietnamese government (with an even bigger one planned) to commemorate Ho Chi Minh’s drive and determination during a life of constant movement. From New York to London, to Paris, to Moscow, to Thailand, to Shanghai, to Hong Kong, and eventually to Hanoi, he never lost sight of his nation’s quest for independence.
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Driving from Udon to Phetchabun you wonder how the app can say 4h 35m when it is only 198 kms away. Upon completing the journey, you understand entirely. An extreme example would be driving from Netherlands to Italy using a political map which didn't show the Alps. The mountains in this case are probably not that high and there isn’t a single tunnel, but the road though Nam Nao National Park faithfully follows the contours, ignoring the gradients, as it climbs and swoops, and twists and turns along its 55 kms route. This rather explains the journey time. Signs showing camera icons say, ‘Gradient 8%, select low gear, or else’. How would they know if you didn't? So, up and down through the broccoli forested hills, chugging behind lorries or trying to shake off F1 aspiring pickup drivers, we inch our way forward on the phone-map. No time for chatter, it’s full concentration mode here.

Phetchabun Province has got some great places to visit including four national parks for hiking trails, views and camping. Even though we have visited several times before, we've never explored the town itself. This is probably because it has always been a stopover on the way home – a handy six-hour drive, rather than ten hours that it would have been without a layover. It has a good feel to it just driving through the periphery though. Perhaps next time (we always say that) and it is also the third time staying at the great-value hotel on the outskirts where you wake up looking across the rice paddies towards the mountains with their early morning mist. Normally it is a case of belting the first few hours to get a head start on the return journey and bypassing Si Thep Historical Park which is about two hours down the road. This time though…

The park at Si Thep is huge, far too big to walk around, hence the electric trolley-buses that ferry you about. It is big for a reason – it was a city state between the 5th and 13th centuries. By the 6th century Hinduism had taken hold, before giving way to Buddhism from the 8th century onwards (common at Khmer Empire sites in Thailand). That’s some history there, as you can imagine. Once the Kingdoms of Ayutthaya and Sukhothai came to prominence Si Thep went into decline. Visiting now there are prangs (towers) and low laterite walls showing the lay-out of various halls and buildings as well as a huge mound of what is left of a massive stone structure. Perhaps it is the fact that the site is so much older and worn away, but it doesn’t have quite the impact that you experience at Ayutthaya, Sukhothai or Kamphaeng Phet historical parks. Another place ticked off all the same.

And so, to the drive home, spanning lunch and tea-time traffic. It is fast and packed with HGVs that don’t know their place. Probably the drivers think that it’s the likes of me that don’t know my place, being in a much smaller vehicle, as I am. More than once, they appeared to be imparting their superior road-craft and knowledge to me. Keep your wits about you on the roads in Thailand and take the pickup if you’ve got one. Just today we drove past two accidents, one of which had about five emergency trucks and ambulances with flashing lights positioned round it, causing a long tailback on the other side of the highway. Not that you ever need reminders like that, you’ve only got to watch the local news in the morning for clips of the previous day’s carnage. For road fatalities, by the way, Thailand is No.1 in the world.

The actual planned trip this time was to have been a trip east taking in Surin and Si Saket for the Khmer historical sites along the Thai-Cambodia border. The recent political tensions meant that the excursion had to be deferred until later. Given the cross-border skirmishes and media posturing, guaranteeing an escalation of the whole thing, it could be years before both sides are ‘friendly’ again and welcoming visitors. The trip plan is filed for future use nevertheless.

Another venture ‘up north’ was hastily put together and covered some old ground but also discovered plenty of new places too. Reaching home after nine hours from Phetchabun (seven hours’ driving) the ODO says 1,954 kms which was covered in eight days, with stops in Bangkok, Chaiyaphum, Khon Kaen, Udon Thani and Phetchabun. Damn, if I’d have known, I would have done a 50 kms side trip somewhere to ensure a 2k total!