Suan Phung is Serene

In Ratchaburi Province, to the west and slightly south of Bangkok, lies a district whose green, rolling hills call to mind Vermont. We drove out to Suan Phung on a Sunday morning, mostly because one of our crowd had heard about a chi-chi resort that was offering two-for-one coupons, good any night but Friday or Saturday. We all had Monday off because our office was closed for one of those American holidays that nobody else in Thailand celebrates.

Now I say chi-chi. What I really mean is a place that looks as if it were designed by a recent architecture grad. A cross between funky dorm room and Anasazi kiva. The dozen or so whitewashed cottages have little stars and moons carved into the walls. From the rooftop patios, reached by outdoor staircases, the view features sheep in the foreground. A long twisty driveway leads to the open-air breakfast room.

Everything felt newly unwrapped, as if the place had been a present from well-off Bangkokian parents to a child wanting to put art-school theory into practice. We had passed dozens of weekend getaways and stylish coffee shops with a similar vibe and vintage as our car left the plain and climbed Suan Phung’s slopes that morning.

It occurred to me to wonder who had lived there before. Signs of farming-for-a-living were scarcer than most places I’ve been in Thailand. An orchid nursery owner told us he had been in business for more than ten years, supplying stems to wholesalers in the big city, but to me that didn’t count as traditional agriculture. Burma is only a few ridges away—was this smuggling territory? The well-maintained roads had clearly been built for something besides tourism. Maybe mining? Military? The district doesn’t seem to be on Lonely Planet’s radar. We didn’t see any other foreigners.

Nothing much was happening. The six of us, and the two dogs we brought along, made up more than half the guests. We watched the dogs chase the sheep. We picked up the sheep. We posed with the sheep. On Monday, we photographed a lamb born during the night. That afternoon we headed back the way we had come, pausing for coffees and pictures and scenery.

Iznájar is Idyllic

All of the towns in this part of Spain are postcard towns. Their white houses have thick walls, small windows, and red tile roofs. The houses cascade down the hills on which these towns are nearly always built, but the houses do not flow onto the plains. At the bottom of the hill, the town stops and the agriculture begins. The people seem to prefer living close to other people and far from the fields where they work, rather than the other way around.

Perhaps the reason they live this way has to do with safety in numbers. Historically, these towns had to be defended. Or maybe in this region, where the dominant agricultural products come from trees rather than barns, it makes no sense to plant buildings when you could plant olives or almonds or oranges or whathaveyou. It has been lovely this week to hike along the ridges, looking out across several valleys dotted with ancient stands of produce. The views are old views, probably not much different than they appeared three or four centuries ago.

We are here celebrating our birthdays, 18 of us who mostly were born in the same year and then graduated from college together. It’s true that gathering in Albuquerque would have been simpler for most of us than getting to Andalucia. In the American Southwest we might have found similar landscapes. If we were really lucky we could even have rented a farmhouse similar to the one we’re enjoying here, where we wake up late and buy wine and cheese at a nearby market and set no goals other than to take one siesta per day.

But there are no postcard towns near Albuquerque like Iznájar, the tranquil hilltop village that presides over a nearby reservoir in this part of southern Spain. We climb the narrow streets of Iznájar, passing exquisite doors, courtyards, and plazas decorated with colorful tiles and pots. At the top we find the Arab castle-turned-church that dominates this fine photo taken by John Beach and the neat watercolor by Jay Mead, both of our group. We can see for miles. Swallows circle. Below, a cemetery clings to the side of the hill, its inhabitants stacked atop one another in the style of post office boxes.

We feel unplugged. Our lives here require no broadband connection. For a few moments we can concentrate on the picturesque, the flavorful (who knew that anchovies could be made to taste delicious?), and best of all, each other. We luxuriate in strolling the squiggly alleyways that seem only to exist in Europe, reverting to a pre-email era when to stay in touch we wrote… postcards!

Our viewpoint affords us a point of view we rarely seek out anymore, that of ourselves as teenagers. Old pals who reunite often become again the age they were when they first met. Surveying the olive hills that stretch to the horizon, we know without a doubt that we will live forever, that our friendships will never fade, and that if we ever return to this hilltop, the view will be unchanged.

Koh Tarutao is Captivating

Here I am in the place once known as Thailand’s Alcatraz. Evidently the deal was that if you were a political prisoner back in the ’30s and ’40s, you got sent to paradise. The catch was that you had to find your own food.

This island near the Malaysian border was thought to be perfect for banishing the inconvenient. About one third of the convicts died, but those who survived sometimes ended up OK, spending their non-foraging time on projects of their own choosing, from experimenting with agriculture to writing dictionaries. One of the most well-known prisoners was fictional, a soldier who remained loyal to the king in a book that most Thai people know called Four Reigns. I read that story last year, which is why the island’s name jumped out at me when I saw that the Siam Society was organizing a trip there.

Koh Tarutao is now a national park made up of more than fifty islands spread over a wide area. Many of these are ringed by coral reefs that disintegrate and form fine-looking beaches with sand the consistency of Coffee-mate®.

We are here during the region’s nicest time of year, the non-monsoon. While we have to be careful to slop on the sunscreen, pleasant winds make temperatures ideal. We spend our days snorkeling (one source claims that the park contains a quarter of the world’s fish species) and eating and watching the sun set. Not a bad four-day exile.

Pai is Popular But Pang Oung is Perfect

When a new fad rolls into Thailand it moves pretty fast. Fashion, film, and food trends crest and crash quickly. Likewise travel destinations.

We knew Pai was hip and happenin’ before we flew up there. A semi-artsy movie showcased the high altitude town a few weeks ago. Another clue was waiting for us on the road from Chiang Mai. At a restaurant where many buses stop, the long list of fruit juices and sodas on the menu concluded with “Add vodka to any of the above, 20 baht extra.”

Nearly every building on the outskirts looked brand new. Yet infrastructure hasn’t kept up with demand. Our group expected to get around on rented motorbikes; the supply was completely exhausted when we arrived early Saturday afternoon. We booked two nights at a newish resort where the gimmick is in-room hot springs; unfortunately, most guests prefer filling their personal tubs at roughly the same time of day, which meant that everybody’s flow was so slow that the water was already cold by the time there was enough to soak in. The night market streets weren’t wide enough to hold all the tourists walking up and down them.

In no time we had investigated the two must-see attractions. “Coffee in Love” is an all-the-rage java shop that figured in the movie. The “sea of fog”—misty valleys visible from above at several viewpoints before the sun gets too high—sounded cool enough to get us out of bed early on Sunday. Just as we were beginning to feel the first pangs of been-there-done-that, somebody suggested we drive a couple hours beyond the t-shirt vendors to a royal development project known as Pang Oung.

The roads soon got pretty narrow. We came to a checkpoint where we were told that our van wouldn’t be able to handle the turns ahead. Conveniently, a queue of pickup trucks was ready for precisely that Plan B, and one of them took us the rest of the way. A few minutes later, we seemed to have left Thailand and arrived in Switzerland. A camera-friendly reservoir, rimmed with pines and other plants rarely seen at this latitude, waited at the end of the road. We strolled the path along the water’s edge, pausing for photo after photo.

Happily, we had Pang Oung nearly to ourselves. A few people had pitched tents among the pines, but they didn’t seem to be in them. Nor were they riding the bamboo rafts or watching the swans on the water. It seemed that the royal project, which promotes reforestation in an area once known for opium production, had prepared itself to become a fad, but the wave had yet to arrive. Perhaps it never will.

We returned to Pai after nightfall to sample a few more of the pie selections at Cake-GO-O, a bakery that is now in vogue. My travel mates were glad to be back in town, but I had left my heart in Pang Oung.