My attraction to northern Thailand strengthened when I visited minority groups in the hills. Many non-Thai minorities live in northern Thailand, and they offer a
The first kings in Thailand’s new Chakri Dynasty grounded Bangkok in Thai traditions in the late 18th and early 19th centuries by erecting monuments in
Thais needed to rebuild their world after Burmese armies traumatized them by sacking Ayutthaya, the capital of their largest kingdom, in 1767. The first king
Wat Pho is the second of the three monuments that the first Chakri kings established in Bangkok’s center to reaffirm traditional Thai ways of perceiving
The horrors of the sack of Ayutthaya in 1767 made old Thai traditions seem like a lost haven. The siege dragged on for more than
Confucians from the royal court in Hue probably would have found Hoi An chaotic if they had ventured there. Although the Nguyen Dynasty’s kings tried
In 1802 the last Nguyen lord, Nguyen Anh, defeated the Tay Son rulers of Vietnam after a traumatic civil war. He returned from the north
Vietnam is full of underappreciated cultural blends. China had ruled Vietnam since 111 BCE. The Vietnamese finally gained independence in 939, after China’s Tang Dynasty disintegrated.
I put off going to Vietnam for a long time. Many other Southeast Asian cultures were heavily influenced by India about 2,000 years ago,
I found lots of things that I didn’t expect when I was in Vietnam. They showed me that Vietnamese culture is unique and