Teak & Salt ← All journeys

Isan

Sandstone & silk

Phimai, Phanom Rung and the sandstone sanctuaries of the Khorat plateau, walked at first light with someone who reads the lintels.

Length6 days
Best seasonNovember to February
CostOne all-in numberQuoted per person once a designer has read your brief — stays, guiding, transfers and boats together, exclusions listed beside it.
Who it suitsTravellers who like ruins better with an archaeologist attached

Day by day

A shape, not a schedule. Every one of these is rewritten around the people travelling it.

  1. Bangkok to Khorat

    Out of the city early, onto the Khorat plateau. Isan food for lunch, which is the sourest and hottest cooking in the country.

  2. Phimai

    The largest Khmer-era sanctuary in Thailand, entered at opening. An archaeologist walks it with you and the carvings stop being decoration.

  3. Phanom Rung

    Up on the rim of an extinct volcano, on a processional walkway that lines up with the sunrise. Early start, and worth it.

  4. The lesser sites

    Muang Tam and the ones with no coach park. Lunch with a family that farms beside a thousand-year-old baray.

  5. Silk

    Weaving villages around Surin where the mudmee dyeing is still done by hand. You will buy something.

  6. The slow way back

    Down off the plateau through Khao Yai — forest in the morning, a long lunch, Bangkok by evening.

What it includes

Included

  • Every stay, chosen against the standard
  • Private guiding and a driver where the roads ask for it
  • Boats, transfers and internal flights
  • One designer, start to finish
  • A 24-hour line while you travel

Not included

  • International flights
  • Travel insurance — required, and we do not sell it
  • Visas where they apply
  • Personal spending and tipping

Suppliers on this route are held to the standard published on the homepage. Where a place is on our list because we trust the person running it rather than because we have slept there ourselves, we say so when we suggest it.

Start with a conversation.

Four questions, a minute of your time, and a designer reads it within one working day.

Begin planning