World on my postcards

Chiang Mai is a city in mountainous northern Thailand. A short 9 km drive from Chiang Mai, Bo Sang Village – also called the Umbrella Village – welcomes families to watch their arts in action. See the entire process from constructing the saa paper umbrellas by hand to painting them in intricate designs.

Thailand's Royal Barge Procession is a ceremony of both religious and royal significance which has been taking place for nearly 700 years.

  Rice production in Thailand represents a significant portion of the Thai economy and labor force. Forty percent of Thais work in agriculture, 16 million of them as rice farmers by one estimate. Thailand has a strong tradition of rice production.

  Bangkok, Thailand’s capital, is a large city known for ornate shrines and vibrant street life. Wat Pho also spelt Wat Po , is a Buddhist temple complex in the Phra Nakhon District, Bangkok, Thailand.  

 At the centre each elephant has his or her own mahout to care for on a one-on-one basis. Elephants are only worked during the mornings, with their afternoons and nights free to roam the surrounding natural forest. With such a vast area filled with hills and the Ping River, elephants can wander through the forests as well as take baths in the river.

 An amazing postcard with fabulous stamps showing Sukhothai historic park filled with ancient temples dating back almost 800 years. The Buddha figure here is known by two different names. The name ‘Phra Achana ‘ translates to ‘Buddha who is not afraid’ whilst the other name, ‘Phra Poot Dai’ means the ‘speaking Buddha’. It is this second name that gives an indication of the role this Buddha image and temple played in ancient Sukhothai at a time when different rulers fought for control of various parts of Siam (Thailand).  There is a ‘secret staircase’ to the side of the Buddha which leads to a small opening where somebody could stand to make a speech without being seen by anybody else in attendance at the temple and with the acoustics it would give the impression it was the Buddha speaking.

 The Akha are an indigenous hill tribe who live in small villages at higher elevations in the mountains of Thailand, Burma, Laos, and Yunnan Province in China.They made their way from China into Southeast Asia during the early 1900s. Civil war in Burma and Laos resulted in an increased flow of Akha immigrants and there are now some 80,000 living in Thailand where they constitute one of the largest of the hill tribes.Many of their villages can be visited by tourists on trekking tour.

 Thailand, the only Southeast Asian nation never to have been colonized by European powers, is a constitutional monarchy whose current head of state is HM Bhumibol Adulyadej. A unified Thai kingdom has existed since the mid-14th century, and Thailand was known as Siam until 1939 when it officially became the Kingdom of Thailand. The population of Thailand comprises of roughly 65 million citizens, the majority of whom are ethnically Thai, though peoples of Chinese, Indian, Malay, Mon, Khmer, Burmese, and Lao origin are also represented to varying degrees. Approximately 7 million citizens live in the capital city, Bangkok, though this number varies seasonally and is otherwise difficult to accurately count. More than 92% of the population speaks Thai or one of it’s regional dialects. While the Thai language is the official language of Thailand, as a result of its cosmopolitan capital city and established tourism infrastructure, English is spoken and understood througho...