{"id":900,"date":"2011-09-26T12:56:42","date_gmt":"2011-09-26T12:56:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/?p=900"},"modified":"2014-08-27T14:28:39","modified_gmt":"2014-08-27T14:28:39","slug":"geography-of-thailand-part2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/geography-of-thailand-part2\/","title":{"rendered":"Geography of Thailand Part2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>North East, or Isaan \u0e20\u0e32\u0e04\u0e2d\u0e35\u0e2a\u0e32\u0e23 paak3 ee1saan5<\/p>\n<p>The north east of Thailand, which is the most populous in the country, is generally referred to as <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Isaan\">Isaan<\/a>. The people of Isaan share a 50\/50 heritage with Thailand and Laos, and the language, food, and culture are representative of that. The land here is the most arid, dry and hot. That\u2019s why the region specializes in mainly farming. Cough.<\/p>\n<p>Economically, the region lags behind the rest of the country. Partly it\u2019s because the environment is not conducive to farming, but also because of many socio-economic reasons I\u2019d rather not go in to. The latter is why the majority of the Red Shirts come from this region. The quality of education in this region is very poor, and unfortunately it negatively affects life for Issaners.<\/p>\n<p>As many of the inhabitants are poor farmers, it results in plenty of thin tan women &#8211; popular among foreigners tired of the lazy fat pale women back home (I guess I\u2019m tired of them too, haha). If a foreigner asks a Thai what\u2019s there in Isaan to see, the Thai will answer with a grin, \u2018women\u2019. But Thai\u2019s of other regions generally look down on Isaaners as dumb water buffalo, and they think tan skin is ugly. They don\u2019t understand why foreigners have interest in them. It\u2019s like wealthy Chinese men coming to America and snatching up all the ugly poor white women, and taking them back to China for marriage. I honestly wouldn\u2019t mind, but I wouldn\u2019t understand it either . . .<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, Isaan is famous for its yummy sticky rice and grilled meats (which IMHO goes great together). It\u2019s entirely okay to eat with your hands here, as they\u2019ll be pleasantly surprised that you \u2018eat like a real Thai\u2019. The <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Khon_Kaen\">kaen<\/a> (\u0e41\u0e04\u0e19, kaen1) instrument and the music style <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mor_lam\">mor lum<\/a> (\u0e2b\u0e21\u0e2d\u0e25\u0e33 ,maw5 lum2) comes from this region. Most of your taxi drivers also come from Isaan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The north east of Thailand, which is the most populous in the country, is generally referred to as Isaan. The people of Isaan share a 50\/50 heritage with Thailand and Laos, and the language, food, and culture are representative of that. The land here is the most arid, dry and hot.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[10208,3],"tags":[5,10179],"class_list":["post-900","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-beginner","category-culture","tag-geography","tag-thailand"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=900"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1976,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900\/revisions\/1976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/thai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}