Almost exactly a year ago, I found myself sitting alone on a hotel terrace, overlooking the sparkling lights of the mighty Chao Phraya River in Bangkok, waiting out the first night of my two-week Covid quarantine. My husband and I had sold our flat in London and packed up everything we still wanted to own. He was organising the last details of our dogs’ flights to Thailand, then would be flying out a few days behind me. We were ready for adventure: a move into an 80-year-old wooden Thai house to run a cookery school up a faraway mountain a stone’s throw from the Mekong.
What could possibly go wrong? After all, Thailand had coped with the beginning of the pandemic brilliantly. Curfew, lockdown, quarantine for new arrivals: all came in at the outset. And by the end of summer last year the country was broadly open, if only to its own residents.
I was born and brought up in Thailand. I am Thai. And I had been wanting to come home for a while. As much as I love London, my life before I married had always been peripatetic — I had careers in the fashion and film industries in LA and New York, going on countless scouting trips and working on location — and I wanted a change. The cookery school seemed like the perfect opportunity to reconnect fully with the land of my birth.
In fact, in January 2020, just as Covid was beginning to burn its way out into the world, I was in Chiang Rai putting the pieces in place. Lockdown stopped all that. And watching Thailand handle the pandemic’s first phase so well from an almost entirely silent London — apart from the clapping and weekly street concerts from the lovely musicians next door — was gloomy. By the time we were all allowed out of the house, I was itching to go.
The first few months were bliss. We may not have had the foreign visitors we had hoped for. We had wanted to show food writers northern Thailand’s staggering ethnic cuisines, to set up chefs’ tours, and to teach curious tourists how to cook steamed fish curry, tomatoey Akha-style relish and my signature sticky laab kua chicken wings. But we had Thai guests.
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The government’s “We Travel Together” scheme subsidised 40 per cent of travellers’ room rates, which kept some of the hotels on their feet. Domestic tourism, at least where we were, was booming. So we pivoted to teach our guests farang (non-Thai) food — you would not believe how popular bread and butter pudding is.
Plus Phu Chaisai, the resort where we had the cookery school, was opening a new coffee shop, so there was a menu to design. And, deep in the iridescent mountains of the Golden Triangle, I found myself teaching the local staff how to make tiramisu and sticky toffee pudding, and Thai-style sausage rolls.
By Christmas, we were confident that things would get back to normal by September. Then Delta hit. No one here anticipated just how virulent it would be. There was nothing to stop it. Suddenly, there was no cookery school. There were no guests. No work. We didn’t know where to go next.
We bounced to Bangkok, living in an apartment on the street where I grew up. But I did not leave London for another city, as much as I love Bangkok. I was looking for something wilder. And as much as I love Thailand’s beaches — which are all waiting for you, by the way, and looking even lovelier since you’ve been away — I had set out to live in the mountains and, dammit, that’s what I was going to do.
Which is how I’ve ended up in Chiang Dao, the so-called City of Stars, just over an hour north of Chiang Mai. It is not a city, which is why you can see the stars. The mountains in Chiang Dao are amazing and Unesco has just declared the main peak a biosphere reserve.
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When I came out here, if you’d told me I’d be living with a pair of tokay geckos in the outside kitchen, I’d have run screaming. Now I’ve named them Terry and Ptolemy and I bid them good morning every day. I know the difference between a spider hunter and a bee catcher (both birds), and watch the egrets glide in silently to feed by the pond as I sip my morning tea. I live in the midst of a mad community of artists, ceramicists, soothsayers and adventurers, at the foot of Doi Luang, one of Thailand’s highest mountains, nudging the rice paddies. I watched them being planted when I got here, and watch them being harvested now.
In a strange way, it has reminded me why I fell in love with Thailand and Thai food in the first place and why I want to share that again. Not just with the cookery school or another cookbook, but with a brand of Thai products that will make it easier for everyday cooks to make this food brilliantly at home. Watch this space.
I have found myself within the Thailand my father told me about, the one he saw when he first came out here in 1961, before I was born. The one that I was seeking. The one that teaches me every day how to be more laid-back, to go with the flow, to be like water.
You should see it for yourself. And now Thailand is open, it’s waiting for you.
Kay Plunkett-Hogge is the author of nine books including Baan: Recipes and Stories from My Thai Home (kayplunketthogge.com)
Visiting Thailand: what you need to know
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Thailand reopened to fully vaccinated tourists on November 1, with no long-term quarantine requirement and no internal travel restrictions for arrivals from the UK and 62 other nations and territories.
Entering Thailand is complicated, though, requiring an immigration form; a vaccination certificate; a negative PCR test result; a certificate of insurance showing at least $50,000 (£36,650) in cover; at least a one-night stay in a designated quarantine hotel; a PCR test on arrival; an antigen test on day six or seven; and the downloading of a health app. Here’s how you arrange it all.
First, check your insurance policy offers cover of at least $50,000 and scan or download the certificate. Then book your quarantine hotel. This must have either the Safety and Health Administration (SHA Plus) or the Alternative State Quarantine (ASQ) certification. A full list is available at shathailand.com, from where you are directed to the Agoda booking platform, showing packages priced from £95 in November for doubles including airport transfers and PCR tests.
Now apply for the Thailand Pass at tp.consular.go.th. To complete this immigration form you’ll need to upload pictures of your passport, your proof of vaccination and your insurance certificate, and enter the booking reference for your hotel. If all is approved you will receive a QR code allowing you to pass through immigration when you arrive in Thailand.
From here you take your booked transfer to the hotel, take your booked test and await the outcome while downloading the MorChana app. If it’s negative you’ll receive an antigen test kit for self-administration on day six or seven, the results of which you upload on the MorChana app. Note that users have reported this as a power-hungry application that can quickly deplete your battery.
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Now you are free to travel wherever you like in Thailand.
Chris Haslam
