Thailand

Thailand does two things unusually well at the same time: it is easy, and it is genuinely different. The transport works, the food is extraordinary from street stall to dining room, and yet an hour outside any city the country is entirely its own — limestone karsts rising straight out of green water in the south, forested hills and walled old towns in the north.

Bangkok is the hinge. It is a river city before it is anything else, and the fastest way to understand it is from the water. From there the country opens in two directions: south to the Andaman and the Gulf, north to Chiang Mai and the hills behind it.