LATest e-bulletin September '26

Sep 8

19 min read

SPECIAL EDITION LAT THAILAND OFFICES OFFICIAL OPENING SEPTEMBER 2026

Look at the endless innovative touring products developed by LAT. From slow tourism to tours away from crowds, from an agile system of modular scheduled departures in different languages to arts, architecture, outdoor, experiential, culinary food and education packages, just to name a few!

All our offers are strictly carbon contribution @ LAT Climate Contribution, all emissions being calculated and offset by projects in cooperation with Climate Partners.

In this issue: ❶ Quote of the month ❷ Thailand, Seen Again ❸ A Place Built to Be Remembered ❹ A Lonely Path to Outdoor Aerobics ❺ Memories of a Restless Bonobo ❻ LATest News ❼ The Dugong and the Jellyfish ❽Loy Krathong ❾ Wat Phra Mahathat World Heritage Site ❿ Bangkok Art Biennale ⓫ Tomorrowland Lands ⓬ Thailand, a Stargazing Destinations ⓭ Thailand Railways Beyond Bangkok

A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots

Marcus Garvey

Thailand, Seen Again

Thailand is hardly a new destination, fertile ground for new frontiers and discoveries. Or perhaps it is. At least, that is what we began asking ourselves some time ago. In fact, for decades, Thailand has occupied a privileged place on the map of international tourism and in travellers’ imaginations. Bangkok, Phuket, Chiang Mai, Koh Samui, and the country's celebrated beaches, temples and cuisine are familiar even to those who have never travelled there. Millions arrive every year, supported by a mature tourism industry that has developed around them. Hundreds of thousands of impressionable young, and not so young, travellers have been captivated by its many sirens’ songs, some becoming trapped by the appearance of an easy, pleasurable, almost paradise like existence. Beneath that seductive surface, however, lies a country far more complex, contradictory and difficult to decipher than the Thailand that tourism has spent decades presenting to the world.

So why enter Thailand now? For LAT, whose operations in the country officially begin in the first week of September, the answer lies precisely in that apparent familiarity. Sometimes the destinations we believe we know best are those we have stopped looking at carefully. Thailand is profoundly cultural, extraordinarily layered and, in many ways, still misunderstood. Behind the familiar images lies a country shaped by a distinctive history, by its religion, superstitions, Hindu influences and animist traditions, by regional identities, migration, monarchy, trade, food and craftsmanship. It is the only country in Southeast Asia never formally colonised by a European power, even though largely influenced by them, a distinction that has marked its sense of identity and continuity.

But continuity should not be mistaken for simplicity. Modern Thailand has also been shaped by repeated military coups, periods of curtailed political liberty and a complex balance between monarchy, military power, economic interests and a rapidly changing society. Alongside its economic development and one of Asia’s most sophisticated tourism industries exist less comfortable realities such as deep inequalities, prostitution, human trafficking and illicit economies that form part of a more complicated social landscape than the familiar image of the “Land of Smiles” suggests.

For the knowledgeable and observant eye, however, the contradictions are apparent everywhere. In the ancient temples standing in the shadow of ultramodern towers, the intense consumerism coexisting with buddhist ideas of detachment and in the remarkable social gentleness living beside a turbulent political history. Tradition and modernity overlap, negotiate and sometimes collide.

Perhaps this is precisely what makes Thailand so compelling: its apparent accessibility disguises just how difficult it is to truly understand. In fact, tourism has inevitably simplified some of this complexity. Successful destinations gradually acquire established circuits, familiar excursions and predictable narratives. Travellers are shown what generations of travellers before them have been shown, often very efficiently and professionally. There is nothing inherently wrong with this in fact the classics became classics for a reason. The Grand Palace does not cease to be extraordinary because millions have visited it, nor does an ancient temple lose its meaning because it appears in every guidebook. I come from Rome and, I promise you, the hordes of tourists invading it every year do not make it a lesser place. The real question is whether Rome makes them better, more curious or more culturally aware people. A destination is not merely a collection of attractions. It is, first and foremost, its people and the culture they have shaped over time, and only then the attractions that have emerged from it.

This is where we believe there is still room to pioneer and where we have decided to try our hand at it. Entering a mature destination does not necessarily mean reproducing what already exists and competing to sell it more cheaply or package it differently. It can mean returning to the destination itself, studying it again and asking what has been overlooked. It means travelling beyond established itineraries, understanding communities and landscapes, rediscovering historical connections and developing routes that do not exist simply because nobody has yet taken the time to create them. This is the approach LAT intends to bring to Thailand.

Our objective is not novelty for novelty’s sake, replacing one superficial experience with another but by real innovation, meaningful because supported by knowledge. New tours should reveal something tangible, like a historical relationship, a regional identity, a connection with a neighbour, a culinary tradition, an unexpected landscape or a way of life that allows the traveller to understand the country a little differently. A job that requires something increasingly precious in tourism, human intellect and knowledge at work.

We live at a moment when technology can produce an itinerary in seconds. Artificial intelligence can describe a destination, recommend restaurants, assemble attractions and generate persuasive paragraphs about places it has never seen. Used intelligently, these technologies are extraordinary tools, and LAT makes extensive use of technology to improve systems, access information and serve markets more efficiently, while ensuring that a tool remains a tool to be used wisely, especially a powerful one.

The growing mass of AI generated material now circulating online has also created an extraordinary amount of repetition, approximation and misinformation. It is called slop for a reason. Those feeding on it should take a deep breath and start thinking, because a destination cannot be understood that way. When the same information is endlessly reproduced, rewritten and repackaged, apparent knowledge can very quickly become detached from actual experience. No artificial system can replace walking a route, inspecting a hotel, sitting in a vehicle long enough to understand whether an itinerary actually works, speaking with a guide, meeting a supplier, tasting what will be served, observing how a community lives or discovering that something described perfectly online is rather different on the ground.

Our expansion into Thailand is therefore more than the addition of another country to our portfolio. It is an opportunity to apply that distinct philosophy of LAT to one of Asia's most established destinations, making this challenge an exciting one. For once, we are at work with something that looks familiar, eviscerating it and making it surprising again by combining technology with direct knowledge. The ultimate goal is to create rather than replicate and to offer our good clients not simply more Thailand on the surface, but a deeper Thailand.

We have rested long enough on the idea that perhaps pioneering today no longer means being the first to arrive but also, at times, being willing to look again.

You are most welcome to look at Thailand through LAT gaze.

Fabio Delisi/ CEO, LAT Group

A Place Built to Be Remembered

Ban Rak Thai is reached after more than an hour of winding mountain roads. As the road climbs higher, the temperature drops, which can come as quite a surprise in a region better known for the humid heat of the lowlands. There are no covered areas along the way, and for those arriving by motorbike in the rain, the first encounter with the village is often an ordinary roadside shelter, just beyond the first cluster of houses. It is the same shelter where two eighteen-year-old boys stop on their way home every weekend, after spending the week studying in Mae Hong Son. For them, the idea of home carries a meaning passed down through generations, one they inherited long before they were old enough to fully understand it.

At first glance, Ban Rak Thai looks like a Chinese village that somehow ended up among the mountains of Thailand: Chinese characters on the signs, Yunnan style architecture, teahouses overlooking the lake. And in a sense, that is exactly what it is, but not by chance. After the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the remnants of the 93rd Division of the Kuomintang and their families crossed the mountains southwards, eventually reaching the borderlands between Myanmar and Thailand, convinced that sooner or later they would return home. That return never came, and so they began to build a new home instead, bringing with them whatever they could: their language, their cuisine, their way of cultivating the land, and the memory of a province that their children and grandchildren would know only through stories. It is not so much a piece of China transplanted into Thailand as something new, born from the coexistence of two worlds that here do not simply stand side by side, but blend into everyday life—in restaurant dishes, in the tea grown on the hillsides, and in the way people speak.

At Ban Rak Thai, the border itself is often crossed for reasons that have nothing to do with geopolitics. On Google Maps, the only laundry in the area appears to be on the other side of the border, in Myanmar: a family who, for just a few baht, will wash, dry and iron your clothes within a couple of hours. Crossing an international border not for a visa or a journey, but simply to do the laundry, may be the simplest way to understand what it means to live in a borderland. To someone looking at a map, a border is a clear-cut line; to those who live beside it, it is part of everyday life, something crossed for work, out of necessity, for trade, because people's lives have never followed the lines drawn by states with quite so much discipline. In the morning, over coffee, there are still stories of mountain trails and old mule tracks leading into Myanmar without passing through official checkpoints—probably the same routes that were used for years for forms of trade that were difficult to trace. It does not matter how much of those stories can be verified; what matters is that these mountains had a life of their own long before a border decided where one country ended and another began.

The village is perhaps at its most beautiful in the evening, when the lights from the Chinese restaurants overlooking the lake shimmer on the water. Sitting there over a meal of pork-filled pastries, it is easy to feel that this is an authentic place, even though Ban Rak Thai is, in many ways, a reconstruction of a home that exists somewhere else.

By morning, the lake is often covered in mist. Within an hour, however, the mist can disappear completely, giving way to a deep blue sky, as if the rain of the night before had never happened. And this is perhaps what makes Ban Rak Thai so unique: it is a village built by people who never truly had a place to return to, yet who, over time, created a home of their own in the mountains of Thailand—far from the place they once called home.

A Lonely Path to Outdoor Aerobics

What began as a modest public health initiative has evolved into one of Bangkok's most vibrant social movements. Every weekday, hundreds—and in some locations more than a thousand—people gather in parks across the city for free outdoor aerobics sessions that combine exercise, music and a strong sense of community.

The recent surge in popularity was sparked by an unexpected source: Taeyong, a member of the K-pop group NCT, who joined a session in Bangkok and later shared the experience on social media. His post introduced a younger generation to a long-standing local tradition, transforming it into a citywide wellness trend.

Yet the phenomenon extends beyond fitness. Research suggests that the classes address a growing need for social connection in an increasingly urban and digital society. A 2025 survey found that more than 80% of people in Thailand experience feelings of loneliness, particularly among young adults and those living alone. For many participants, the classes provide not only physical activity but also an opportunity to build friendships and reconnect with their communities.

The movement has attracted support from both the public and private sectors. Bangkok's city government continues to organize the sessions, while companies including CP Group, Samsung Electronics and Line Man have contributed equipment and sponsorship, recognizing the value of initiatives that promote healthier and more connected communities.

As Thailand continues to urbanize and demographic patterns shift, outdoor aerobics reflects a broader trend across Asia: wellness is increasingly understood as a combination of physical health, mental wellbeing and meaningful social interaction. Bangkok's parks have become more than places to exercise—they have become gathering spaces where people strengthen both their bodies and their sense of belonging.

THE OBSERVATORY - Notes and Observations from LAT Key Personnel

Memories of a Restless Bonobo

By Giulio Siracusano / Sales & Marketing Manager

“Are you afraid of not being loved?”

“No. I’m afraid I won’t be able to love.”

I answered instinctively, after a few moments, without stopping to think. From the gut. Days later, thinking about it, I realised it wasn’t true at all. Because I do love. I have loved, and I continue to love deeply. I love my family, and every now and then I still find myself struck by how lucky I have been to grow up in such a close-knit family, where love was never something that had to be demonstrated, but something that simply existed, as natural as the air. I love my friends. I have loved women. And when it comes to romantic love, I have always had a theory, perhaps naive, perhaps simply my own: there is almost always one person who does the chasing and another who lets themselves be chased. The one who chases suffers, often deeply. The one being chased lives more peacefully, but sometimes with a strange sense of emptiness, as if they were missing that overwhelming force that only love can generate. And it is in those rare moments when that distance disappears that something extraordinary is born.

I don’t know if that is really how it works. What I do know is that there is another form of love that is rarely considered enough to be called love at all. The love of places. Because yes, I believe you can fall deeply in love with places too. And in some cases, I think it is harder to stop loving a place than a person, because for a place to truly disappoint us, it has to change radically, until it loses the very identity that once made it ours. But, when you think about it, we never really love a place for what it is. We love what we lived there. The people we lived it with. And the versions of ourselves that existed only in that particular place.

I, for one, fell hopelessly in love with Bangkok. And every time I go back, the same thing happens. The exact moment I step out of the airport, I feel something moving inside me, somewhere between my stomach and my chest. It is a difficult sensation to explain, almost visceral, as if the city could reach some precise place inside me and remind me of something undefined that, without even realising it, I had forgotten. I am sure we have all experienced that feeling at least once in our lives. I like to describe it as when your heart smiles. It isn’t pure joy or excitement. It is a mixture of both, blended with the feeling of being grateful to be exactly there, at exactly that moment.

That is what Bangkok does to me. Because Bangkok witnessed the most intense period of my life: the work, the friendships, my first real responsibilities, experiences I had never had before, a culture that is powerful and omnipresent, the Thai way of life, that wonderful sabai sabai that somehow seems capable of slowing down and stretching time.

I have always been convinced that I have a poor memory. Probably because, for many years, I lived a little like a restless bonobo, jumping from one thing to another, often skimming across the surface of events and relationships without giving myself the time to really observe them, to analyse them, to ask questions and look for answers that perhaps never existed in the first place. I think this is something many of us share. The difference is simply when we become aware of it.

And yet I remember everything about Bangkok. I remember every desire, every emotion, every discovery. Sometimes, out of nowhere, images from that time come back to me, for no apparent reason. Actual frames, sharp and in full colour, as if someone had cut a sequence from a film that exists only inside my head. And that is probably the point. We really do remember only what we have loved. And perhaps loving means allowing something to leave a mark deep enough to survive time. There are places we do not want to return to a second time. We are afraid that the present might ruin the memory. That the place we used to go might have closed. That the street might have changed. That the magic might have belonged only to us.

With Bangkok, though, I have none of that fear. Quite the opposite. Every time I return, the feeling is exactly the same, with the same magnetism, the same inexplicable pull. It belongs to that very rare category of places that seem to belong more to the heart than to geography.

I love watching Wat Arun illuminated at night from the other side of the river.

I love eating kor moo yang and rice, sitting on red plastic stools by the side of the road.

I love getting lost in the streets of the Old Town and stumbling upon a hidden temple tucked away behind some random alley.

I love crossing the city on the public boats that run along the canals, watching the slow life unfolding along their banks.

And I love the frenzy of Chinatown just as much: the noise, the lights, the smells, the perfectly organised chaos. I love the skyline from a rooftop bar. The nightlife. Live music. The city’s incredible jazz scene. Art.

I could spend hours simply watching the Chao Phraya flow past me.

But the point is not Bangkok. The point is that perhaps I am still able to love all of this because, during that period of my life, I also deeply loved the way I was living, the people I had around me, and the person I was becoming. That is why today I believe my answer to that question was wrong. I am not afraid that I won’t be able to love. On the contrary, I believe that one of the greatest privileges we have is the ability to love something deeply enough to remember it forever.

Because it is impossible to love your life every single day. But it is important to love as much as you can during the time you are given. Because if you love, you are left with the memory. And if you have the memory, then perhaps you can say that you have lived a life worth living.

“Mientras uno esté vivo, uno debe amar lo más que pueda.”

— Bad Bunny.

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TATTLER

The Dugong and the Jellyfish

A man sits by the sea in Phuket, watching a small screen on which a tiny silhouette moves beneath the water’s surface: a dugong, a huge herbivore that inhabits the warm coastal waters stretching from East Africa to Australia, including the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. Dugongs are related to manatees, which they resemble in both appearance and behaviour, although the dugong’s tail is forked, much like that of a whale. Both are also distant relatives of the elephant, although this gigantic land animal is completely different in both appearance and behaviour.

The dugong the man is watching is part of a group that has moved from Trang to Phuket in search of something that has become increasingly difficult to find in its original habitat: seagrass meadows. Its habitat changed, so it changed its destination. It crossed the sea because it had to adapt. There is something almost absurdly simple about it: the dugong does not expect the sea to adapt to the dugong.

Perhaps we could learn something from that. The dugong crosses the sea to adapt to a new environment. The tourist crosses the world expecting the environment to adapt to him.

Of course, this is not about refusing comfort, eating local food at every meal or pretending that a two-week holiday requires the resilience of an expedition. The problem lies somewhere else. It is in our ability - or inability - to understand the place we have travelled so far to reach.

A traveller can arrive in Kuala Lumpur knowing exactly where to eat. The restaurant has thousands of reviews, an almost perfect rating and perhaps a queue that has become part of the experience itself. They know what to order, what the dish should look like and, quite possibly, what it should look like in a photograph. But do they know why it tastes the way it does?

Why these ingredients? Why these combinations? How much of what is on the plate comes from the extraordinary mix of Malay, Chinese, Indian, Peranakan and other influences that have shaped Malaysia over generations? How much of a country's history can be found in something as simple as a plate of food?

The meal can be excellent. The photograph can be perfect. And yet the traveller may leave knowing very little about what they have just eaten.

The same can happen with a temple. A traveller may know exactly when to visit Wat Arun, where to stand for the best light and how to avoid the crowds. They may know its name, have saved its location on their phone and seen hundreds of photographs of it before setting foot in Bangkok. But why was it built there?

Who built it? What did it represent? How did religion, politics and history shape it? And what does it mean to the people who live around it today? They have seen the temple. But have they understood anything about it?

Knowing what to see is not the same as understanding what you are seeing. And context is not only found in history books. It is in the way people speak to each other, in what they consider polite or rude, in the way families eat together, in the relationship between generations, in how time is perceived, and in the things people value, fear or simply take for granted.

These things are harder to photograph. They do not necessarily appear on a “Top 10 Things to Do” list. They cannot be booked in advance and they rarely come with a five-star rating.

Perhaps this is why the modern traveller sometimes resembles a jellyfish more than a dugong. A jellyfish moves great distances, but largely by allowing the currents to carry it. And we have our own currents: habits, expectations, algorithms, familiar tastes, familiar ideas of comfort, and preconceived notions of what a place should be. We can cross oceans while remaining remarkably close to where we started. We can spend two weeks in another country and never seriously question the way its people see the world. We can take photographs of the sulphur miners at Ijen in Java without wondering what their lives look like beyond the frame, what brings them back to the crater every day, or what it means to make a living in such extreme conditions.

We may capture the image without ever trying to understand the reality behind it. A market becomes a backdrop, a temple an architectural curiosity, a local custom something exotic to observe. Even after spending days surrounded by another culture, it is possible to experience the world almost entirely through the lens of our own.

And yet, this is where travel has something else to offer. Its real value may begin when we encounter something we do not immediately understand, taste something we are not sure we will like, or discover that what seems strange to us makes perfect sense within another culture. The most rewarding moments are those that remind us that our own way of doing things is not the default setting of the world.

Adapting to a new environment may simply mean allowing the place we have travelled to shape the way we think, even if only a little. Letting its history, its habits, its contradictions and its way of seeing the world challenge some of our own assumptions. Not necessarily changing who we are, but returning home with a slightly different understanding of the world we thought we knew.

The dugongs of Phuket moved because their environment changed. They followed what they needed and adapted to where they found it.

We travel for different reasons. But perhaps we should occasionally do something similar. Because there is a difference between crossing the world and actually leaving our own little world behind. And perhaps, after all, the question is not how far we have travelled. It is how much of the place we travelled through has travelled back with us.

HIGHLIGHTS

Loy Krathong Season Approaches

Thailand's Festival of Lights returns this November, with Sukhothai's UNESCO-listed Historical Park hosting the Loy Krathong and Candle Festival from 15 to 24 November, widely considered the most historically evocative version of the celebration, staged among centuries-old temple ruins with a large scale light-and-sound show.

Wat Phra Mahathat Named Thailand's Ninth World Heritage Site

Recently, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee inscribed Wat Phra Mahathat Woramahawihan (in Nakhon Si Thammarat Province) as a World Cultural Heritage Site, Thailand's ninth World Heritage property and the first cultural inscription anywhere in the country's southern region. Active since the eighth century as a major regional Buddhist centre, the temple has long drawn pilgrims to wrap cloth around its towering 78 meters stupa. TAT has launched a year-round campaign, "The Twelve Sacred Discoveries," inviting visitors to explore the site's living Buddhist heritage, opening a cultural destination beyond southern Thailand's traditional beach-focused image.

Bangkok Art Biennale Returns This October

The fifth edition of the Bangkok Art Biennale, "Angels and Mara," runs from 29 October 2026 to 28 February 2027, transforming temples, museums and public spaces across the city (including Wat Arun, Wat Pho and the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre) into venues for contemporary art. The lineup now includes over 40 international and Thai artists exploring themes of light, darkness and transformation across Bangkok's most recognisable spaces.

Tomorrowland Lands in Thailand This December

Tomorrowland Thailand will take place at Wisdom Valley in Chonburi from 11 to 13 December 2026, in partnership with the Thai government and the Tourism Authority of Thailand. All 150,000 tickets for the debut edition sold out in under an hour when general sales opened, before the lineup had even been announced. The site, roughly two hours from Bangkok, was selected over several other locations across the continent, extending the festival's presence beyond its existing events in Europe and South America.

Thailand Points at New Stargazing Destinations

Long known for its beaches and temples, Thailand is quietly building a new kind of destination: the night sky itself. NARIT, the country's astronomical institute, is working with the Tourism Authority of Thailand to develop stargazing sites across seven provinces (Chiang Mai, Nan, Khon Kaen, Loei, Surat Thani, Ratchaburi and Songkhla) chosen for their distance from city light pollution. Rather than adding another stop to an existing route, the initiative points toward a slower, more rural Thailand, one experienced after dark, away from the country's best-known circuits.

Thailand's Railways Open Up Beyond Bangkok

Thailand is quietly rebuilding its relationship with the train. A new daily service, Bangkok Connex, now links the capital's central terminal to Ayutthaya for the price of a coffee, turning the former capital into an easy day away rather than a separate stop on the itinerary. Further down the line, plans are taking shape for a proper sleeper experience toward Kanchanaburi, Hua Hin and the southern border, the kind of journey where the getting there is as much the point as the arriving. For a country long organised around its airports, it is a small but telling shift: Bangkok as the gateway into the rest of Thailand, not the last stop before it.

Our whole product for free and independent travellers, groups and MICE is based on a Climate Contribution programme. This means that part of the greenhouse gas emissions that will be generated are offset by projects in collaboration with Climate Partner, one of the leading climate protection solution providers for companies.

The arising emissions are being compensated by supporting a third-party certified forest conservation project in Indonesia. This initiative plays a vital role in protecting the habitat of critically endangered orangutans, while also preserving biodiversity and maintaining important carbon sinks. By preventing deforestation and promoting sustainable land use, the project helps reduce CO₂ emissions and supports the long-term resilience of Indonesia’s ecosystems.

For over thirty years, Lotus Asia Tours Group has provided services and assistance to travellers the world over, specialising in the design and implementation of corporate events, activities, incentive tours and motivational travel, targeted at FIT, GIT and MICE markets, in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. The group also operates five boutique island hotels in Indonesia, in Lombok, Bali, Sulawesi, Papua and Maluku, as well as a seven-cabin luxury sailing yacht.

We look forward to hearing how we could help make your next trip, tour or event memorable and successful.

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