What I miss most in Thailand

I love to read. One book per week is minimum and I try not to run out of new books. When I managed to pick up a whole bunch, it makes my day. One of the things I miss most in Thailand are books or better bookstores where one can spend hours looking for new reading material. Sure, there are bookstores in many places and they also have some English books, but the selection is limited. I do not talk Bangkok or the tourist areas, where one might find second hand book stores where travellers exchange their reading material. It needs some patience but sometimes you find something really worth the effort.

Upcountry, the picture is completely different. The bookstores carry very few English books and the used books available are often the typical holiday read, not what I am looking forward to relax with. One can only digest a limited number of John Grisham, Dan Brown or simiar books. And any textbooks are impossible to find. Inside the expat community there is some book exchhange going on in the place I live, but most books are not exactly what I would have choosen had I another option.

So I rely a lot on Internet bookstores like Amazon - and fortunately import of books is taxfree and normally the parcels do not get lost on the way. Maybe simply because nobody here is interested much in English or German books.



One could say I shoud learn to read Thai better and stick to Thai books. Let me tell you, that would not really be an alternative. It took me some time before I really enjoyed reading English books, my native language is German. With Thai I am far from this stage of mastering the language.