Dishing out the Thai Island Directory

A little more housekeeping on the drafting and publication process.

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Today, in preparing to publish a whopper of an email — 16 pages of single-spaced text — as previously planned for tomorrow, I noticed how the piecemeal publication of the Thai Island Directory would function best if released in chunks that are sizable but not exhausting, as would have been the case if I’d stuck to the old plan. In truth, that would have drowned you in masses of dense text all at once.

This slight adjustment means that all subscribers will get more weekly postings overall — yay!

The cart can only move so fast, and you can only consume so much fruit at once. (Ko Lipe back streets, 2017)

I’ll let you in on a secret. When I was traipsing from New York to Frankfurt to Singapore to Bangkok late last November, I didn’t really have a plan. I had a bag full of maps, lists and books about coastal Thailand to go with a few new ideas, such as adding “[Island] in a nutshell” posts to accompany the more in-depth feature articles and photo essays that this newsletter was built on back in the Thai Island Times days of early 2020 to late ‘21.

But also, looming in the back of my mind was a bigger idea that originated back in 2019. Throw out the wide lasso, I thought, and rope every Thai island into a single resource. Right before my birthday on December 10th, almost by instinct, I dusted off my old draft list of all the Thai islands and set out to transform it into what I’ve just begun to share with you in earnest: the Thai Island Directory.

This grand idea was still pretty vague in my mind when I released the first announcement about it on December 9th. Seven coastal zones, seven chapters, in seven emails, I thought. How naive I was!

As tends to happen when I sink my teeth into a writing project, the Thai Island Directory quickly expanded into something that I now see fits better into perhaps 50 emails than seven. (Don’t worry, I’m laughing at myself now too.)

So, to make this monster project more digestible for you, and to give myself a pace that allows me to actually breath in oxygen, I’ll be sending you roughly 1,200 to 3000-word chunks of the Directory, most of which focus on a cohesive area, be it a single archipelago or the entire mainland coastline of a province.

Others are introductory sections like the piece published yesterday, welcoming you to the Eastern Gulf. Many contain dozens, if not hundreds, of entries covering specific islands and coastal areas. A fistful of others will ultimately fit into the Directory’s first chapter, which will serve as an overview of sorts. In fact, some of those bits have already been published and are accessible for free under ‘Thai Island Directory’ over on the Thai Island Quest sitemap page.

The sections that are on my immediate publication radar are an ‘Overview of Trat province,’ which I’m publishing tomorrow, and two meatier sections set to ring in the new year next week — one covering Trat’s mainland coasts and the other encompassing the entirety of the Ko Chang Archipelago.

As you’ll see, each of these postings has a solid hunk of useful info presented in a way that enables me to add more of a visual element than previously advertised. After all, I have been photographing Thai islands and shorelines for 10+ years. Why not fill this broad portrait of them out with choice selections from all that imagery?

This all should slice down into around five to eight postings (i.e. emails) in total for each chapter. After the posting this Friday, I plan to release two to three postings per week, more or less, until the complete Thai Island Directory is live on Thai Island Quest. I say “more or less” because I’ll probably need to take a week or two off at some point during this long-haul publication.

Don’t worry though — paying subscribers will get considerably more than the four monthly postings that I guarantee with a paid subscription to Thai Island Quest.

Free subscribers will also get (again!) more than previously promised, including all seven postings comprising the Eastern Gulf chapter, and perhaps a sneak peak or two when the rest of the Directory goes paid after that. Introductory sections on environmental concerns and all of Thailand’s mainland coasts will also be available for free; expect one of those each in February and March.

A quest takes time, and writing a book of this stature does not happen on the boat ride from Lipe to Lanta. So, as an adjusted (read: realistic for the first time) completion goal, I’m now eyeing early to mid May. If it takes longer than that, I’ll deprive myself of coconuts until I’m done.

I hope you enjoy reading this one-of-a-kind project over the next several months. And if you’re missing my old feature-style articles, I ask that you please hold out until the complete Thai Island Directory has been shared.

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Subscribe for free or upgrade now to gain full access to the complete Thai Island Directory, and much more from Thai Island Quest: