When we arrived in Mukdahan on the Thai-Lao border, a travelling companion commented “Well Philip, today we have driven through nine Thai provinces and eight of them looked exactly the same”. He had a point as the same banks and retail stores cluster around the main road through each town and city. So I decided to embark on a journey which would take me to all 76 provinces and the two Special Administrative Areas, taking me off the main roads and discovering something unique about each province.