Chaiyaphum
Thailand's internal ecotone—Phetchabun mountains meet Khorat Plateau, Lao-speaking majority under Thai administration, 31.4% still forested against agricultural odds.
Chaiyaphum straddles Thailand's great geographic divide. The Phetchabun mountain range—rising to 1,222 meters—bisects the province, creating a western half of forested highlands and an eastern half of the Khorat Plateau. The name means "Land of Victory" in Sanskrit, but the victory here is geological: 31.4% of the province remains forested, a rarity in agricultural Thailand.
This is ethnic and linguistic borderland. Most residents are Lao, speaking Lao as their first language despite Thai administration. The cultural substrate precedes the modern state, just as the forest predates the farms. Rice, sugarcane, tapioca, and taro grow on the plateau side, fed by the Chulabhorn Dam. But the 2019 drought exposed the limits: the Royal Irrigation Department proposed three additional dams, acknowledging that one reservoir cannot stabilize a province caught between mountain runoff and plateau thirst.
Chaiyaphum represents Thailand's internal ecotone—the transitional zone between the Central Region's rice-intensive lowlands and Isan's drier plateau agriculture. Neither fully Bangkok's satellite nor fully Isan's heartland, it exists in productive ambiguity. Tourism is emerging as farmers discover that forests have value beyond lumber and that the mountain-plateau gradient attracts visitors seeking neither beach nor temple but terrain itself.