About

I research diligently, produce hand-drawn illustrations, and use storytelling to help make stories legible.

Why

Growing up, I learned the histories of other countries more easily than my own. Southeast Asia's stories are there, but they've always felt less legible than what gets written about places like Rome or Paris.

So I go looking for them: through archives, old maps, and firsthand research, then tell them again, to travelers passing through, and to the people who already live inside these histories without always knowing it.

The hope is simple. That people come away informed, and a little intrigued by their own existence. We are, after all, a continuation of these same stories.

Why physical books

• Holding something real in your hands, right where a story actually happened, makes the moment stick.
• It reaches readers directly, the way stories traveled long before algorithms and advertising existed.
• A booklet asks you to slow down. Simple drawings and short stories make a place easy to understand without feeling overwhelming.
• It becomes a keepsake, something carried home that's less a purchase than a small piece of the place itself.

Books are the starting point, not the limit. I'm curious what other mediums these stories could live in.

Projects

What I'm working on right now.

• A Zine for the Sleuthing Traveller Through the five old old old gates of Chiang Mai A hand-illustrated guide to Chiang Mai's five historic city gates, built on real archival research and told for travelers who want more than a plaque can offer. Coming soon

References

Hello, fellow traveller. I hope you enjoyed A Zine for the Sleuthing Traveller, or you're in the middle of it right now. Here are the references and links behind it.

Inspiration

• The overall idea was inspired by a YouTube video by ประวัติศาสตร์นอกตำรา, where historians and archaeologists broke down the timelines and history of the gates in detail. It gave me a foundational understanding of the walls across different periods and shaped how I structured each gate's story.

Maps

• McGilvary's Among the Siamese and the Laos
• The title page's market scene was inspired by page 275 of the same book
• The regional map of the Laotian state in the South Gate spread comes from page 327 of the same book
• Individual gate layouts came from ประวัติศาสตร์นอกตำรา

Mangrai's story

• Ideas drawn from this Blockdit post
• This chronology on bytelife.altervista.org was especially helpful throughout, recommended if you want to read more about Chiang Mai's history

Chang Puek, North Gate

• The statues, their auspicious meaning, and the myth mainly came from this Matichon article
• Procession details from a Pantip thread and a Silpa-mag article

Tha Phae, East Gate

• The caravan and Chin Haw merchants were built from pages 204 to 216 of Carl Bock's Temples and Elephants
• Gate functions and visuals from bytelife.altervista.org

Chiang Mai, South Gate

• Whether people usually traveled by elephant, from this piece
• Travel speed estimates also came from Temples and Elephants, in the details between its Chiang Mai chapters
• Early reading on the Wua Lai neighborhood started with this Pantip thread
• This Matichon piece went deeper into the silversmiths and their effect on Lanna culture
• This Blockdit post on the Mon community's history inspired the later speech comic

Suan Prung, South East Gate

• The funeral procession was the hardest to research. McGilvary's Among the Siamese and the Laos, from the death of Kawilorot onward (p.131), was the strongest source available
• The sketch and coloring are credited to the rough sketch in Chindapol, Sumavalee and Arkarapotiwong, Piyadech (2024), "Chiang Mai's royal crematorium: Siamese influence evident in Lanna cremation heritage," NAKHARA Vol. 23, No. 1, DOI: 10.54028/NJ202423406
• Basic understanding of Northern Thai funeral culture from this Fine Arts Department page
• Lua clothing reconstructed from details on this CMRU page
• Whether the hatsaling prop was actually present at Kawilorot's death was debated in this Matichon piece
• Phi Phong came out of reading this ACCL article
• A big thank you to REAL on YouTube for a genuinely comprehensive video on Thai spirits. It's what made the whole concept click for me, and showed just how deep spirits run through the culture

Suan Dok, East Gate

• Foraging around Suan Dok, from this ACCL page
• Suan Dok before Mangrai's founding, from Wikicommunity and Silpa-mag
• Phayom flowers in Suan Dok, from this Siamganesh page

Feedback

Something not sitting right, or something you loved? Tell me about it.