My best friend and her family are vacationing in Thailand on Koh Khao Island in Thailand.

CNN: Tsunami tragedy: Your e-mails

Phi Phi Don is more like Khao San by the Sea than parkland.

CNN: POSTCARDS FROM THE BEACH

Shooting last week at a waterfall in Khao Yai National Park northeast of Bangkok brought a cascade of new charges.

CNN: POSTCARDS FROM THE BEACH

He was shot while guarding the main gate of a house in Khao Killay village in Mardan district as a worker administered the vaccine inside.

BBC: Pakistan 'policeman killed' guarding anti-polio worker

Rewe will start flying to Phuket and Sri Lanka in February too, but will not send people to Khao Lak until the end of October.

ECONOMIST: Back to the beach?

But the school staff has not told students about two of their classmates who are missing after waves pulverized the Khao Lak, Thailand, hotel where their family was staying.

CNN: Treating children's emotional wounds

There, I continued my affair with rice puddings, exploring variations like Spanish arroz con leche, Indian kheer and khao niao sang khaya a sticky rice and coconut custard that's popular in Thailand.

WSJ: Nostalgic for Nursery Pudding

Thus far, Travelreads has highlighted some fantastic travel stories, including Michael Lewis's celebrated Vanity Fair report about Iceland during the financial crisis and Susan Orlean's classic New Yorker article on the backpackers who haunt Bangkok's Khao San Road.

BBC: Fantastic and free travel stories

Bangkok jeweler Acharavadee Wongsakon, for instance, on June 30 led a procession of several hundred protesters through the city's famous Chatuchak weekend market and the Khao San Road backpacker district to persuade Thais and foreign tourists to show more respect.

WSJ: In Thailand Today, Teen Monks Express the Spirit to a Rock Beat

Sadly, most visitors to the city experience only a tiny section of the ferry route, shuttling between Saphan Taksin pier in the south and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha or Khao San Road in the north (there are piers close to both).

BBC: Take the boat out of Bangkok