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Last week I visited the beautiful country Thailand, from Koh Pi Pi (island in the south) via Bangkok to Chang Mai and Pai (up north in the jungle) back to Bangkok: a huge city that spans as far as the eye can see from the 84th floor of the highest building.

Thai are overall very friendly and enthusiastic people, which provides a nice break from European so-called ‘hospitality’ (be careful for the elephants though!).

Next to a great experience of a first time in Asia, I’ve had to post something on what’ve experienced about domains in this non-english country. Although only a limited group of Thai are able to read, write and talk in English all website references go to english / ASCII characters .com (or .th)-domains. Not only companies servicing foreigners in tourism and transportation but also (local) governmental sites refer to .com-domains on billboards while the description is fully in the Thai language.
For me this emphasizes that although the number of domain top-level names will be increased significant soon and IDNs are targeted at a big portion of the web from Asia, a “ascii-domain.com” is strong and widely used even on the other side of the world.

PS: I wish I had taken some pictures as examples, but l had to pretend I had no work on my mind to my girlfriend.
PS2: Get a blue-ray player and buy the “Planet Earth” documentary from the BBC. 550 minutes of jaw-dropping entertainment.