Our People

The people who shape your journey

Every SALA journey is conceived by hand. Below, the people who will design yours — four specialists whose knowledge of Thailand goes far beyond any itinerary we could write on a page. They are the reason the itinerary exists at all.

Bangkok

Khun Nattaya "Nat" Srisawat

Founder & Lead Designer

Nat founded SALA after a decade spent guiding private clients through Thailand's most unguarded corners — not the temples in guidebooks, but the ones known only to the monks who sweep them at four in the morning. She holds the rare ability to read a landscape and a person with equal precision, calibrating each journey to exactly what the traveller is searching for, even when they cannot yet name it themselves.

Before SALA she worked as a cultural liaison for a private family office, arranging bespoke itineraries across Southeast Asia. She speaks French with Parisian ease, a remnant of three years spent studying art history in Lyon. Ask her which Bangkok neighbourhood she would live in forever and she will not hesitate: Phra Nakhon, before the tourists found it.

Languages English · Thai · French

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Chiang Mai · Northern Thailand

Khun Somchai "Sam" Lertkhamol

Northern Thailand Specialist

Sam was born to a family of Lanna teak craftsmen in Mae Hong Son Province, and can identify a temple's century by the geometry of its eaves alone. He spent his twenties mapping village trails that do not appear on any tourist map, building relationships with hill-tribe elders, master weavers, and a handful of monks who make their own natural dyes from forest plants. His knowledge of northern Thailand has the depth that only a childhood spent inside it can give.

He has designed journeys into the Golden Triangle, the Doi Inthanon highlands, and remote corners of Chiang Rai Province where guesthouses outnumber traffic lights by a wide margin. He speaks the Lanna dialect with a fluency that opens rooms — and temples — that remain closed to ordinary guides. In another life he would have been an architect.

Languages English · Thai · Lanna dialect

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Koh Samui · Southern Thailand

Khun Apinya "Pin" Wongthep

Islands & Coastal Specialist

Pin grew up on a fishing boat her grandfather captained out of Surat Thani, learning the Gulf of Thailand as a body rather than a map — its moods, its tides, the way the light sits differently on the water at six in the evening than at nine in the morning. This inherited intimacy with the southern seas became the foundation for her work designing coastal and island journeys that feel like quiet revelations rather than packaged itineraries.

Her Mandarin opened a second channel into Thailand's southern culture, and she has spent years cultivating relationships with Chinese-Thai heritage families whose homes and craft traditions are invisible to standard tourism. She designs journeys for guests who want to eat where no review has found the restaurant yet, and sleep where the sound that wakes them is the sea.

Languages English · Thai · Mandarin

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Bangkok

Khun Visit "Vit" Pongkitivat

Culinary & Cultural Concierge

Vit studied philosophy in Tokyo before returning to Bangkok to apprentice under a fourth-generation royal-cuisine cook in a shophouse on Samsen Road. The combination gave him a rare lens: he thinks about food the way a philosopher thinks about language — as a system of meaning, not merely sustenance. For SALA guests, this translates into culinary experiences that go far beyond restaurant tables: private tastings in home kitchens, market walks that become conversation, cooking sessions where the real subject is how a family understands itself through what it eats.

He also manages SALA's cultural concierge desk, arranging access to private collections, studio visits with contemporary Thai artists, and occasional evenings with academics who make history feel immediate. His Japanese brings in a quiet precision — guests who have travelled extensively through Japan often remark that Vit's journeys carry a similar quality of considered attention.

Languages English · Thai · Japanese

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Begin

Ready to design your journey together?

Tell us what calls to you — a coastline, a kitchen, a temple at first light — and one of our specialists will begin.

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reservations@salaprivatejourneys.com +66 99 101 9919 SALA Private Journeys Co., Ltd
89 AIA Capital Tower, 20th Floor
Ratchadaphisek Road, Din Daeng
Bangkok 10400, Thailand