The storytellers who took the prize home. Real Isan voices, real Isan lives, told in English to a real audience.
"The Day My Mother Sold Her Wedding Gold to Send Me to School"
A 34-year-old rice farmer from a small village outside Ubon Ratchathani who had never spoken on a stage before. Five minutes. The audience was silent at the end. Then they stood up. The judges didn't have to confer. He took ฿100,000 home that night and used it to buy his mother a new piece of gold.
▶ Watch Pak's winning story (5:12)Each city's regional winner who came to Surin for the final.
A noodle-shop daughter who told the story of finding her grandfather's buffalo in a flood. The audience laughed and cried in the same minute.
Buriram Regional Winner
A father of three who told the story of how his own father saved their farm during the 1997 floods. Wept on stage. Audience wept with him.
Khon Kaen Regional Winner
Told the story of why her grandmother taught her Khmer before Thai. Won Best Youth and Surin Regional in the same night.
Best Youth Prize 2025 · Surin Regional Winner
A retired motorbike taxi driver who told the story of riding 350km to Bangkok to bring his son home from a hospital.
Korat Regional Winner
A nurse who told the story of her mother's som tam recipe and what it meant to leave home. Funny and heartbreaking.
Udon Thani Regional Winner
A young Buddhist monk who told the story of the elderly monk who first taught him English from old American magazines.
Roi Et Regional Winner
A widowed mother who told the story of her daughter's first day at school after her husband died. Audience gave a standing ovation.
Sakon Nakhon Regional Winner
The story he told in Ubon that took him to Surin where he won the Grand Championship. The story of his mother and her wedding gold.
Ubon Regional Winner · 2025 Grand Champion
The first year was four cities only — Surin, Khon Kaen, Udon Thani, and Korat — with a ฿50,000 grand prize. The 2024 Grand Champion was Sutthida Pansiri, a 19-year-old university student from Khon Kaen, who told the story of her grandfather's struggle with Alzheimer's. She used the money to start a memory-care reading program for elderly villagers in her hometown.
"You don't win with perfect English. You win with truth told in English." — Sutthida Pansiri, 2024 Grand Champion
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