Homepage > Press Room for Nattawud Daoruang > Interviews in the Press > Interview 6

Bangkok Post, 5th July 2000.

Karnjana Karnjanatawe

At the age of 14, Nattawud Daoruang manages at least four web sites, one of which receives frequent hits from teenagers around the world.

Thailandlife.com http://www.thailandlife.com has been reviewed and reported on by the media both here and abroad and Nattawud has full confidence that he would continue to develop the site to provide more information about his personal experiences and also to provide more stories and pictures from every province in Thailand.

Currently he also runs Nattawud.com, a Japanese Manga web site and a movie web site for Bangkok.com. He also has the responsibility for taking pictures for both Paknam.com and ThaiScouting.com.

"I will have two more dot com names soon," he added cheerfully.

Inspired by his English teacher Richard Barrow http://www.RichardBar row.com, Nattawud or "Gor" got his first hands-on experience with the Internet when he was in his last year in elementary school (Prathom Six) at Sriwittayapaknam School http://www.sriwittayapaknam.ac.th in Samut Prakan.

Mr Barrow does web site development at the school and he teaches his Prathom Six class Internet and web site development skills.

"Hundreds of students have web sites here, but I work on mine more often," Gor said. "My teacher and I are very close. Four years ago, he developed his web site project called ThaiScouting.com and asked me to be his assistant," Gor said, adding that initially he found this work to be difficult.

But within a couple of months, he had learned to love it and eventually he developed his own web site.

Thailandlife.com is a year old now and it has received more than 100,000 hits, mostly from students and teachers overseas.

Gor first experienced computer games when he was 11 years old, but although he likes computers and technology he said he prefers sports such as soccer, bowling and basketball as well as English.

But he spends three to fours hours a day after school and on weekends developing web sites.

Gor now studies in Mattayom three or Grade 9 while the Thailandlife.com web site talks about his daily life.

He created it since he believed that there was no web site like it in Thailand that could give information about teenagers. "On my home page, you will find lots of information about me which is about life in Thailand. That's why it is called 'Thailand Life.com'," he says in a welcome message. "The content is about my life since it is quite easy to talk about and it is close to me. I want youths in other countries to know that our lives are not that different to theirs," he said.

"I used to receive letters asking if we still rode elephants or if there was television in Thailand. My web site can help people the same age as me to understand more and to learn more about us, our country and our culture," he said.

"I think you might be surprised that some things are the same!" he writes on his web site.

Gor also has an ambitious goal to make money out of the web site business in the future. Mweb currently sponsors his site and the company also has a technical team to help educate children about the Internet.

Gor himself also helps by teaching web site development and Internet skills to junior students at his school.

To learn more about Nattawud, visit his site at ThailandLife.com or http://www.Nattawud.com or email him to webmaster@thailandlife.com or ICQ at 43117055