Travel

Pick your coast before you pick your dates

Thailand’s two coasts have opposite weather, which is the most useful fact in this whole section. The Andaman side — Phuket, Krabi, Ko Lanta, Ko Phi Phi, the Similans — is reliably dry and calm from November to April and properly wet from May to October, when some island boats stop and the Similan Islands national park closes entirely. The Gulf side — Ko Samui, Ko Pha Ngan, Ko Tao — runs a different monsoon: its worst months are October to December, and it is often perfectly good in June, July and August when the Andaman is under water.

That is your escape hatch. A July trip is not a bad Thailand trip, it is a Gulf trip. A February trip should be on the Andaman. And the mainland has its own rhythm: cool and dry in the north from November to February, brutally hot everywhere in April, and hazy with agricultural burning across the north in March. Our month-by-month, coast-by-coast guide is the long answer.

How long you actually need

Count bases, not destinations. Every move costs you the better part of a day once you include checkout, transfer, airport or pier time and finding dinner in a new town. As a rule: one week is two bases — Bangkok plus one island, or Chiang Mai plus one. Ten days is comfortably two, ambitiously three. Two weeks is three bases and the first length at which you can do Bangkok, the north and an island without it feeling like a transfer schedule; that is exactly what our two-week itinerary is built around. Three weeks or more and you can add a second island group or a slow provincial run.

If you only want beaches, skip the north and go deep on one coast — seven days island-hopping the Andaman beats a fortnight of half-days. If it is your first trip, resist the urge to add Cambodia or Vietnam onto the end of two weeks.

Getting around: what to fly, what to take a train for

Domestic flying is cheap and takes the pain out of the long north-south hops: AirAsia, Nok Air, Thai Lion and Thai VietJet routinely sell Bangkok–Chiang Mai or Bangkok–Phuket for under 1,500 baht booked a few weeks out, and Bangkok Airways holds the Samui monopoly, which is why that route costs what it costs. Remember that Bangkok has two airports and they are 50 kilometres apart: check whether you are landing at Suvarnabhumi (BKK) or Don Mueang (DMK) before you book a connection.

Overland is better than its reputation. The State Railway’s overnight sleeper to Chiang Mai is a genuinely pleasant way to spend a night and lands you in the middle of town rather than out by an airport — we ranked all four ways to make that trip honestly. For the south, the Bangkok–Surat Thani train plus a ferry is the classic Samui approach, and Bangkok to Phuket compares flying against the long way down. In Bangkok itself, the BTS and MRT beat every taxi in rush hour, and the Chao Phraya boats are the cheapest good view in the city.

Check train, bus and ferry times on 12Go — it aggregates the operators that do not publish English timetables, and it is what we use to sanity-check a route before committing to it.

Where to stay: neighbourhood beats star rating

In Thailand the area decides your trip far more than the property does. A four-star hotel on the wrong side of Bangkok costs you two hours a day in traffic; a guesthouse two minutes from a BTS station does not. Same logic on the islands, where “Phuket” covers everything from Patong’s neon to beaches with three restaurants on them. We have written the honest version for each of the places people actually book: Bangkok area by area, Phuket, Ko Samui and Ko Pha Ngan.

Practical notes: rates on both coasts can double in the high season and over Songkran and New Year, so book those months early and shoulder months late. Check whether an island property is walkable to anything before you fall for the photographs. And read the recent reviews rather than the score — a 8.9 from 2019 tells you nothing about a hotel that changed hands in 2024. Agoda has the deepest Thai domestic inventory, including small provincial places that never appear on the Western booking sites.

The seventy provinces nobody writes about

Thailand has 77 provinces and the tourism industry monetises about seven of them. We have written a guide to every single one, which is the part of this site we are most stubborn about, because the gap between the famous Thailand and the ordinary one is where the trip gets good.

If you want somewhere with no tour buses: Nan is the best-kept province in the country, all murals and mountain roads. Phrae has teak mansions and indigo workshops. Betong, at the literal end of Thailand, wakes up under a sea of fog. Mae Sot is a border town with a Burmese soul and the best market breakfast in the west. Nakhon Phanom owns the prettiest stretch of the Mekong. Chaiyaphum has Siam tulips and a rock field that looks like Stonehenge. None of them need a tour, and all of them are reachable on a bus and a 500-baht room.

Entry rules, money, connectivity and staying safe

Entry. Citizens of a long list of countries currently enter visa-free for up to 60 days, and a reduction to 30 days for many nationalities has been announced but is not in force until it is gazetted — so check before you fly rather than trusting a year-old blog post. Everyone arriving by air now needs the Thailand Digital Arrival Card, a free online form that takes five minutes and causes disproportionate panic. Longer stays have their own routes: the exemption explained, the Destination Thailand Visa (DTV) for remote workers, and extending at immigration once you are here. Our visa tool gives you the answer for your specific passport.

Money. Thailand is still a cash country at street level and increasingly a QR-payment one everywhere else. Foreign cards are charged a fixed ATM fee of around 220 baht per withdrawal on top of whatever your own bank takes, so withdraw large amounts rarely, always decline the machine’s currency conversion, and change cash at a licensed exchange rather than at the airport or your hotel.

Connectivity. A tourist SIM with generous data starts around 300 baht at any airport arrivals hall or 7-Eleven; an eSIM does the same job before you land and skips the queue. Our SIM and eSIM guide compares AIS, True and NT on coverage rather than on marketing, and if you want it sorted before departure, Yesim is the eSIM we use ourselves.

Safety. Thailand is a low-violence destination where the real risks are mundane: the road, the sea and your own drink. Motorbikes injure more visitors than everything else combined, and hiring one without a licence that covers it voids most travel insurance — which matters, because a private hospital here is excellent and expensive. Is Thailand safe in 2026 is our straight answer, scams included.

What a Thailand trip costs

Rough daily figures, excluding international flights and per person sharing a room. Backpacking: 1,200–1,800 baht a day — hostel or fan room, street food, buses and trains, a beer at a shop. Mid-range: 2,500–4,500 baht — a decent 3-star or good guesthouse, a mix of local and sit-down restaurants, the occasional domestic flight, a couple of paid activities. Comfortable: 6,000 baht and up, at which point the ceiling is whatever Bangkok and Phuket can charge, which is a great deal.

The costs that surprise people are not the daily ones: island transfers, national park entry fees for foreigners (typically 200–500 baht per person per park), diving courses, and the price gap between low and high season on the same room. Activities are worth pre-booking in high season for the popular ones only — GetYourGuide is where we compare day trips, and the rest can wait until you are there and know the weather.