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Thailand Frontier

Best time to visit

Thailand in January

The best month in the country, and the only one where that is uncomplicated. Every place on this site is under its dry threshold at the same time, which happens in three months of the year and January is the first of them.

Measured, not repeated

Where it rains in January, and how much

Driest first. Chiang Mai takes 11mm this month and Koh Samui takes 83mm, which is 8 times as much. The strip on the right is that place's whole year, with January outlined, so you can see whether this is a good month for it or merely a bad one everywhere.

  1. Chiang Mai 11mm 2 rain days
  2. Bangkok 16mm 3 rain days
  3. Thailand's islands 40mm 7 rain days
  4. Phuket 52mm 9 rain days
  5. Krabi 61mm 10 rain days
  6. Koh Samui 83mm 11 rain days

ERA5 reanalysis, 1995 to 2024, averaged per calendar month at each place's own coordinates. A rain day is a day with a millimetre or more.

Chiang Mai takes 11mm across the whole month and two days of rain, which is the driest reading anywhere on this site in any month bar its own February. The Andaman coast is at 52mm, the islands at 40. Even the Gulf, which runs on a different calendar from everywhere else, has come out of the far side of its wet season at 83mm.

There is no weather argument against January. There is a crowd argument and a price argument, and they are the same argument: this is the month everyone else has also worked out. The first ten days carry the tail of the Christmas and New Year peak, and the middle of the month is the cheapest part of it.

If you want the north, this is when to take it. Chiang Mai in January is genuinely cool at dawn, which is the one thing the rest of the Thai year does not offer.

Where to go in January

The three driest places on this site this month, in order.

  1. Chiang Mai 11mm 2 rain days in January Dry season October to June
  2. Bangkok 16mm 3 rain days in January Dry season November to June
  3. Thailand's islands 40mm 7 rain days in January Dry season December to April

What is on in January

  • New Year's Day

    1 January

    A public holiday, and the last of the peak week.

  • Chinese New Year

    Late January or February · Bangkok's Yaowarat, Phuket Town date moves each year

    Not a Thai public holiday, but Yaowarat closes to traffic and Phuket Town's Sino-Portuguese quarter fills up.

How the Thai seasons work, and the year as a whole