Best time to visit
Thailand in March
Still dry on the coasts and getting hot everywhere. The north looks best on paper and is the one place to think twice about: March is the worst month of the burning season, and 13mm of rain does not help when the air is the problem.
Measured, not repeated
Where it rains in March, and how much
Driest first. Chiang Mai takes 13mm this month and Krabi takes 112mm, which is 9 times as much. The strip on the right is that place's whole year, with March outlined, so you can see whether this is a good month for it or merely a bad one everywhere.
- Chiang Mai 13mm 2 rain days
- Bangkok 42mm 7 rain days
- Thailand's islands 73mm 10 rain days
- Koh Samui 84mm 9 rain days
- Phuket 93mm 12 rain days
- Krabi 112mm 14 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's 13mm and two rain days are the second-driest reading of its year. They are also the month in which the haze from crop burning across the north and over the Myanmar border is usually at its heaviest. People book March for the north on the rainfall figure and arrive to find the mountains invisible.
The coasts are still in their season. Phuket is at 93mm and twelve rain days, the islands at 73mm, Koh Samui at 84mm. Krabi has begun to climb, at 112mm and fourteen rain days, which is the first sign of the Andaman turning.
Heat is the other change. Bangkok's afternoons are into the mid thirties and the country's hot season is properly under way, which is what April's water fight is a response to.
Worth knowing. Usually the worst month for northern air quality. If Chiang Mai is the point of the trip and the mountains are the point of Chiang Mai, this is the month to avoid.
Where to go in March
The three driest places on this site this month, in order.