Destinations
Best Places to Visit in Thailand
Thailand splits into four broad regions, and the difference between them is not scenery so much as what a day there is like. Here is how they compare, and the places we cover in each.
Area
Best for
Showing all 23 destinations
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Bangkok Dry November to April Thailand's capital mixes gilded temples and royal palaces with chaotic markets, riverside food stalls and a skyline of rooftop bars. Most trips to Thailand start or end here.. -
Chiang Mai Dry November to April Chiang Mai is the calm counterweight to Bangkok. The old walled city in the north is a grid of Lanna temples, coffee houses and night markets, ringed by forested mountains with the temple of Doi Suthep looking down from above. -
Phuket Dry December to March Phuket is Thailand's largest island and the easiest gateway to the Andaman coast. It pairs the busy west-coast beaches and nightlife around Patong with quieter sands north and south, an old town of Sino-Portuguese shophouses, and a harbour full of boats bound for Phi Phi and the islands beyond. -
Krabi Dry December to March Krabi is the Andaman coast at its most dramatic: limestone karsts rising straight from the sea, the car-free beaches of Railay reached only by longtail boat, and easy hops to Phi Phi, the Hong Islands and hot springs inland. Ao Nang is the main base for island-hopping, while climbers and quieter-beach seekers head for Railay and Tonsai, which is reached only by boat even though it sits on the mainland.. -
Koh Samui Dry January to April Koh Samui is the largest of the Gulf islands, a resort island of palm-backed beaches, a busy strip at Chaweng and calmer corners at Bophut and along the north coast. It sits within easy boat reach of Koh Pha Ngan, home of the Full Moon Party, and the diving base of Koh Tao. -
Khao Lak Dry December to March Khao Lak is thirty kilometres of Andaman coast an hour north of Phuket airport, with none of Phuket's volume and most of its weather. It is a string of low-rise beaches backed by national park rather than a town, and it is the mainland base for the Similan Islands, which is why the diving season decides its year.. -
Chiang Rai Dry November to April Chiang Rai is the far north: a smaller, slower town than Chiang Mai three hours south of it, with the country's most photographed modern temple on its edge and the Mekong and the Golden Triangle an hour beyond. Most people come for two nights and the White Temple, and the province is worth more than that.. -
Pai Dry November to April Pai is a small town in a mountain valley three hours northwest of Chiang Mai, at the end of a road with 762 bends in it. It has been a place people stop and fail to leave for thirty years, and what it offers is a week of doing very little in cool air, with hot springs, a canyon and a waterfall to fill the afternoons.. -
Ayutthaya Dry November to April Ayutthaya was the capital of Siam for four hundred years and one of the largest cities on earth before a Burmese army destroyed it in 1767. What is left is a UNESCO-listed island of brick prangs and headless Buddhas ninety minutes north of Bangkok, and it is the best day trip the capital has.. -
Sukhothai Dry November to April Sukhothai was the first Thai capital and the place the Thai alphabet and the classic walking Buddha come from. Its historical park is quieter, greener and better preserved than Ayutthaya's, and it is far enough from Bangkok that almost nobody comes for the day, which is most of its appeal.. -
Koh Phangan Dry December to April Koh Phangan is the middle island of the Gulf three, half an hour by boat from Koh Samui, and it is two places at once. Haad Rin in the south hosts the Full Moon Party; the north and east coasts are among the quietest bays in Thailand and have almost nothing to do with it.. -
Koh Tao Dry December to April Koh Tao is small, steep and almost entirely about what is underwater. It is one of the busiest places in the world to learn to dive, which makes it cheap to do here and busy with people doing exactly that. -
Trat Dry November to February The province and town at Thailand's far southeastern corner, against the Cambodian border, and the gateway to Koh Chang, Koh Mak and Koh Kood. Almost everyone who arrives is on the way to a boat, and which of the two piers that boat leaves from is the question this place exists to answer.. -
Koh Mak Dry November to March A flat coconut and rubber island between Koh Chang and Koh Kood, about thirty square kilometres, quiet enough to cycle across and owned for generations by a handful of families. It is the wettest place this site measures, and the one nobody searches for.. -
Koh Kood Dry November to March Thailand's fourth-largest island and one of its least developed: about two thousand people, a few villages, no nightlife and no town, at the far eastern end of the country near Cambodian water. It is the quietest place with good beaches on this site, and the wettest place on it.. -
Koh Chang Dry November to February Thailand's second-largest island, in Trat near the Cambodian border, and the one most people have not been to. Seventy per cent of it is national park: a mountain spine under rainforest with a road round the western edge and four beaches strung along it. -
Koh Samet Dry November to April Koh Samet is the island Bangkok goes to for the weekend: three hours by road and forty minutes by boat, inside a national park, with white sand on its eastern side and very little on the rest of it. It is busiest at weekends and empty midweek, which is the whole trick to it.. -
The Similan Islands Dry December to March The Similans are nine granite islands sixty kilometres off the Andaman coast and the best diving in Thailand. They are a national park with no hotels, they close for roughly half the year, and every visit starts from Khao Lak: this is a place you go to rather than stay in.. -
Pattaya Dry November to April Pattaya is a city of a hundred thousand people on the Gulf, two hours from Bangkok, with a reputation that belongs to one street of it and three beaches that are three different holidays. It is also the driest and among the calmest of every beach destination on this site, which is the part nobody mentions.. -
Koh Phi Phi Dry December to March Phi Phi is two islands: a party village on an isthmus between two bays, and an uninhabited limestone sister next door holding Maya Bay. The water is the best on this coast and the peace is the worst, and the difference between a good trip here and a bad one is almost entirely about where on the island you sleep.. -
Koh Lanta Dry December to March Lanta is long, flat and quiet: twenty-seven kilometres of island with a road down the spine, beaches all along the west side and mangrove down the east. It is the Andaman answer for people who want the coast without Phuket's volume or Phi Phi's noise, and the north and south ends are genuinely different holidays.. -
Koh Lipe Dry January to March Lipe is two kilometres of island at the bottom of Thailand, inside the Tarutao marine park and closer to Malaysia than to Krabi. Three beaches, a walking street between them, no cars and no deep-water pier: you wade ashore from a long-tail. -
Thailand Islands Dry December to March Thailand's islands split between two seas, and the difference shapes any beach trip. The Andaman coast in the west, reached through Phuket and Krabi, brings the towering limestone karsts of Phi Phi and Railay; the Gulf coast in the east is home to Koh Samui, Koh Pha Ngan and the diving island of Koh Tao.
Nothing matches those two filters.
Plan the trip around them
- Best time to visit Thailand
The two coasts do not share a season, which decides the route more than anything else.
- Visa and entry requirements
What applies to your passport, and the arrival card every visitor now files.
- What a Thailand trip costs
Daily budgets by style of travel, and where the money actually goes.
- Where to stay in Thailand
Choosing a base in each destination, area by area.