A Thailand Honeymoon: The Coast Your Wedding Date Chooses

Most honeymoon advice starts by asking when you want to travel. A honeymoon is the one trip where that question has already been answered, usually by a wedding date chosen for reasons that had nothing to do with the weather eight thousand kilometres away.

So this starts from the other end. Thailand has two coasts about three months out of step, the month you already have decides which one, and the choice between them is larger than the choice of hotel.

The one month to move your dates for

October, if you can. It is the Andaman’s wettest month everywhere at once, Phuket at 315mm and Krabi at 338mm, and the Gulf has already turned. There is no dry coast in Thailand in October and no arrangement of islands that fixes it.

November is the other one worth knowing about, because it is the reverse of what people assume. Koh Samui records its wettest month of the year in November, at 313mm, which is almost exactly what Phuket takes in its own worst month. A couple who read that the Gulf is the drier coast, which is true from May to September, and applied it to a November honeymoon have it exactly backwards.

The Andaman, December to March

Krabi and Koh Lanta are the quiet end. Railay is reached only by boat, walled in by limestone, and has no road at all; it is either the most romantic place on this coast or too small by day four, and both reactions are common. Koh Lanta is longer, has a road, and keeps its southern bays genuinely empty.

The Krabi bays also have the calmest water in Thailand by a wide margin. Ao Nang, Railay and Phra Nang never average more than about 0.43 metres of wave height in any month of the year, because they sit inside Phang Nga bay with Phuket island between them and the open sea. Phuket’s own west coast reaches 1.34 metres in July.

Phuket’s northern beaches, Bang Tao and Mai Khao, are the compromise most couples actually make: the resort quality and the short airport transfer without Patong. Mai Khao is the island’s emptiest beach and is inside a national park.

Koh Phi Phi photographs better than it lives. Tonsai is loud and young, and the quiet parts of the island are a boat ride from everything.

The Gulf, May to September

In these months the Gulf is not the fallback. Koh Samui averages 90mm of rain in July and August against the Andaman’s 223mm and 248mm, and its wave heights sit around a third of a metre while Phuket’s west coast is above 1.1. It is the drier coast, the calmer sea and the better beach.

Koh Samui’s north coast, Bophut and Maenam, is where couples go rather than Chaweng. Fisherman’s Village at Bophut has the restaurants without the strip, and the water is shallow and flat.

Koh Phangan’s north, Thong Nai Pan in particular, is a long way from Haad Rin in every sense and is the quietest good option on this coast. Two bays, a handful of hotels, and a rough road in.

Koh Tao is the diving island. Wonderful if you both dive, and a slightly odd choice for a honeymoon if neither of you does.

Two places, ten to fourteen nights

The flight is eleven and a half hours nonstop from Heathrow and about fourteen with a stop from anywhere else in Britain, which makes a week hard to justify and a fortnight easy.

The shape that works is a short first stop and a long second one. Three or four nights in Bangkok gets you over the flight and gives the trip a change of gear before the beach, or three nights in Chiang Mai does the same thing with mountains instead of a city. Then a single beach for the rest of it.

The thing to avoid is a third move. Two coasts in one honeymoon is the itinerary that looks best on paper and costs the most in practice: Phuket to Koh Samui is 261 kilometres and can take ten hours by road and ferry, and they are dry together in only three months of the year, January to March.

What the money buys here

Thailand has the widest price range of any destination at this distance. The same stretch of sand carries a beach hut and a villa with a private pool and a butler, and the gap between them is smaller than it would be in the Maldives or the Caribbean. The flight is the fixed cost that dominates a Thai honeymoon budget; almost everything after it is elastic.

The two expensive fortnights are the ones to know about. From about 20 December to the first week of January, and the week around Songkran in mid-April, prices go to their annual maximum on both coasts.

Getting married here, as opposed to honeymooning

Resorts arrange symbolic beach ceremonies as a matter of routine, and they are straightforward. A legally recognised Thai marriage is a different exercise involving your embassy, an affirmation of freedom to marry, certified translation and a district office, and it wants planning months rather than weeks ahead. Many couples marry at home and hold the ceremony here, which removes the paperwork entirely.