Plan

An eSIM you install before you fly is the easiest way to stay connected in Thailand. Here is how to choose between eSIM and a physical SIM, and what to know about data.

Bangkok’s location makes it one of Southeast Asia’s best base cities for day trips: a 2,000-year-old temple city, a WWII history site, Thailand’s biggest national park, and a royal beach town are all within roughly two to three hours of the capital. You do not need to pack up your Bangkok hotel room to see…

Doi Inthanon is Thailand’s highest point, a 2,565-meter peak about 100 km southwest of Chiang Mai, and its national park packs waterfalls, hill-tribe villages, and the country’s best mountain views into a single long day trip. It is the natural counterpart to a temple-focused Chiang Mai day trip like Chiang Rai — swap gold-leafed shrines…

Hua Hin sits roughly 200 km south of Bangkok on the Gulf of Thailand, and it has been Thailand’s royal seaside retreat since the 1920s, when King Rama VII built a summer palace here and the newly completed railway made the coast reachable from the capital in a single afternoon. That royal pedigree still shapes…

Khao Yai is Thailand’s oldest national park and one of the easiest wild spaces to reach from Bangkok, about 200km northeast and roughly two and a half to three hours by car. It packs waterfalls, wild elephants, hornbills, and even a cluster of vineyards into one UNESCO World Heritage rainforest, which is why it works…

Chiang Rai’s three signature stops, the dazzling White Temple, the vivid Blue Temple, and the dark, sprawling Black House, can realistically be seen in one long day trip from Chiang Mai, about three hours’ drive each way. Together they show three completely different sides of contemporary Thai art and temple design: one gleaming white and…

Pai is a small mountain town in Mae Hong Son Province, roughly a three-to-four hour drive northwest of Chiang Mai along a famously winding road, and it has built its reputation on a laid-back, nature-first pace that feels completely different from Chiang Mai’s old-city bustle. Most travelers add Pai on as a two-to-four night extension…

Railay is a small limestone peninsula in Krabi Province that you can only reach by boat, and that one fact shapes almost everything about visiting: no road traffic, no 7-Elevens on every corner, and four distinct beaches wrapped in dramatic karst cliffs that have made Railay one of the world’s best-known rock climbing destinations. Most…

Koh Tao is the smallest and least developed of the three main Gulf of Thailand islands, and it has built its reputation almost entirely around one thing: it is one of the cheapest and most popular places in the world to learn to dive. Day-trippers come for the famous Koh Nang Yuan sandbar and a…

Koh Phangan has two reputations that barely seem to belong to the same island. To one crowd it is the home of the Full Moon Party, a monthly beach rave on Haad Rin that draws thousands of backpackers. To another it is a quiet, half-undeveloped coastline of bays reachable only by boat or dirt track,…