Romantic Thailand in 11 days: three places, three hotel changes
Honeymoons get ruined by ambition. Eleven days is enough for three places if you choose three good ones and stay long enough to unpack, and it is not enough for five.
- Duration
- 11 days
- Pace
- Relaxed
- Hotel changes
- 3
- Best months
- Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb, Mar
- From
- $3,190 per person
So this route has three hotels: a river suite in Bangkok, a valley outside Chiang Mai where the nearest other building is a rice field, and five nights on Koh Yao Noi, which sits in the middle of Phang Nga Bay with the limestone towers on every horizon and almost nothing to do.
We run it on the Andaman coast from November to March. Between roughly May and September we move the island to the Gulf, where Koh Samui’s quiet north coast has the opposite season, and the rest of the route is unchanged.
Who it suits: honeymooners and couples celebrating something. Also anyone travelling as two who has had enough of itineraries with a start time.
Day by day
Day 1: Arrive in Bangkok. Private transfer, and a room on a high floor above the Chao Phraya with the river as the view. Nothing scheduled. Dinner sent to the room if the flight was long, which it was.
Day 2: Bangkok, early and then not at all. Out at eight with a private guide for the Grand Palace and Wat Pho before the heat and the coaches. Back by noon. The afternoon is a spa treatment and a swim. In the evening, a private longtail up the river at dusk with the temples lit, then dinner at a place we will have argued about internally before choosing.
Day 3: Bangkok to Chiang Mai. A late morning flight, an hour and fifteen. Then 45 minutes north of the city into the Mae Rim valley, where the hotel is a set of pavilions in working rice terraces. Afternoon free. Dinner outside.
Day 4: The north, slowly. A private morning in the old city, three temples chosen for being quiet rather than famous, and lunch at a northern kitchen that does khao soi properly. Back to the valley by mid-afternoon. A Lanna massage, which is gentler than the Bangkok version, and an evening with nothing in it.
Day 5: The elephant day, or the mountain. Two options and you choose in advance. Either a full day at the observation project we use outside Chiang Mai, watching a herd across open ground with no riding and no bathing, or a day up Doi Inthanon with a picnic and a walk on the ridge trail. Both are good. Most couples take the elephants.
Day 6: Chiang Mai to Koh Yao Noi. Fly to Phuket, around two hours, then a private speedboat across Phang Nga Bay, about 45 minutes, arriving at a beach rather than a pier. This is the transfer people remember, and it is the reason we use Koh Yao Noi rather than an island reached by a bus and a car ferry.
Day 7: Koh Yao Noi. Nothing scheduled. The island has one road, a handful of villages, water buffalo in the fields and a tide that goes out a long way. Bicycles are the correct transport.
Day 8: The bay, privately. Your own longtail with a captain for the whole day into Phang Nga Bay: the sea caves at Koh Hong, a lagoon you paddle into through a tunnel at low tide, and lunch anchored somewhere with nobody else in sight. We start at seven thirty, which is the entire trick. The same bay at eleven in the morning has forty boats in it.
Day 9: Free. A cooking session for two at a house on the island, kayaking through the mangroves, or the beach. Sunset from the western side, which is the only part of the day the island schedules for you.
Day 10: Free. Deliberately empty.
Day 11: Departure. Speedboat back across the bay to Phuket in the morning, then your flight. If your international connection is in the evening we hold the room until midday and build the timings backwards.
What is included
Suites or pool villas throughout with breakfast, the Bangkok and Phuket flights with a real baggage allowance, a private speedboat transfer in both directions across Phang Nga Bay, a private air-conditioned car with English-speaking driver on all mainland transfers, private guides on two half days, the private evening longtail in Bangkok, the full-day private longtail in Phang Nga Bay with lunch, the elephant project or the Doi Inthanon day, a room upgrade or a dinner arranged as a honeymoon gesture where the hotel offers one, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and our representatives in Thailand for the whole trip.
Honest notes
Koh Yao Noi is quiet, and that is the point. There is no nightlife, the choice of restaurants outside the hotels is small, and the beach on the east side largely disappears at low tide. If you want a beach you can swim off at any hour and a bar at the end of it, tell us now and we will use Koh Lanta or the Krabi coast instead. We would rather have that conversation than read it in a review.
Phuket. We use its airport and we do not use its beaches on this route. Patong is not what you are looking for, and the good Phuket hotels are excellent and expensive and face a sea with a lot of boat traffic. If you want Phuket specifically, we will build it, and we will tell you which side of the island to be on.
The heat. Anything scheduled is scheduled early. A honeymoon spent walking around temples at two in the afternoon in April is not a honeymoon.
Three hotels in eleven days is deliberate. We are frequently asked to add a fourth, usually a night in a jungle lodge or a second island. Our answer is that the fourth hotel costs you two half days of transfer, and on a trip this length that is a fifth of your holiday spent in transit.
Built by Paz Prosianoy, our Southeast Asia specialist, with hotels checked in person by our partner team.
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