How many days do you need in Thailand?

So this article is organised around what each length actually buys, and where the cut-off sits.

The number that matters is not days, it is moves

Thailand is a long country. It runs roughly 1,020 miles (1,640 km) from the Myanmar border to the Malaysian one. Bangkok to Chiang Mai is about 430 miles (690 km). Bangkok to Phuket is about 525 miles (845 km). Those distances mean that a change of region is a flight, and a flight is most of a day once you count the transfer, the check-in window, the bags and the road or boat at the far end.

Our working ratio: above one hotel move every two and a half days, a Thailand trip starts to feel like work. We publish the move count on every itinerary for exactly this reason.

A useful way to think about it is that you have a budget of transfer days, not a budget of nights. Fourteen days holds three bases comfortably. It does not hold five.

Seven or eight days

What it buys: one region, done properly, plus Bangkok.

Bangkok and one beach, or Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Not all three. People try all three constantly and the result is two internal flights, four hotel nights that are really airport nights, and no day where nothing is scheduled.

If we had eight days we would take three nights in Bangkok and four or five somewhere on one coast, with a single internal flight in each direction. The alternative, three nights in Bangkok and four in Chiang Mai, is also excellent and quite different. Both are real holidays. The version with all three is not.

Where it falls down: jet lag. If you are flying from Europe or North America, the first day is largely gone. On an eight-day trip that is more than a tenth of the holiday, and it argues strongly for arriving into Bangkok and staying put rather than connecting straight onto a domestic flight.

Ten to twelve days

What it buys: Bangkok, one other region and one island group, without rushing.

This is the shortest length we are genuinely happy with, and for a lot of people it is the right one. Three nights in Bangkok, four in the north or in Kanchanaburi and Ayutthaya, five on a coast. Two internal flights. Three hotel changes over twelve days, which is comfortable.

Twelve days is also where a slower, two-base trip becomes possible: one city and one long beach stay, with day trips out. Romantic Thailand in 11 days is built on that principle, three hotels and no wasted days.

Where it falls down: trying to add Khao Sok. Khao Sok is worth two or three nights and it sits between the south and everything else. Squeezed into twelve days it costs you the beach stay, and the beach stay is usually the reason people came.

Fourteen days

What it buys: the classic trip, with slack in it.

Fourteen days is the sweet spot and it is not close. Three nights in Bangkok, four in the north with a night outside Chiang Mai, five or six on a coast, and two days where nothing at all is scheduled. Two internal flights. Three or four hotel changes.

The two unscheduled days are the point. Thailand rewards them more than most countries, because the best things that happen to people here are not on a list: a market they walked into, an afternoon in a hotel pool during a downpour, a second visit to a noodle shop they liked. A fourteen-day itinerary with every day programmed is a worse trip than a fourteen-day itinerary with eleven programmed.

Our classic fourteen-day route is this shape, and the best two-week route through Thailand argues the case for the specific order.

Eighteen to twenty-one days

What it buys: the parts of Thailand that most visitors never reach.

A third week is where the country opens. Khao Sok, with two or three nights on a floating raft house on Cheow Lan lake and no road access. Mae Hong Son and the western hills, where the north stops being convenient and starts being interesting. Isaan in the northeast, the least visited third of the country, with Khmer temples at Phanom Rung that predate Angkor Wat and the sharpest food in Thailand. Or the eastern Gulf islands, Koh Chang and Koh Kood, which are four hours from Bangkok by road and boat rather than by air.

The alternative use of a third week is a second country. Laos across the northern border with two days down the Mekong is our favourite pairing, and Cambodia adds Angkor in five days. Deep Thailand in 21 days shows what staying in one country buys instead.

Where it falls down: almost nowhere, except that three weeks with six bases is worse than three weeks with four. The temptation grows with the length.

The cut-offs, stated plainly

• Under six days. One base. Bangkok, or one beach. We will build it, and we will tell you that you are buying a long weekend with a long flight attached.
• Under eight days. Do not attempt Bangkok, the north and a beach.
• Under twelve days. Do not add Khao Sok.
• Under fourteen days. Do not attempt both coasts.
• Under eighteen days. Do not add a second country.

Each of those is a rule we break occasionally, always for a specific reason and always in writing.

The season shortens some trips and lengthens others

Length interacts with the calendar. Thailand’s two coasts have opposite wet seasons, which we cover in detail in Thailand’s two coasts have opposite seasons, and it matters here for one practical reason: in shoulder season on the Andaman coast we would rather give you two beach stops than one, so that a run of rough sea days does not define the whole week. That adds a move, which means it also wants an extra day or two.

Similarly, if you want the north at its best, November to February, and you also want the Gulf islands at their best, February to September, February is the only month that gives you both, and it is busy and priced accordingly.

What we would do with your dates

If you tell us you have ten days, we will not try to sell you fourteen. We will tell you which of the three classic components to drop, and we will have a view about which one.

For most first visits, the component we would drop first is the north, because Chiang Mai deserves four nights and does not work as two. For divers and for anyone travelling in the Andaman monsoon, we drop the beach instead and build the north and the interior properly. And for anyone travelling between late February and mid-April, we would drop the north regardless of the length, because that is the burning season and the mountains are behind smoke.

Plan this trip

Tell us how many days you actually have, and we will tell you honestly what fits inside them and what we would leave out. Free first proposal, no obligation.

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Keep reading

• Thailand: the complete guide to planning your trip
• The best two-week route through Thailand
• Thailand’s two coasts have opposite seasons
• Classic Thailand in 14 days
• Deep Thailand in 21 days
• All our Thailand trips

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