What we would skip in Thailand, and what we book instead

Two categories below. Things we refuse to book at all, where we will not change our mind. And things that are simply not worth your days, where reasonable people disagree and we will build them if you ask.

Things we refuse to book

Elephant riding, shows, painting and bathing

The word sanctuary is not regulated in Thailand. It sits on the signage of places that ride elephants, that make them paint, that breed them for tourism and that genuinely retire them, and no visitor can tell them apart from a website.

We do not book riding, in any form, on any seat, including the bareback neck-riding some venues present as the ethical version. No shows, painting, football or trekking with elephants. No venues that chain animals between visits, separate calves for photographs, or breed for the tourist trade.

We also decline the hands-on bathing programmes, which is the one that surprises people, because a washing session is what most visitors picture when they imagine an ethical visit. A queue scrubbing an elephant in shallow water is stressful and repetitive for the animal and less safe for you than it looks.

What we book instead: a small number of observation-led projects where the herd is watched at a distance, where the food you carry is the only interaction, where the mahouts are employed properly and where daily numbers are capped. We name the exact project in your proposal so you can research it yourself, and if we are not satisfied about a venue in a given season we will say so and offer a different day.

Tiger attractions, all of them

No exceptions, in any province, under any description, including those that call themselves conservation projects and charge for a photograph with a sedated adult animal.

The ticketed Kayan villages in Mae Hong Son

Women wearing brass neck coils, many of them refugees from Myanmar with restricted legal status, are effectively displayed behind an entrance fee. We do not sell this under any description and we will explain why if you ask us to build it.

What we book instead: trekking in the north with small groups, a guide from the region who speaks the village language, routes that reach households paid directly for hosting you, and a night in a home rather than a purpose-built lodge. Less photogenic than the brochure version and much better.

Scooter rental

We do not arrange it, on any island, for anyone. Road injury is the largest cause of serious harm to visitors on the Thai islands, most riders have no licence valid for a motorbike, and hospital care in Phuket and Samui is excellent and expensive. If you rent one anyway, the same sentence will be in your travel documents.

Jet skis in Patong

Not an animal welfare question, a fraud question. The damage claim racket on Patong beach is long-running and well documented, and we would not rent one.

Things that are simply not worth your days

Damnoen Saduak floating market

Two hours from Bangkok each way, to a canal where boats sell souvenirs to visitors. It photographs beautifully and it is an entirely constructed experience. The genuine floating markets that served this function are largely gone, replaced by roads.

Instead: Amphawa, at a weekend in the late afternoon, which is a real local market with excellent grilled seafood. Or skip the category and spend the day on the Chao Phraya express boats.

Koh Phi Phi as a place to stay

Phi Phi Don is beautiful, extremely crowded and built up hard behind the sand, and the party economy runs late. Maya Bay reopened under real restrictions: you cannot swim in the bay, boats moor on the far side, numbers are capped and it closes for part of each year to let the reef recover. That is the right policy and it does not make the bay a good use of your afternoon.

Instead: if you want to see it, go at seven in the morning on a private boat from Krabi and be gone by ten. To stay, Koh Yao Noi is forty minutes away and quiet.

The Golden Triangle

It is a viewpoint over the confluence of two rivers, a boundary marker, souvenir stalls and a boat to a Laotian island market selling the same souvenirs. Four hours of driving from Chiang Mai for a photograph of three countries.

Instead: the Hall of Opium museum nearby is genuinely good, and Chiang Rai’s Wat Rong Khun, the white temple, is a contemporary artwork rather than an ancient one and worth the hour on its own terms.

The Bridge on the River Kwai as a day out

Kanchanaburi contains one of the most sober memorial sites in Asia, Hellfire Pass, where prisoners of war and Asian forced labourers cut a railway through rock by hand and died in enormous numbers. It also contains a bridge with a carnival attached: souvenir stalls, a tourist train and people photographing each other on the sleepers.

Instead: we route around the carnival. Hellfire Pass and its museum, the war cemeteries, and the railway where it runs on the wooden trestle above the river. It is a heavy day and it should be.

Full-day joined island-hopping tours

The four-island tour, the five-island tour, the James Bond island tour. A hundred people, six stops, a fixed schedule, and every boat arriving at the same beach at the same hour.

Instead: a private long-tail or speedboat, at $180 to $350 for the boat rather than per person. You set the order, you arrive before or after the flotilla, and you leave when you want to. It is the single upgrade that changes a day the most on the Thai coast.

Chiang Mai between late February and mid-April

Not a place, a date. This is the burning season, when agricultural and forest fires fill the northern valleys with smoke and Chiang Mai’s air quality is regularly among the worst of any city in the world. The mountain views that are the point of the region disappear, and anyone with respiratory sensitivity has a genuinely unpleasant time. It coincides exactly with the best beach weather in the south, which is why so many February and March itineraries pair a very good week on the Andaman coast with a disappointing few days in the north.

Instead: do the north in November, December or January, or from late May onwards. In a March trip we would replace it with Sukhothai, Kanchanaburi or more coast, and we do not put the north into a March itinerary without saying this in writing first.

Both coasts in one fortnight, outside February to April

Thailand’s two coastlines have opposite wet seasons, which we cover in Thailand’s two coasts have opposite seasons. Doing both in November means one of them is at its worst. Doing both in July means the same in reverse. In February, March and April, both work and it is a good trip. Otherwise you are adding a flight in order to spend days on a beach that is not functioning.

Bangkok dinner cruises

A loud boat with buffet food, on a river that costs under a dollar to travel by public express boat. Our three days in Bangkok has the version we would actually do.

Two nights anywhere you flew to

This is the structural one and it costs more days than any single attraction on this list. A domestic flight in Thailand consumes five to seven hours of daylight once you count the transfer, the check-in window, the bags and the road or ferry at the far end. Two nights at the end of that is one usable day.

Three nights minimum anywhere you have flown to, and six or seven at a beach. The itinerary that drops a region entirely beats the one that keeps it at two nights.

The honest general rule

Almost everything on this list has the same shape. It was genuinely good twenty or forty years ago, it has been industrialised since, and it survives on a photograph and a reputation rather than on what it currently delivers.

The good version usually still exists half an hour away, costs about the same and has nobody in it. Knowing where that is this year is why we run Thailand through a Thai partner company we have worked with for years rather than from a desk. Our own offices are in Japan, Vietnam, India and the Philippines, Thailand is not one of them, and we would rather name who is on the ground than imply an office we do not have.

Plan this trip

Send us the list of things you were planning to do in Thailand and we will tell you honestly which of them we would keep, which we would move, and what we would put in the gap. Free first proposal, no obligation.

Start planning →

Keep reading

• Thailand: the complete guide to planning your trip
• Thailand’s two coasts have opposite seasons
• Three days in Bangkok, by neighbourhood
• The best two-week route through Thailand
• Northern hills and Khao Sok, 14 days
• All our Thailand trips

Frequently asked questions