What’s your travel passion? Are you a foodie? Do you want to shop till you drop at markets and shopping centres? Are you looking for adventure or a wellness retreat? Fine-tune your trip with the question: What type of Thailand traveller are you?
Food lover
Rock the wok. With around 14,000 restaurants, Bangkok challenges even the most fanatic foodies. It’s a bottomless tom yam goong of taste trips.
Chinatown: create your own progressive feast by sampling the offerings along Yaowarat Road and its side sois. For example, a starter of kuay jap pork soup at Nai Ek. And then follow your nose, literally, to busy Hua Sen Hong. Or many others. Taper off with desert, a cocktail and jazz at Shanghai Mansion
Hotel dining: To dine with an angel’s-eye view, head to Vertigo restaurant on level 61 of the Banyan Tree hotel banyantree.com/, or Red Sky atop the Centara Grand at Centara Hotel. For a more intimate dining experience, try Nimitr at 137 Pillars Suites and Residences. At the riverside Four Seasons Bangkok, the Michelin-starred Yu Ting Yuan is renowned for Cantonese specials like steamed red grouper and organic crispy chicken.
Learn Thai cooking: There are some 50 schools in Bangkok, with well-equipped stations and a wok-star instructor. Even the changing school names are taste teasers: Pink Chili, Tingly, Travelling Spoon and Courageous Kitchen. Prices range from $60 upwards for a four-hour lesson, with the more sophisticated establishments including a market tour or canal journey.
Romantic
When you’ve dined and shopped to a standstill in Bangkok, pack-up your partner and head down the Gulf coast to Hua Hin. The sea is calm, as is the town. From Cha-am in the north down to Pranburi there’s a royal flush of brand-name resorts including Cape Kantary, Anantara and Amari, boutique retreats like Aleenta and Lets Sea, plus hundreds of other options.
Time in Hua Hin is about relaxation and that Thai specialty, spas. There are dozens, ranging from in-house resort facilities to day salons to upmarket retreats like the celebrated Chiva-Som. So, a romantic, two-hour couples’ massage or just a soothing rubdown?
Come sunset, eating and shopping converge at Hua Hin’s long-established Night Market, a mid-town melee on Soi 72, or the more spacious Cicada Market. Clothing stalls spring up at dusk, as do the roaring woks. Once you’re sated, you can trawl the market for a swag of don’t-need/must-have clothes and gifts. The dining options in Hua Hin are huge but the rickety old seafront piers like Ketsarin are special, offering good seafood, the sounds of the sea and an open sky above.
Seeker
Chiang Mai, Thailand’s upcountry capital of cool and culture has some 300 temples (“wats”) but keep in mind the local saying, “Until you’ve been to Wat Doi Suthep you haven’t been to Chiang Mai.” The town’s most famous temple, the mountaintop complex of Doi Suthep is in fact 15km out of town.
Climb its 306 steps for spiritual merit, or take the elevator for convenience. Either way, you reach its summit of golden Buddhas, monks and pilgrims. Meanwhile, mid-city, the largest temple is the giant Wat Chedi Luang with a 600-year old central stupa and grand Reclining Buddha.
Chiang Mai, known as the “Rose of the North” has long attracted Thai creatives and artists. Its Nimmanhaemin area, aka “Nimman”, has numerous boutiques specialising in ceramics, jewellery and ethnic textiles, along with smart new cafes like Ristr8o Lab clearly understands what good coffee-making is about.
The renowned night bazaar, now reborn as Lannatique offers familiar wares that can be found in many Thai markets. For more original offerings try the Sunday Walking Street Market in the Old City or the White Market in front of One Nimman shopping centre.
Adventurer
Khao Lak, an hour’s drive north of Phuket is a 20-km ribbon of shops, languid resorts and long Andaman Sea beaches. At mid-point Bang Niang Beach see plenty of nightlife with its bars, markets, dive shops and restaurants. Elsewhere check out the seafront restaurants for a feast of local seafood, and watch a slow-burn sunset while you plan tomorrow’s explorations.
Khao Lak is tagged as the Gateway to the Andaman Sea. A daytrip out to the Koh Similan archipelago, a Thai national marine park, is something special. Its nine islands have dramatic swim-throughs, luminous corals and crystal visibility. A one-hour speedboat trip brings you to the islands, which are open from mid-October to mid-May. A dive shop, tour desk or dive travel agency can arrange your snorkelling or scuba trip, but avoid busy Thai public holidays.
Head inland to the 740 sq km rainforest of Khao Sok National Park, a wilderness where karst limestone peaks surrounding Cheow Lan Lake. Eagles on snack patrol cruise in the updrafts. The lake (actually a giant reservoir) has several raft-house resorts like Elephant Hills Rainforest Retreat moored along the shoreline. This becomes your base for wildlife-spotting treks and magical kayaking excursions.
And there’s more…
Medical Traveller. And dental.Bangkok has numerous hospitals that specialise in treating overseas clients. Phuket, too, but this journey is about medical priority, not tourism. Sand and surgery, recuperation and cocktails mix disastrously. Very careful prior research of institutions, practitioners, recovery time and costs is mandatory.
Wellness Wanderer. Upmarket, residential facilities like Bangkok’s RakXA and Hua Hin’s Chiva Som are professional, and expensive, retreats for concentrated, non-surgical health and wellness work. Think, cleansing fasts, hydrotherapy, physio and more.
Wine Lover. Another Thailand surprise, well-established vineyards and “new latitude” wines. North of Bangkok, Khao Yai has good wineries like GrandMonte and PB Valley Khaoyai, plus plenty of accommodation and dining options. Inland of Hua Hin, the Monsoon Valley Vineyard matches fine food with its shiraz, columbard and other varietals.
Golfer. The secular religion of golf attracts devotees from across the world to play in Thailand. Home to nine quality courses, the Hua Hin-Cha-am region might be called the Golf Coast. Across the water, Chonburi and Pattaya have even more courses. The facilities and greens are generally excellent and playing fees reasonable. Golfthailand
