1 Month Thailand Itinerary: My Real 31-Day Route

I landed in Bangkok on a Saturday evening in July with nothing planned for the next few hours except finding my hotel and figuring out what my stomach wanted first. By the time I’d checked into the Tarawish and washed the flight off my hands, the heat had softened into something almost comfortable and the city outside was already fully awake, tuk-tuks cutting between food stalls, temple spires catching the last orange light before dark. That was the whole trip in miniature: land, drop the bag, go straight into it.

This is the real route, not a version assembled afterward from research. Every hotel below is one I stayed in. Every tour has the actual link I booked it through. Where I’m recommending something I didn’t personally do, I’ll say so plainly, the same as everywhere else on this site, but for this trip that’s rare. Almost all of this happened exactly as written.

If you’re short on time, the Thailand hub has shorter versions of this route. This page is the full one, day by day, for anyone actually taking the whole month.

Trip Overview

The Trip in a Nutshell

Trip Highlights at a Glance

Nights Per Stop

How the Month Flows

Day-by-Day at a Glance

Part 1: Bangkok & Ayutthaya

Bangkok for temples, food and the river. Ayutthaya for the one day of real history on the whole route.

Day 1

Land in Bangkok

Landing evening was the easy part, a taxi to the Tarawish, a shower, then straight back out again before jet lag could talk me out of it. A night tuk-tuk tour picked up a couple of hours later, and Bangkok at night from the back of an open three-wheeler is a different city than the one you land into on a map, gold temple gates lit against the dark, food stalls throwing enough smoke and noise into the street that you could smell dinner three stalls before you could see it, markets that don’t fully wake up until the sun’s already gone down.

Day 2

Full-day Bangkok city tour 🏠 Day trip

The city tour covered the ground I’d expected, the Grand Palace’s rooftops stacked in gold and green ceramic tile catching the sun at every angle, Wat Pho’s reclining Buddha too large to take in from any single spot in the room.

A short ferry across the river added Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn, its central spire encrusted with broken porcelain that catches the light in a way no photo quite gets right, close enough to climb partway up for a view back across the water at everywhere we’d just come from. What I hadn’t expected was how much the day would soften by evening. The Chao Phraya dinner cruise pulled away from the pier just as the sky turned that particular shade of orange-into-purple Bangkok does so well, and for two hours the whole chaotic, brilliant city slid past the window instead of surrounding you, bridges lit up overhead, temples glowing gold from across the water, the noise of the streets replaced by the sound of the river itself.

📍 Overnight in Bangkok: Tarawish Hotel

Day 3

Ayutthaya, full-day tour from Bangkok 🏠 Day trip

Ayutthaya is Bangkok’s opposite in almost every way. Where the capital stacks itself vertical and loud, Ayutthaya spreads low and quiet across the plain where it once stood as Siam’s capital for four centuries, brick temple spires broken and sun-bleached, a stone Buddha head grown into the roots of a banyan tree at Wat Mahathat in a way no photograph quite prepares you for. It’s an hour and a half outside Bangkok and it feels like a different country’s worth of centuries, not just a different town. Back in the city by evening for one more night before flying north.

📍 Overnight in Bangkok: Tarawish Hotel

Part 2: Chiang Rai & Chiang Mai

Mountains, temples and cooler air, a real change of register from anywhere else on this route.

Day 4

Fly Bangkok → Chiang Rai 🧳 Travel day · time to explore after

I flew from Bangkok to the north of Thailand, Thai Vietjet VZ132, 1:30pm to 2:55pm, and Chiang Rai felt like a decompression from Bangkok before I’d even left the airport, mountains instead of skyline, the air noticeably thinner and cooler the moment the plane doors opened. Resort transfer straight from the airport, nothing scheduled for the evening on purpose.

Day 5

Chiang Rai private custom tour 🏠 Day trip

Ten hours with a driver, and it covered ground I’d only ever seen in photos: the White Temple, all mirrored glass and bone-white plaster catching light like something underwater rather than built, then the Blue Temple’s deep cobalt interior doing the exact opposite, swallowing light instead of throwing it back. The Black House, Baan Dam, is the pairing most guides skip past, forty-some teak buildings built by the artist Thawan Duchanee across four decades, animal skulls and horns worked directly into the architecture, read locally as the White Temple’s shadow twin, heaven answered by something considerably darker. Chui Fong’s tea terraces climb a whole hillside outside town, rows curving with the slope as far as you can see, a walk through the plantation itself and a cup of the actual leaf grown on it. A hill tribe village rounded out the afternoon, one of several Karen and Akha communities open to visitors in this part of the north, worth going into with more curiosity than camera. The Golden Triangle, where Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet across the Mekong, is more interesting to stand in than to photograph, from the main viewpoint, three countries visible at once and nothing marking the line between them but water.

Travelling solo? There’s a solo-friendly version of the same tour here.

📍 Overnight in Chiang Rai: Diamond Park Inn Chiangrai & Resort

Day 6

Transfer to Chiang Mai 🧳 Travel day · time to explore after

A private van, 11:30am to 2:30pm, three hours south into a different register of the north again, less mountain drama, more old-city calm, the kind of place where the pace drops noticeably the moment you’re inside the moat walls.

Day 7

Doi Inthanon private tour 🏠 Day trip

Thailand’s highest point, a full day of cool air and cloud forest that felt almost alpine, twin royal pagodas set into the mist near the summit, waterfalls dropping through jungle so dense the sound reached you before the view did.

Worth knowing before you plan your own version of this day: Doi Inthanon and Doi Suthep are two completely different mountains despite the near-identical names. Doi Suthep, the golden temple visible from much of Chiang Mai itself, is the city’s single most iconic landmark, and I didn’t get to it on this trip. If you have the extra half-day, it’s worth building in as its own stop rather than assuming Doi Inthanon covers it.

This one’s a private tour, priced and sized for a group of four. Travelling solo or as a pair? A better-priced individual option is here.

📍 Overnight in Chiang Mai: Ban Chang Tong

Day 8

Mae Kampong Mountain Village 🏠 Day trip

The opposite scale entirely from the day before, a single small village built into a hillside around a stream, wooden houses on stilts, the whole place smelling of woodsmoke and the specific local coffee the village is known for.

📍 Overnight in Chiang Mai: Ban Chang Tong

Day 9

Elephant Sanctuary Experience 🏠 Day trip

The one day of this whole stretch I’d built real expectations around, and it still outdid them. No riding, no performances, just walking beside these animals through the jungle at their own pace, close enough at one point to feel the air move as one shook water off after a river crossing.

📍 Overnight in Chiang Mai: Ban Chang Tong

Day 10

Fly Chiang Mai → Bangkok 🧳 Travel day · time to explore after

Thai AirAsia FD3438, 8:25am to 9:35am, one connector night in the capital before flying south to the islands the next morning.

A night train between Chiang Mai and Bangkok is also a real option, closer to twelve hours, sleeper cabins, and a completely different way to watch the country go by than an hour in the air. I flew, purely for speed, but if the train sounds better for your own trip, here’s where to check schedules:

Part 3: The Gulf Islands, Koh Samui & Koh Phangan

Snorkelling, easier weather, and the first real slowdown of the month.

Day 11

Fly Bangkok → Koh Samui 🧳 Travel day · time to explore after

Bangkok Airways PG107, 7:10am to 8:15am, and after two and a half weeks of temples, mountains and elephants, the trip finally exhaled. Cinnamon Beach Villas sat close enough to the water that the first night’s sleep came with the sound of it through an open window.

Flights to Koh Samui aren’t the cheapest domestic route in Thailand, Bangkok Airways runs most of them and prices it accordingly, but they’re really the only practical way in. A road-and-ferry route exists on paper, a long drive south followed by a ferry crossing, but it eats most of a day for a saving that rarely justifies it. This is one leg worth just booking the flight.

Day 12

Koh Tao & Koh Nang Yuan snorkelling 🏠 Day trip

The boat out is a long one, but Koh Nang Yuan is worth every minute of the ride, three islands joined by a single sandbar narrow enough to walk across with water on both sides, the kind of view that photographs well and still undersells the real thing. Snorkelling around Koh Tao itself is excellent too, some of the clearest water on this whole route. If you dive, this is also one of the best and cheapest places in the world to do it, and there’s a dedicated diving day later in this itinerary on Day 15 if you’d rather trade a second Koh Tao trip for that instead of doing both.

📍 Overnight in Koh Samui: Cinnamon Beach Villas

Day 13

ATV Adventure & exploring Samui 🏠 Day trip

An hour on the ATV, then the rest of the day exploring the other side of the island at whatever pace felt right, the first real slow day since landing.

One thing I’d add if I did this stretch again: Koh Samui’s Big Buddha, Wat Phra Yai, the 12-metre golden statue on its own small island off the northeast coast, visible from the air on the way in and probably the single most photographed thing on Samui. I never made it there this trip, the ATV day and the beach won out, but it’s an easy add if you’re basing yourself anywhere near Bophut.

📍 Overnight in Koh Samui: Cinnamon Beach Villas

Day 14

Ferry to Koh Phangan 🧳 Travel day · time to explore after

Lomprayah high-speed ferry, 10:30am, hotel pickup included. Koh Phangan runs at a noticeably different pace than Samui, quieter beaches, fewer resorts stacked along the shore, obvious the moment the boat docks. This is the island most people picture when they think Full Moon Party, Haad Rin Beach specifically, which is also real enough now to have shown up as a filming location in The White Lotus season 3.

Day 15

Koh Phangan, no plan on purpose 🌴 Free day

The first full day of the whole month with nothing booked at all, and by this point that felt earned. It went to the beach directly below the resort and not much else, which was exactly the right call after eleven straight days of flights and tours.

If a beach day isn’t enough, a 1-day diving experience is bookable from here too, no previous diving experience required. It runs out to the same waters around Koh Tao as the snorkelling trip on Day 12, so if this sounds better than a second boat day, cut that one and do this instead rather than doubling up on the same stretch of sea.

📍 Overnight in Koh Phangan: Absolute Beachfront Resort

Part 4: The Andaman Coast, Phuket, Koh Lanta & Ao Nang

Limestone cliffs, boat days, and the country’s most dramatic coastline. Railay Beach is the one stop here I’d tell someone not to skip.

Day 16

Ferry & minibus to Phuket 🚐 Full travel day

Phantip Ferry, 11:30am to 7:30pm, a long travel day that ended with Phuket announcing itself as a bigger, busier island than anywhere so far the moment the ferry docked. Not many people realize Koh Phangan to Phuket is doable in a single day at all, most routes send you through Surat Thani or back via Bangkok, but this direct ferry and minibus combination gets it done, just not quickly.

Day 17

Phi Phi, Maya Bay & Khai Islands 🏠 Day trip

Phi Phi is outstandingly beautiful, no exaggeration needed to sell it. Maya Bay is the beach from The Beach, the 2000 Danny Boyle film with Leonardo DiCaprio, and it’s just as striking in person as the film made it look, cliffs dropping straight into water so clear the boat seemed to be floating on nothing. It’s also the most crowded and most expensive stop on the whole route, to my liking anyway, boats queuing for a landing slot, prices well above what the same money buys anywhere else on this trip. I did it as a day trip and didn’t stay overnight because of exactly that. If the crowds bother you less than they bothered me, staying over is a completely reasonable call, plenty of people do it and don’t regret it.

📍 Overnight in Phuket: Diamond Cliff Resort & Spa

Day 18

Zipline at Hanuman World 🏠 Day trip

A different register entirely from every beach day around it, the one full jungle-canopy day of the whole month, inland from the coast and cooler for it.

📍 Overnight in Phuket: Diamond Cliff Resort & Spa

Day 19

Phang Nga Bay & James Bond Island 🏠 Day trip

The postcard everyone’s seen without knowing its name, limestone karsts rising straight out of flat green water, James Bond Island itself smaller and stranger in person than the films ever let on. The kind of landscape that makes a boat feel like the only sensible way to be looking at anything.

📍 Overnight in Phuket: Diamond Cliff Resort & Spa

Day 20

Transfer to Koh Lanta 🧳 Travel day · time to explore after

After Phuket’s scale, Koh Lanta felt like the trip deliberately slowing itself back down, quieter roads, fewer resorts stacked on top of each other, obvious from the moment the speedboat pulled in. This leg runs by speedboat or ferry rather than road, there’s no bridge connection this far south, so the whole transfer happens on the water.

Days 21–22

Koh Lanta, two slow days 🌴 Free day

No fixed plan beyond a rented scooter and the coastal road, and Koh Lanta is one of the easiest places on the whole route to do that, rental is simple, the roads are quiet, and traffic never became the thing I had to think about. It’s an island I’d already written up in more detail elsewhere on this site, worth reading alongside this if you want the fuller picture rather than just the flavor of it here.

If you’d rather turn one of these days into something booked, a Koh Rok and Koh Haa snorkelling tour runs from Koh Lanta and covers two of the clearer, less-visited reef spots in this part of the Andaman.

📍 Overnight in Koh Lanta: Rawi Warin Resort and Spa

Day 23

Koh Lanta → Ao Nang 🧳 Travel day · time to explore after

Ao Nang sits in Krabi province, though it’s a world away from Krabi Town itself, there’s not much real reason to base yourself in the town, almost everything that actually draws people to this stretch of coast happens along Ao Nang instead. And it earns the trip: limestone towers rising straight out of the sea, jungle thick enough on the cliffs above that a dinosaur wouldn’t look out of place walking out of it, stunningly dramatic in a way photos undersell. An afternoon at Railay Beach along the way, normally reached by boat from Ao Nang, worth the short ride for the limestone cliffs alone before checking in at Ao Nang for the night.

Day 24

Hong Island 🏠 Day trip

Hong means “room” in Thai, named for the lagoon at the island’s centre, a collapsed cave now ringed by limestone cliffs that a longtail boat can only enter through a narrow gap in the rock, timed to the tide. The day started at 9am with snorkelling, then into the lagoon itself, water so still and enclosed it barely feels like the open sea anymore. Hong Island doubles as a working bird’s-nest collection point too, nests harvested straight from the cave walls for bird’s nest soup, one of those small local industries you’d never guess was happening around you until someone points it out. A picnic lunch followed at Koh Lao Lading, foreign visitors mostly just call it Paradise Island since the real name doesn’t roll off the tongue, and the name isn’t an exaggeration. One more stop at Pakbia Island rounded out the afternoon before the boat brought us back into Ao Nang by 3pm.

📍 Overnight in Ao Nang: Centara Ao Nang Beach Resort & Spa Krabi

Day 25

Krabi 4 Islands 🏠 Day trip

Snorkelling by longtail boat, the slower, more traditional way to move between islands, and a good last full day on the Andaman side before the long journey east. The four stops earn the name: Phra Nang Beach first, limestone cliffs and a cave shrine right on the sand, then Chicken Island, named for a rock formation that really does look like a chicken’s head from the water, snorkelling straight off the boat into a reef busy with fish. Between Chicken and the next stop, Thale Waek, “the separated sea”, appears at low tide, a sandbar you can actually walk across with open water on both sides, the kind of thing that photographs like it shouldn’t be real. Poda Island closed out the day, the calmest water of the four and the easiest place to just sit on the beach for a while before heading back.

📍 Overnight in Ao Nang: Centara Ao Nang Beach Resort & Spa Krabi

Part 5: Koh Kood, the Hidden Gulf Gem

The one stop on this route built entirely around having nothing to do.

Day 26

Ao Nang → Koh Kood 🚐 Full travel day

The longest crossing of the whole month, most of Thailand’s width covered in one go. Every other stop on this route, you could find versions of on a dozen other Thailand itineraries. Koh Kood is the one most first-time routes leave off the page entirely. It sits in the eastern Gulf near the Cambodian border, far enough from the usual Samui–Phangan–Tao cluster that it rarely makes the cut, and that distance is exactly what keeps it the way it is.

If the direct crossing sounds like too much, there’s a second alternative worth knowing about: flying instead of driving the whole way. There’s no direct flight from Krabi to Trat, the airport nearest Koh Kood, but a short connection through Bangkok gets you there, then a road transfer and a ferry finish the trip from Trat to the island itself.

Days 27–28

Koh Kood, no schedule 🌴 Free day

No big resorts stacked on the coastline, roads dark enough at night that the stars actually show, water clear enough that the boat seemed to hover rather than float above the sand. After Phi Phi and Railay’s very real, very earned crowds, two days on a beach that felt markedly quieter than anywhere else on the trip made this feel like a different country’s version of Thailand. Same as Koh Lanta, a rented scooter is the easiest way to see the island, easy to pick up, easy to ride, and the roads stay quiet enough that it never feels like a decision you have to think twice about.

If you’d rather spend one of these days in the water, a snorkelling day trip is bookable from Koh Kood too.

I’ve written the fuller version of this island separately, what to actually do there, where to stay, the ferry logistics in more detail than fits here.

📍 Overnight in Koh Kood: The Beach Natural Resort

Part 6: Back to Bangkok

One last full day of food, markets and the sights the first stretch didn’t have time for.

Day 29

Koh Kood → Bangkok 🚐 Full travel day

Coming back to Bangkok after two and a half weeks of islands felt disorienting for the first hour, the noise and scale of it rushing back in all at once. The Michelin food tour that evening, through Chinatown, more than fifteen tastings deep by the end of it, was the right way back in, moving between small, specific, exceptional plates rather than one long sit-down meal.

Day 30

Floating market, train market & a spa evening 🏠 Day trip

The floating market ran on a completely different rhythm than anywhere else on the trip, boats stacked with fruit and cooked food weaving between each other on water barely wider than the boats themselves, vendors calling out and passing food hand to hand between vessels rather than across a counter. The train market attached to the same day is its own kind of strange, stalls packed right up to the rails, awnings folding back like a held breath every time a train comes through and the whole market resets itself within minutes. By evening, after a month of flights, boats, hiking and one very long transfer day, the Thai massage was less an activity than an actual necessity.

📍 Overnight in Bangkok: Asia Hotel

Day 31

Jim Thompson House, Paknam Temple & the Mahanakhon SkyWalk 🏠 Day trip

The last day tried to fit in everything the trip hadn’t gotten to yet, and mostly managed it. Jim Thompson’s teak house sits improbably calm behind its garden walls a few minutes from some of the city’s busiest streets, silk looms and art collected across a life that ended in genuine mystery. Wat Paknam Phasi Charoen’s soaring 69-metre golden Buddha and the cooking class that followed gave the day a second wind before the last stop of the whole month: the Mahanakhon SkyWalk, glass floor included, the entire month’s route laid out somewhere below in a city that had felt enormous on day one and, by then, felt more like something I understood the shape of. Flight out that night.

My flight was late enough for a full last day to work without any real risk. If yours leaves earlier in the evening, move the cooking class or the SkyWalk to Day 30 instead and keep Day 31 lighter, rather than gambling a day this packed against an international departure.

What I’d Book Again

This post contains affiliate links. If you book through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Every hotel and tour listed on this page is one I actually paid for and used.

What This Trip Roughly Costs

Accommodation is the one number I can give you with real confidence, everything else on this route varies too much by which tours you actually book to put a single figure on.

<p style=”font-family:Poppins,sans-serif; font-size:13px; color:var(–muted,#a99c90); font-style:italic;”>The accommodation figure is real, calculated directly from the nightly range and night count on this page. The other rows need actual receipts to fill in properly rather than industry-average guesses, worth adding once those numbers are in hand.</p>

Practical Tips for Planning This

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Thoughts

Thirty-one days, six regions, one country that felt completely different depending on which week you asked me about. Bangkok’s noise and Chiang Rai’s quiet mountains and Koh Kood’s empty beaches don’t feel like they belong to the same trip, and that’s exactly why the full month works better than any shorter version could, there’s room for all of it to actually register rather than blur into a highlight reel. If you’re building your own version of this, protect the north and Koh Kood first, they’re the two stretches I’d be most reluctant to cut, but that’s my own priority, not necessarily yours. What you’d actually cut depends on what you’re building the trip around: