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Thailand

4 city guides · Asia

Cities in Thailand (4)

Asia
🇹🇭 Thailand

Bangkok

Bangkok (Krung Thep Maha Nakhon — "City of Angels, Great City" in Thai, the capital's official name being the longest place name in the world at 169 characters) is one of the most overwhelming, exhilarating and contradictory cities on earth: a metropolis of 10 million people where golden Buddhist temples overlook floating markets and glass skyscrapers rise above wooden canal houses on the Chao Phraya River. Thailand's capital is the world's most visited city (22 million tourists annually), the global capital of street food (the UN's FAO called Bangkok street food "the best in the world"), the spiritual home of Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia, and simultaneously the neon-lit playground of Sukhumvit and the Khao San Road backpacker scene. Three days gives you the temples, the floating market, the food, the canal network and the rooftop bars — but Bangkok rewards much longer.

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Asia
🇹🇭 Thailand

Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai (population 130,000 city, 1 million metropolitan area) is the most important city in northern Thailand and the most significant cultural, historical and spiritual capital of the former Lanna Kingdom (the "Kingdom of a Million Rice Fields" — the independent northern Thai kingdom that ruled from 1296 to 1775 CE). Founded in 1296 by King Mengrai (the most important king in the history of northern Thailand — the ruler who united the Lanna Kingdom and chose the confluence of the Ping River and the Mae Kha canal as the most auspicious location for the new capital), Chiang Mai remains surrounded by the most intact medieval moat and walls in Thailand. The city contains over 300 Buddhist temples (the most temples per capita of any city in Thailand) — the most important concentration of Lanna-style Buddhist art and architecture in the world. The Saturday and Sunday Walking Streets (the most important outdoor markets in Southeast Asia), the most celebrated Songkran water festival in Thailand (the Thai New Year water festival — the most internationally famous Thai festival), the elephant sanctuaries of the Mae Taeng Valley (the most important ethical elephant tourism destination in Asia), and the most important trekking gateway to the Doi Inthanon National Park (the highest mountain in Thailand at 2,565m) make Chiang Mai the most visited destination in northern Thailand.

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Asia
🇹🇭 Thailand

Pattaya

Pattaya is Thailand's most contradictory city — a fishing village of 10,000 in 1960, transformed into a US military R&R destination during the Vietnam War (1965–1975), and now a city of 120,000 permanent residents (plus 500,000 floating) that draws 10 million visitors a year with the world's largest concentration of beach resort infrastructure, a nightlife strip second in Southeast Asia only to Bangkok's Sukhumvit, and — simultaneously — some of Thailand's best water sports, offshore islands and golf courses. The Walking Street reputation (2 km of bars, clubs and adult entertainment that operates openly in a legal grey zone the Thai authorities have periodically attempted to reform) overshadows the city's genuine attractions: Sanctuary of Truth (an extraordinary all-wood Buddhist-Hindu temple under construction since 1981, expected to take 100 years to complete, using no nails or metal — only hand-carved timber with 100,000 individual sculptures), Koh Larn island (the 'Coral Island', 7 km offshore, with clear turquoise water and coral reef), and Pattaya's status as the go-kart capital of Southeast Asia (multiple world-class circuits). The city sits 140 km southeast of Bangkok on the Gulf of Thailand, reachable in 90 minutes by the direct bus from Suvarnabhumi airport. For travellers who know where to look, Pattaya combines resort infrastructure (1,000+ hotels, every cuisine, world-class water parks) with genuinely spectacular day-trip destinations and some of the best value diving in Thailand.

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Asia
🇹🇭 Thailand

Phuket

Phuket is Thailand's largest island (543 km², roughly the size of Singapore) and the country's most visited tourist destination, with 10 million visitors per year drawn by the Andaman Sea beaches (Patong, Kata, Karon, Kamala, Nai Harn), the limestone karst formations of Phang Nga Bay (the setting for the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun, 1974, featuring Khao Phing Kan "James Bond Island"), and the Old Town of Phuket City with its Sino-Portuguese colonial architecture from the 19th-century tin-mining boom. The island was devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami (which killed 5,395 people in Phuket province alone) and rebuilt within a decade — the rebuilt resort infrastructure is now among the most developed in Southeast Asia, with a price spectrum ranging from ฿300/night hostels to $5,000/night private pool villa resorts. Patong (the main resort town, 15 km from the airport) has the Bangla Road nightlife strip — 500 m of open-air bars, clubs, elephant shows and the famous ladyboy cabaret shows of the Simon Cabaret and Fantasea — while the south of the island (Nai Harn, Yanui, Rawai) retains a local Thai character with better food and fewer tourists. The interior of Phuket is a landscape of rubber and palm oil plantations with Buddhist temples — Wat Chalong (the island's largest and most important temple, home to a relic believed to be a bone fragment of the Buddha) — while the north of the island has mangrove forests, cashew nut orchards and the Thai-majority town of Thalang. Island hopping from Phuket to the Phi Phi Islands (2 hrs south by speedboat), Similan Islands (the finest diving in Thailand, 3.5 hrs north by speedboat) and Racha Island (1 hr south, excellent snorkelling) makes Phuket the best Andaman Sea base in Thailand.

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