Our Thailand Itinerary, Top Tips and mistakes we made
You can find all of our Thailand blog posts here
Here’s our Thailand itinerary & the mistakes we made…
We flew to Kuala Lumpur {originally it was meant to be a direct BA flight but they cancelled the whole route so we had to switch to Qatar indirect via Doha}, took an internal flight to Langkawi & had a night in a lodge close to the airport.
Then we had a 10 minute taxi in a prebooked grab to Telaga harbour for the ferry to Koh Lipe.
We spent 5 nights on Koh Lipe at the Akira Lipe hotel {see this post for all of the details}
We took a speedboat transfer & 5 hour minibus ride to Krabi. Booked through 12GO Asia.
We spent 3 nights in Ao Nang Phu Petra resort in Krabi and took excursions to Railay Beach, saw Elephants ethically and took an incredible private longtail boat trip to the Hong Islands. See this post
Then we flew up to Chiang Mai for 5 nights. See this post on staying at the Shangri-La CM and this post for a full guide to Chiang Mai.
From Chiang mai we flew to Kuala Lumpur and then home.
A few things we’d do differently…
- We booked our return flights to Kuala Lumpur & our first stop on Koh Lipe before we decided to go to Chiang Mai. We always knew we were doing the relaxing, paradise island bit first but if you’re planning from scratch I’d do it the other way around to finish on the beach bit!
- Everything was so easy and close on Koh Lipe {apart from getting there maybe} and Krabi. Whereas Chiang Mai was quite spread out, was really hot and we probably had one night too long there. I’d definitely add a night on to Lipe or Ao Nang if you can.
- You could fly into Bangkok instead of KL but we found ✈ more expensive there & further to get to Koh Lipe from.
- If you’ve got any amazing spots in Thailand then please share, we’d love to go back someday! Koh Trang or Kood or Samui maybe. I don’t think I’d rush back to Chiang Mai now we’ve done it but maybe Bangkok for a couple of days first or a national park near there. That part of SE Asia is so well connected that it’s easy to combine with other parts. Ben & I did Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia before we got engaged & loved them.
It was always a fairly ambitious itinerary, especially with two small kids, there were too many incredible places to try to fit in! A special mention to Charlotte the best family travel planner and her amazing black book of recommendations from @littlevoyagers. I had booked Koh Lipe and then had such a block on where to go next, it’s not a region we’ve visited before & I was struggling for time to research it as much as I wanted to. She was great & helped me decide on where would suit what we wanted best, I then booked our accommodation & she suggested some incredible places around Chiang Mai which I don’t know if we’d have discovered otherwise! She puts together such family friendly ideas for a range of budgets.
Although I wish we’d had longer, there were so many other regions I wish we could have visited! Koh Lanta, Koh Kood, Phuket, the national park near to Bangkok.
Top Tips
Buy an E-Sim before you go. I used Airalo for the first time - use this referral code link or input REBECC7296 for £2.50 off when you sign up - and it was incredible to have unlimited data for our whole trip. It really was unlimited, unlike the UK fair usage policies,
Email hotels about extra beds if you need them for kids. There’s an assumption in Thailand in particular that children aged up to about 4 will share a bed with you so hotel rooms/booking sites aren’t always geared up for extra children, we found that emailing got the best options and rates.
Buy the pink Soffell Bug spray from 7/11 on your first day there. We bought 4 bottles, put it on a couple of times a day and only got 1 bite. I normally get LOADS!
Get the Grab and Bolt apps. They’re like Uber. We used them almost everyday and they were so so cheap to get around and normally really nice cars with professional drivers. We started off with Grab then found Bolt to be even cheaper and more available. Depends which area you’re in I think.
We gave our kids extra Probiotics for a few weeks before our trip. None of us got sick out there. Not sure if a coincidence or if they helped!
See all of the Thailand posts here.