Day-by-day programme of this 14-day itinerary across Bangkok, the North and the Andaman Sea.
Day 1 — Flying to Bangkok
Off you go: overnight flight to the City of Angels. Neck pillow, a film and away — when you wake you will be on the other side of the world, six hours ahead.
- ✈️ Bangkok — Aeroporto di Bangkok-Suvarnabhumi (BKK)
Day 2 — Bangkok: Wat Pho and sunset on the river
Dawn landing, check-in and straight into the city: Wat Pho's Reclining Buddha, a Thai massage in the school where it was born, sunset over Wat Arun from the river bank and dinner among Chinatown's flaming woks.
- 📍 Wat Pho — The trip's first temple is a heart-stopper: the Reclining Buddha, 46 metres long, gilded from head to mother-of-pearl feet, fills the sanctuary like a ship in a bottle, while outside the porcelain spires of the chedis sparkle in the sun. Wat Pho is also the cradle of Thai massage: the school inside the temple is the right place for a first, well-earned post-flight treatment. Muscles loosened, walk down to the pier: across the river waits the country's most photographed tower, at the hour it lights up.
- 📍 Wat Arun — The Temple of Dawn is at its best at sunset: the 80-metre central prang, inlaid with Chinese porcelain and shells, catches fire in the last light and then glows under golden floodlights. Cross on the 5-baht ferry to see it up close and climb its steep terraces, then return to the opposite bank for the perfect postcard from a riverside café. By now the hunger is serious: three MRT stops and you are in the neighbourhood that eats best (and loudest) in all Bangkok.
- 🍽️ Yaowarat Road, Chinatown — After dark Yaowarat becomes a single, kilometre-long open-air kitchen: flaming woks, curry crab, skewers of everything, noodles tossed in smoke and the legendary stalls — goose rice, pad thai wrapped in an omelette, charcoal toast with pandan custard. Order little and often, following the locals' queues. The right end to day one: tomorrow, an early start for the palace that is the kingdom's sacred heart.
- 🏨 Riva Surya Bangkok — Riverside / Rattanakosin, Bangkok
Day 3 — The Grand Palace and the canals
The Grand Palace and the Emerald Buddha at opening time, then the secret Bangkok of the Thonburi klongs by longtail boat. Grand finale from above: skyline and cocktails on a rooftop.
- 📍 Grand Palace, Bangkok — The complex that dazzles: golden spires, mosaic guardian demons, a miniature Angkor Wat and, in Wat Phra Kaew, the Emerald Buddha — 66 centimetres of jade that is the kingdom's most sacred object, dressed by the king at every change of season. Arrive at 8.30 sharp, properly covered (long trousers, covered shoulders: checks are strict), and walk clockwise ahead of the groups. Out of the gate, Tha Chang pier is steps away: that is where you hire the long-tailed boats for the Bangkok that has no streets.
- 🎯 Thonburi canals by longtail boat — The longtail slips into the Thonburi klongs and Bangkok becomes the 'Venice of the East' again: teak stilt houses, water-side shrines, kids diving, monitor lizards sunbathing and vendors paddling alongside with mangoes. Ninety minutes of secret city that makes more sense from the water than from land. Agree the price at the pier before boarding. Back home, shower and rest: tonight you ride 60 floors up to watch this whole city spread beneath you.
- 📍 Sky Bar, Lebua State Tower — From the 63rd floor of the State Tower, with the Chao Phraya snaking golden between the skyscrapers, Bangkok at sunset is a show worth the (steep) price of a cocktail: this is the rooftop from 'The Hangover Part II', smart-casual dress code enforced, no booking for the open-air bar. Arrive by 6 pm: balustrade spots go to the early. Tomorrow you leave the city early: two markets that seem impossible await beyond the gates.
Day 4 — The railway market and the floating market
A day out of Bangkok: the Maeklong market folding itself away as the train passes, and the fruit-laden sampans of Damnoen Saduak. An afternoon of silk and gardens at the Jim Thompson House.
- 📍 Maeklong Railway Market — The world's most absurd market is laid out ON the tracks: fish, vegetables and umbrellas occupy the trackbed until the siren announces the train — and in thirty seconds awnings and crates fold away, the carriages glide a palm's width from the mangoes, and everything reopens as if nothing happened. Eight passes a day: time yours for mid-morning. The adrenaline calls for a Thai breakfast among the stalls. Twenty minutes down the road you swap rails for water: the Damnoen Saduak canals are already swarming with boats.
- 📍 Damnoen Saduak Floating Market — The wooden sampans glide past loaded with pineapples, orchids and steaming pots: the rowing cooks prepare boiling noodles right on board and hand them to you across the water. Has it become touristy? Yes. Is it still a world-image worth the early alarm? Absolutely: board a rowing boat (slower and quieter than the motorised ones), buy boat noodles and an iced coconut, and let yourself be paddled. You are back in Bangkok by mid-afternoon, just in time for an oasis of silk and silence amid the towers.
- 📍 Jim Thompson House — Six antique teak houses dismantled and reassembled around a tropical garden on the klong: here lived Jim Thompson, the American who revived Thai silk and vanished into the Malaysian jungle in 1967 — an unsolved mystery the guided tour recounts among Ming porcelain and dazzling silks. Half an hour of perfect peace, and the shop is dangerous for your wallet. Free dinner tonight and a light suitcase: tomorrow morning you travel four centuries back, to the old capital of Siam.
Day 5 — Ayutthaya
A day trip to the old capital of Siam: the Buddha head embraced by the fig tree, the three towers of Wat Phra Si Sanphet and sunset over Wat Chaiwatthanaram. Back to Bangkok in the evening.
- 📍 Wat Mahathat, Ayutthaya — For four centuries Ayutthaya was one of Asia's richest cities, until the Burmese razed it in 1767: at Wat Mahathat, among the beheaded chedis, the roots of a fig tree have wrapped a Buddha head in a perfect embrace — the city's signature image (to photograph it, crouch down: the head must be respected from below). The train from Bangkok takes an hour and a half; on site you cycle or tuk-tuk between ruins scattered across the river island. Next stop, the royal heart of the old capital.
- 📍 Wat Phra Si Sanphet, Ayutthaya — The three aligned bell-shaped chedis are Ayutthaya's silhouette: this was the royal palace temple, the Wat Phra Kaew of its age, home to a 16-metre Buddha clad in 250 kilos of gold that the Burmese melted down. Today red bricks and grass tell of the grandeur better than any reconstruction. Boat-noodle lunch at the nearby market, and in the afternoon you pedal towards the river, where the most scenic temple waits for golden hour.
- 📍 Wat Chaiwatthanaram, Ayutthaya — On the bank of the Chao Phraya, the 'temple of the long glorious reign' is a little Angkor: the Khmer-style central prang ringed by eight towers, built by King Prasat Thong in 1630. At sunset the bricks turn copper and Thais come to pose in period costume — renting one is half the fun. When the floodlights come on over the prang, it is time for the train back: tomorrow morning you fly north, where the air smells of mountains and incense.
Day 6 — Flight to Chiang Mai
One hour's flight and everything changes: ancient walls, three hundred temples and gentle rhythms. Afternoon between Wat Phra Singh and Wat Chedi Luang, evening at the night market with the obligatory khao soi.
- ✈️ Bangkok → Chiang Mai — Aeroporto di Chiang Mai (CNX)
- 📍 Wat Phra Singh, Chiang Mai — The old city's most venerated temple keeps the Sihing Buddha in the Lai Kham chapel, a Lanna jewel with murals of nineteenth-century court life: gold on red lacquer, triple-tiered roofs nearly sweeping the ground, novice monks happy to chat and practise their English ('monk chat'). The perfect introduction to the Northern style. Five minutes' walk away stands the mutilated giant that is the North's ancient heart.
- 📍 Wat Chedi Luang, Chiang Mai — The great chedi of 1441 reached 82 metres before an earthquake ate its summit: even maimed it remains the city's mightiest monument, stone elephants bursting from its flanks and naga-guarded stairways. The Emerald Buddha you saw in Bangkok once lived here too — the circle closes. As the sun drops, candles are lit and the monks' chanting fills the courtyard. Then follow your hunger: the night market is Chiang Mai's evening living room.
- 🍽️ Chiang Mai Night Bazaar — Stalls of Hmong crafts, lanterns, tailors and — above all — Northern food: tonight you debut with khao soi, the coconut-curry soup with soft noodles below and crispy ones on top, Chiang Mai's flagship dish. Add sai ua sausages, moo ping skewers and a banana roti to finish. If it is Sunday, the Walking Street inside the walls is even better. Early to bed: tomorrow is the day you will remember most — elephant day.
- 🏨 De Lanna Hotel, Chiang Mai — Città vecchia, Chiang Mai
Day 7 — Elephants and Thai cooking
Morning at an ethical sanctuary in the Mae Taeng hills: feeding and walking to the river with elephants rescued from circuses and logging. Back for an evening cooking class: you go home knowing how to make curry.
- 🎯 Elephant Nature Park — An hour and a half into the hills and you enter the sanctuary that changed elephant tourism in Asia: here animals rescued from circuses, logging and shows live free in herds, while visitors observe them, prepare their food and watch them bathe in the river — NEVER riding, never circus tricks: the rule that marks a true sanctuary. A half day worth the whole trip, booked weeks ahead. You return to town in the afternoon with the best photos on your phone and just time for a shower: tonight you cook.
- 🎯 Thai cooking class, Chiang Mai — You start at the market learning to tell galangal, lemongrass and the three Thai aubergines apart, then to the woks: pad thai, tom yum soup, green curry pounded in the mortar and mango sticky rice. In four hours you cook (and devour) an entire menu, and the recipe book goes home with you — the trip's most-used souvenir, the diaries swear. Tomorrow, an alarm in the dark for the North's loveliest ritual: dawn from the temple on the mountain.
Day 8 — Doi Suthep and the creative quarters
At dawn up the 306 steps of the mountain temple, with Chiang Mai waking far below. Then specialist coffee and artist studios in Nimman, and the North's last sunset along the old moat.
- 📍 Wat Phra That Doi Suthep — Legend says the spot was chosen by a white elephant, climbing the mountain with a relic of the Buddha on its back: today the golden chedi of Doi Suthep gleams 1,073 metres above the city, atop a 306-step staircase flanked by mosaic nagas. At dawn there are only chanting monks and the mist unravelling over the valley: the North's moment of pure magic. On the way down, stop at a mountain café — the beans grow on these very slopes — and return for a slow afternoon in the creative quarter.
- 📍 Nimmanhaemin, Chiang Mai — The quarter of designers and roasters: galleries, celadon ceramic concept stores, brunch spots and the country's best speciality coffee — Chiang Mai's baristas win the national championships with embarrassing regularity. Between sois rises the One Nimman complex with its brick courtyards. The perfect afternoon for definitive purchases: tomorrow Chiang Rai, and the day after the sea will swallow any urge to shop. In the evening, drinks along the moat as the sky turns pink.
Day 9 — Chiang Rai: the White Temple
A day in Chiang Rai: the mirror-and-lime Wat Rong Khun, artist Thawan's Black House and the Blue Temple. Back to Chiang Mai in the evening, bags packed for the sea.
- 📍 Wat Rong Khun — Three hours of scenic road (or a 40-minute flight) and the apparition appears: artist Chalermchai Kositpipat's White Temple, all lime and mirror chips, its bridge vaulting a sea of sculpted imploring hands — the passage from desire to rebirth. Inside, the murals blend Buddha, the Matrix and Hello Kitty: contemporary art disguised as a temple, under construction until 2070. Go mid-morning, when the sun makes it explode with light. Twenty minutes away, the perfect counterpoint: the BLACK house of another local genius.
- 📍 Baan Dam, the Black House — Forty black teak buildings in the green: the world-museum of Thawan Duchanee, master (and provocateur) of Thai art, is the shadow completing the White Temple's light — thrones of horn, crocodile skins, sculptures out of a shamanic dream. You wander among the houses as through a dark fairy-tale wood. On the way back, Wat Rong Suea Ten — the Blue Temple — closes the colour trilogy. Back to Chiang Mai by evening: tomorrow you fly to the sea, and temples give way to cliffs.
Day 10 — Flight to the sea: Krabi
North to South in a two-hour flight: land at Krabi, drop the bags in Ao Nang and end the day with a first Andaman sunset and seafood dinner on the beach.
- ✈️ Chiang Mai → Krabi — Aeroporto Internazionale di Krabi (KBV)
- 📍 Ao Nang — The perfect island base: a crescent of sand with karst cliffs closing the horizon and longtails lined up like coloured pencils. Ao Nang is not the area's most beautiful beach — it is the springboard to the most beautiful ones — but its sunset, with Poda and Chicken islands in silhouette, opens the sea chapter the right way. Grilled prawns for dinner with your feet in the sand: tomorrow morning the longtail takes you to the roadless paradise of Railay.
- 🏨 Holiday Style Ao Nang Beach Resort — Ao Nang, Krabi
Day 11 — Railay and the Princess Cave
Ten minutes by longtail and you land on Railay, the peninsula reachable only by sea: West beach, the Phra Nang cave and — for the willing — the climb to the lagoon viewpoint.
- 📍 Railay West Beach — The longtail drops you in a bay that doesn't seem to belong to this century: no roads, no cars — just white sand, 200-metre cliffs plunging into the sea and the limestone walls that made Railay a world climbing mecca (beach schools offer first climbs even to beginners). Settle under a palm and absorb the peninsula's rhythm. Fifteen minutes' walk along the cliff-foot path lies a cave where fishermen leave very particular offerings.
- 📍 Phra Nang Cave Beach — Rated among the planet's finest beaches: silken sand, a cave-shrine to the sea princess's spirit (with decidedly phallic votive offerings, left by fishermen to bless the catch) and islets close enough to swim to. Monkeys stand guard: hold tight to bags and sunglasses. For the energetic, a muddy, rope-assisted trail climbs to the hidden-lagoon viewpoint. At sunset, longtail back and dinner in Ao Nang: tomorrow you go island-hopping.
Day 12 — The four islands
The classic Krabi 4-island longtail tour: Poda, Chicken Island, Tup with its sandbar emerging at low tide, and snorkelling among clownfish.
- 🎯 Krabi 4 Islands Tour — Krabi's postcard day: the longtail hops between Koh Poda with its rock sail, Chicken Island (the hen's head is undeniable), coral snorkelling and the magic moment of Koh Tup, where at low tide a sandbar emerges linking three islands and you literally walk in the middle of the sea. Packed lunch beneath the casuarinas. Choose the longtail tour over the speedboat: slower, lovelier, truer. Tonight you book the grand finale: tomorrow, the islands that made the world dream.
- 🍽️ Krua Thara, Ao Nang — Krabi's seafood institution, loved by locals and travellers alike: tanks of live lobster and grouper, yellow curry crab, steamed sea bass with lime and chilli, clams stir-fried with basil. You order by weight, eat under the fans, pay a fair bill. The sailors' dinner after an island day — and perfect fuel for tomorrow's most awaited one: the Phi Phi.
Day 13 — The Phi Phi Islands
The grand finale: Maya Bay (of 'The Beach' fame), snorkelling in Pileh Lagoon between limestone walls, the monkeys of Monkey Beach. Last evening on the Andaman.
- 🎯 Phi Phi Islands — The sheer cliffs of Phi Phi Leh enclose jade lagoons: Maya Bay, mythologised by 'The Beach' and reborn after years of closure to regenerate its corals (you land from the back, numbers capped, no swimming in the bay — which is exactly why it is beautiful again); Pileh Lagoon, where you float in a pool between 100-metre walls; the Viking Cave and clownfish snorkelling. Pick a tour leaving Krabi early to beat the Phuket flotillas. Back on shore, the last Thai sunset on the beach: savour it slowly.
Day 14 — Heading home
A last morning swim, a farewell mango sticky rice and the flights home via Bangkok. By now the wai comes naturally.
- ✈️ Krabi — Aeroporto di Roma-Fiumicino
