Bangkok and Chiang Mai in 6 Days: The Capital and the North

Most people who visit Thailand pair a city with a beach. This itinerary pairs a city with a mountain, and it produces a far more interesting six days. Bangkok and Chiang Mai are seven hundred kilometres and about eight hundred years apart. Bangkok is a twenty-million-person megacity that mostly dates from the late eighteenth century, built on a river, growing vertically and fast. Chiang Mai was the capital of the independent Lanna kingdom from 1296, sits in a bowl of forested mountains, and its historic core is still a perfect square inside a moat you can walk around in an afternoon. The flight between them is an hour and ten minutes and costs almost nothing — every low-cost carrier in the country runs the route several times a day. You lose half a morning and gain a completely different country. The Bangkok half is the classic three days, and on a first trip that is the correct choice. Day one stays light: Iconsiam on the river, where the SookSiam floor rebuilds an indoor floating market with stalls from all seventy-seven provinces and a halal section, then a dinner cruise from the pier below. Day two is the old city — the Grand Palace at opening, before the heat and the tour groups; Wat Arun across the river in the afternoon, the one Bangkok temple you climb rather than just look at; and Chinatown after dark, when Yaowarat Road turns into a corridor of neon and street kitchens. Day three is the modern city: the Jim Thompson House, the teak compound of the American who rebuilt the Thai silk industry and then vanished in the Malaysian jungle in 1967, followed by Chidlom for shopping and a rooftop for the last night. Then north. Chiang Mai's three days are deliberately not more temples — you have just done Bangkok. Day four is the old city on foot and, if your dates allow, the Sunday walking street, when several hundred stalls take over the road from Tha Phae Gate. Day five is Elephant Nature Park, a genuine sanctuary rather than a riding camp: no chains, no performances, no bathing shows, just a rescued herd behaving like one. It is the single best day in northern Thailand and it books out weeks ahead. The evening lands in Nimman, the university quarter turned coffee and design district. Day six climbs to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, three hundred and six naga-flanked steps to a golden chedi standing since 1383, with the whole Ping valley below — then a long northern Lanna massage before the flight home. Budget roughly 20,000–42,000 THB ($560–$1,180) per person for six days, mid-range, including the domestic flight. Come November to February: it is dry in Bangkok and cool and clear in the north at the same time. Avoid March and April in Chiang Mai, when agricultural burning drops air quality badly for weeks.