We are an Indian couple who did a 9 day trip to Bangkok, phi phi islands, phuket in May 2023.
This sub helped me a lot on my trip, and I hope this post helps someone out there. Here are my tips and things about the place that we figured out on the go and I wish I knew before my trip to Thailand. I apologise for any mistakes before hand.
Generic tips
* ATM : It costs 220 bhat to withdraw cash from the atm everywhere. So reduce the number of times you plan to do it on your trip
* Language: most people who aren’t in very tourist areas, speak almost no English. Download Google translate on your phone and use it whenever interacting with locals.
* weather: we went during the summer and it was unbearably hot, this coming from an Indian used to humidity. Google showed bangkok was 39 but felt like 46 degree celsius and this hindered our ability to do things.
* travel agents: You’ll see a lot of tavel agents to book tickets for attractions/ events in tourist areas.. they charge different rates for the same service. Find out rates and go to a guy who isn’t close to the most accessible spots to tourists for better rates.. You’ll end up saving 100s of bhat per person.
* food: most places don’t serve veg options. Depending on the place you’ll see chicken, beef, pork, shrimp and seafood options for the same preparation.. a veg option generally means egg for them. On one of the road side stalls I saw them make veg and shrimp in the same wok together, so be prepared. Findings places for vegan / pure vegetarian might be difficult in general. Google translate also helps translate Thai menus by taking a picture of it on the app.
Arriving in Thailand at DMK, Bangkok
* Visa : there is a visa on arrival just follow the big boards. You need to fill out a form that’s available. Carry a pen and a passport sized pic with you. The visa costs 2200 bhat per person. But I understand that there is a cheaper option by applying for the visa earlier.
* Immigration: you need to have 10k per person or 20k bhat per family. And ideally you would have spent 2.2k bhat per person for your visa before entering the country so keep that in mind. We weren’t asked though.
* sim card : there are multiple vendors at the airport right after collecting your bags and customs. They were open at 5am when we landed.
* cab to the hotel : there is a taxi counter at the last exit gate inside the DMK airport, they go by the meter plus a fixed fee. Note that you need to pay any tolls so ask the guy to avoid tolls if you don’t want to shell out 100+ bhat
Bangkok
* transport: don’t take tuk tuks. Download grab and bolt and use bike taxis. We found it really affordable for short distances. For longer distances use public transport like the bus and trains. We used Google maps to figure out the bus number/ train details
* attractions: there is literally so much to see in bangkok as a city. I would recommend the national museum(200B per person) if you enjoy museums. Maybe skip the Palace(500B) if you’re on a budget, but if you can afford it, it’s extremely beautiful. Note that they deny entry to the Palace and holy places if you have your knees or shoulders exposed regardless of gender. You’ll be forced to buy something to wear from their shops in such situations
* clothes shopping: if you want cheap clothes or plan to buy anything on your trip go to platinum mall. It is where the locals and tourists who know about it go to shop. Its like a market with few hundreds of stalls across many floors. Never buy from the first store cos you’ll find at least 5 stores with same stuff at different prices unless it’s a branded store. I saw quite a few people walking out with new suitcases as well.
* food: undeniably a foodies paradise(if you eat meat and fish). A popular thing to do is search for michelin star restaurants and visit them. Out of the 3 we visited, 2 of them had a huge number of locals as well and was good, the third was only tourists and the service and food weren’t great. We also visited a restaurant looking at the reviews and it was packed with locals. In general, We didn’t enjoy the beef and even read somewhere that it may be other meat they use instead of beef(might not be true). I recommend trying out mango with sticky rice(sounds weird but it’s unbelievably good).
* accommodation location: I’m not good with the area names but i would recommend staying as close to the Palace as possible as there a number of tourist places around the area. Having metro access at walking distance is also really good if you plan on travelling to other parts of town
* khaosan Road : a really active street at night full of pubs and people. Each pub(empty or not) was blasting music as loud as their speakers let them and they had staff on the road trying to get people in.. people were walking around drinking beer. Half the places were pretty empty in summer.. and most places had more staff on the road trying to pull customers in than actual customers) ,there are a bunch of hostels and hotels here though it wouldn’t be our preference cos of the noise at night.
Krabi to phi phi :
We then caught a flight to krabi from Bangkok
* travel to pier in krabi. when you walk out of the airport you will immediately be hounded by travel agents. It costed us 100b per person to krabi town in a shared van which was a 30 min ride.
* ferry to phi phi islands.
After checking that we didn’t have tickets, The driver of the shared cab that took us to their office first before the pier. What we didn’t know is that they charged us 100 extra than the actual ticket. 550 instead of 450. We figured this out at the pier. Note they also have speed boats which are much faster. There are options to book things online as well, so explore those before you go down.
Phi phi islands
* local transport: there are no land vehicles on the island. All the hotels arrange for boats to take you to their places. You also get them at the main pier.. its easy to get on and off boats at the pier but they drop you off the beach and it can very tricky cos of the waves. We saw a girl fall in the water entirely as she couldn’t climb on the boat easily. If you’re traveling with older people, I wouldn’t recommend staying anywhere you need to take a boat to.
* accommodation: The accommodation we booked was on long beach and was too difficult a trek for us in the hot weather to explore the heart of the tourist spots unfortunately. Staying closer to town would be nicer cos there are a lot of nice restaurants in the central island. Though since ours was far away we did get a free pick up and drop by the hotels boat
* maya bay package: there are 2 main packages for sight seeing. Half day and full day. This includes multiple stops and snorkelling in clear blue waters. Life vests and snorkelling equipment was provided for everyone. It includes a 1 hr stop at maya bay(made popular by dicaprios movie the beach). We booked the half day package from our hotel for 1200 B, but we later realised the rates next to the pier varied from 600 to 400 (maybe lesser) depending on who you asked. Could have saved a lot of money if we knew earlier.
* scuba diving: there were a lot of scuba diving places in phi phi if that’s what you want to try out
* ferry to phuket. We caught the ferry to phuket at 3.30pm for 450 bhat per person.
Phuket
* Travel to accommodation: there are multiple shared cabs waiting outside the pier in phuket who charge standard rates per person. We tried booking a grab cos the distance was close but no one accepted. The shared cab charged us 100 b per person to old town.
* Accommodation : depending on the kind of holiday you want, you can either choose to stay close to the beaches, or in Old Town which is extremely beautiful.
* Transport: you get scooters for hire all over phuket to go around. This makes things really easy
* Old town : lovely architecture , peaceful streets, pubs and a good number of michelin star restaurants we spent the day trying out a lot of good food
* Old town to patong : there are local buses which charge 40 b per person. I didn’t find them on Google maps transit but out hotel told us they are available till the evening
* Patong area: the vibe of patong was completly different.. You’ll see a lot of sex tourism. All massage parlours have multiple pretty women exposing skin sitting on the road in front of the shop. We didn’t really enjoy the environment but it was interesting. The beach did have some water sports to take part in like paragliding and jet skis from what we could see. Note that cabs charge a fixed 200 for a ride within this area which is crazy expensive. It even showed the same on cab apps.
* Bangla Road : we visited the popular road and it was nothing that we could have imagined. The roads were filled with employees asking if we wanted to visit a ping pong party(we were shocked after googling what it was).. multiple bars had young women in lingerinr dancing.. you’d see many trying to hit up men at .. a few places had live English music by bands which was really good but very loud.. not our kind of place but we were happy we experienced it.
* cab to the airport : we saw offers for cabs for 900b for a trip to the airport online. When we booked on the grab app and it was 550b for us which was pretty good as it was about an hours drive
Return and international air asia transfer via DMK, Bangkok
* we booked air asia flights to return to India via Bangkok. But we realise we had only 2 hours in dmk(way too short) and needed a terminal change and to top it off first fight was delayed by 20 minutes. We went to domestic at phuket only to be told that we need to go to international which was 7 min walk and in a completely different building. The good thing was that air asia was sending our check in bags directly to the final destination and we only needed to pass customs in phuket and could skip the process in bangkok. They gave each of us stickers for our shirts so their staff could identify and help us. Once we landed in terminal 1 air asia staff had a list of passengers catching international flights and led us through a separate path to bypass the regular formalities to terminal 2. After we boarded our flight from Dmk was delayed 30 minutes cos apparently another flight from phuket had passengers who had to board our flight. But keep a few hours just to be on the safe side
That’s it. I hope this helps someone planning their trip to Thailand. 🙏 Have a nice holiday exploring a truly beautiful country.
