How many days do you need in Thailand?
Eight days. That is the length of the itinerary we built for Thailand, across Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Phuket.
Here is what each day holds. Every stop below carries its time, and every gap says how to get to the next stop, with the walk or drive time wherever both stops are mapped.
Thailand · 8 days Bangkok → Chiang Mai → Phuket
Best time: November to February: dry, and as cool as Thailand gets.
Bangkok: Grand Palace and Wat Phra KaewDay 1
🏛️9:00 AMGrand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew
The royal compound and the Emerald Buddha, Thailand’s holiest image, carved from a single block of jade. Go as early as you can, doors open at 8:30, and mind the dress code, which is strict and enforced.
🚗 ~9 min · 2.5 mi
🖼️1:30 PMJim Thompson House
Six teak houses assembled by the American silk entrepreneur who revived the industry and then vanished in 1967, art-filled, canal-side, and genuinely mysterious.
🚶 ~38 min · 🚗 ~5 min · 1.4 mi
🌆6:00 PMYaowarat (Chinatown)
After dark the neon comes on and the woks come out, one of the world’s great street-food strips, still run from family shophouses in a Chinese quarter that dates to the 1780s.
Bangkok: Wat PhoDay 2
🏛️9:00 AMWat Pho
The 46-meter gold-leafed Reclining Buddha with mother-of-pearl soles, and the birthplace of Thai massage, still taught and practiced on the temple grounds.
🚗 ~12 min · 3.4 mi
🥾1:30 PMLumphini Park
The city’s green lung: dawn tai chi, swan boats, and two-meter water monitor lizards cruising the lakes like small dinosaurs.
🚗 ~16 min · 4.6 mi
🎟️6:00 PMThonburi canal longtail tour
A late-afternoon longtail-boat run through the west bank’s canals, stilt houses, temple ghats, and the amphibious Bangkok that predates every road.
Bangkok: Wat ArunDay 3
🏛️9:00 AMWat Arun
The Khmer-style Temple of Dawn across the river, its spires crusted with broken Chinese porcelain. Cross on the cheap shuttle ferry and climb the steep central prang terraces.
🚶 ~27 min · 🚗 ~3 min · 1.0 mi
🖼️1:30 PMNational Museum Bangkok
Thailand’s largest museum, in a former viceroy’s palace, royal funeral chariots, Ayutthaya-era Buddhas, and the backstory to every temple you will see.
🚶 ~10 min · 🚗 ~1 min · 0.4 mi
🌆6:00 PMBanglamphu
The old royal quarter around Khao San Road, backpacker mythology up front, quiet temple lanes, shrine-makers, and river breezes behind.
Arrive in Chiang MaiDay 4
✈️8:30 AMFlight to Chiang Mai
Bangkok to Chiang Mai in about 1h10 from either airport, with flights all day, or take the overnight sleeper train from Krung Thep Aphiwat station, about 12–13 hours, waking to jungle hills.
✈️ ~1h10 · 362 mi
🏛️2:00 PMWat Phra Singh
The old city’s grandest temple: a gilded Lanna-style chedi and the revered Phra Singh Buddha in a teak assembly hall.
🚶 ~6 min · 🚗 ~1 min · 0.2 mi
🌆6:00 PMThe Old City
A one-mile moated square with crumbling brick gates and a temple every few blocks, best absorbed on foot as the evening cool arrives.
Chiang Mai: Wat Phra That Doi SuthepDay 5
🏛️9:00 AMWat Phra That Doi Suthep
The golden hilltop shrine at over 1,000 meters’ elevation, high above the city and reached by a 306-step naga staircase. Legend sited it where a relic-bearing white elephant lay down and died. Go early; the terrace view is the whole valley.
🚗 ~16 min · 4.4 mi
🖼️1:30 PMLanna Folklife Museum
Opposite the Three Kings Monument in a colonial-era courthouse, the clearest explanation of Lanna crafts, rituals, and why the north is its own country in all but name.
🚶 ~10 min · 🚗 ~1 min · 0.4 mi
🎟️6:00 PMNorthern-Thai night-market food walk
A guided evening graze through the markets, khao soi, sai ua sausage, and the Burmese and Yunnanese threads in northern cooking. Learn it once, then eat independently for days.
Chiang Mai: Wat Chedi LuangDay 6
🏛️9:00 AMWat Chedi Luang
A 15th-century brick chedi that once held the Emerald Buddha, half-toppled by a 1545 earthquake and majestic in ruin.
🚗 ~10 min · 2.9 mi
🥾1:30 PMMonk’s Trail to Wat Pha Lat
A forest path marked by strips of monks’ orange robes, climbing to a mossy jungle monastery on Doi Suthep’s flank, 45 minutes up, and the city’s best easy hike.
🚶 ~41 min · 🚗 ~5 min · 1.5 mi
🌆6:00 PMNimmanhaemin
The café-and-design quarter by the university, third-wave coffee, galleries, and northern-modern kitchens.
Arrive in PhuketDay 7
✈️8:30 AMFlight to Phuket
Chiang Mai direct to Phuket in about 2 hours, several times daily, the only sane way to swap mountains for the Andaman in a single morning.
✈️ ~2h · 755 mi
🏛️2:00 PMBig Buddha
A 45-meter white-marble Buddha on Nakkerd Hill, visible from half the island, the 360-degree view over Chalong Bay and the west coast is the best on Phuket.
🚗 ~23 min · 6.5 mi
🌆6:00 PMOld Phuket Town
Pastel Sino-Portuguese shophouses from the tin-boom era, now cafés, noodle shops, and shrines, liveliest after dark and during the Sunday walking street.
Phuket: Wat ChalongDay 8
🏛️9:00 AMWat Chalong
The island’s most important temple, its grand pagoda holding a bone relic of the Buddha; firecrackers pop all day in thanks for answered prayers.
🚗 ~15 min · 4.3 mi
🖼️1:30 PMThai Hua Museum
A 1934 Sino-colonial former Chinese-language school in Old Town, the story of the Hokkien tin-mining families who built the island, told inside the kind of mansion they built with the proceeds.
🚶 ~3 min · 🚗 ~1 min · 0.1 mi
🎟️6:00 PMNight-market food crawl
An evening guided run through Phuket Town’s weekend markets, Hokkien noodles, moo hong braised pork belly, and southern curries far spicier than Bangkok’s.
This is how Petrel lays out a trip. Upload your own confirmations and it builds this for your dates: flights and hotels included, with live flight status and the travel time between stops.
This is one of 126 free itineraries. Open it, change anything you want, and it becomes your trip.