Thailand forum

Hi Nikita,

You've picked the hottest time of year for your trip, so I hope you are comfortable with the heat. You'll also be travelling right in the middle of the busy Songkran water festival holiday, so if you don't want to get involved in day long water fights in Chiang Mai , you might want to go somewhere else.

Because this is a busy time for domestic travel, you may want to book your train as far in advance as possible. Other transport may be booked solid too, so either plan ahead or be very flexible with your plans, which is hard to do with only 12 days to spend.

There is no train from Chiang Rai back to Bangkok, so you'll need to travel either back to Chiang Mai or another place along the line like Den Chai to catch the train. Given the short amount of time you have, consider flying back to Bangkok instead. That way you can catch a connecting flight to get you down south right away. Also, since you've got only a few days, maybe skip Chiang Rai altogether, spending the extra time in Chiang Mai and flying south from there instead.

Perhaps this weather map http://www.travelfish.org/weather_fish.php will help you decide if you want to stay on the east or west coast in April.

That's just a few ideas. I'm sure others will have more. I hope these help. Cheers.

With only 5 days I'd be seriously thinking of doing them on one island - I reckon Phangan is a good one that time of year. Thing about Phangan is that by changing beaches you are doing the equivalent of changing islands elsewhere (there is a diverse range of beaches - one for everybody's taste from party fiends to chill-out merchants) except it takes an hour or so rather than most of the day.

If you figure two islands than Tao and Samui are both pretty close to Phangan. Tao is the better for budget travellers.