Our Southeast Asia Travel Guide explains how you can make the most of your trip, including routes, maps, highlights, countries to visits and pitfalls to avoid.
Dreaming of backpacking around Southeast Asia? The “banana pancake” trail is an exciting, budget-friendly, and not too challenging travel route. It’s an excellent place to be a first-time backpacker, and veteran adventurers will also find plenty to keep them occupied!
One of the pull factors of Thailand is the low cost of living, but how much does it really cost? Living comfortably in Chiang Mai, expect to pay 28,100 Thai baht per month. That’s roughly $873 or £644.
Thailand is a very budget-friendly destination and you will almost always get a lot of bang for your Baht. But what’s a good budget per day for Thailand? Well, it depends on how you’re travelling. If you’re a digital nomad living in Thailand, you can take advantage of long-term rentals and keep costs low. If you’re backpacking around Thailand for two weeks, you should expect to spend a little more to make the most of your time in the country. Read on to find out how much it costs to travel in Thailand.
This Christmas, we took a 2-day road trip from Chiang Mai to Pai. Because we work full-time, we use our Christmas holiday to make sure we go on an adventure! I know that doesn’t sound much like what you do at Christmas back home, but to be honest we’re both quite rubbish at sitting down, relaxing and doing nothing — we’ve tried, I swear.
Chiang Mai is a hot spot for vegetarian and vegan food. In this vegetarian and vegan food guide, I share all my favourite places to eat in Chiang Mai. Expect Thai curries, pad Thai, Burmese tea leaf salads and more smoothies than you can shake a bamboo straw at.
Among the lush valleys and undulating hills of Loei province lies the Tai Dam village in Chiang Khan, Thailand. Named for the black robes worn by both men and women, the Tai Dam — known as “Black Thai” in English — are an indigenous Vietnamese tribe that were scattered by war. Today, their descendents practise time-honoured traditions in their new home in Northern Thailand.
“Never try, never know,” rang out the cheery voice of our Thai farm cooking class teacher Benny. She was waving around fresh herbs and spicy roots from the organic garden attached to the cooking school and encouraging us to bite into galangal roots, lemongrass stalks and strong smelling leaves. Luke and I did so without protest, though not everyone in our cooking class was so adventurous – and with good reason, some of those raw roots packed a real punch.
Why is it that when you give someone a mask they will never fail to show you their true face? For Phi Ta Khon festival, or the ghost mask festival, the normally shy, polite and retiring villagers of Dan Sai reveal themselves to be fun-loving, dance-crazy, non-stop party people. The festival, held in Loei province, is a vibrant interweaving of religion and art.
Mask makers spend the months leading up to the big event constructing and painting their lavish costumes in exquisite detail. When finished, the complete outfits resemble colourful monsters, somehow managing to be both fearsome and fluorescent. Dancing and continuous cowbells announce to the world that the ‘ghosts’ are in town.
The raw food movement, or raw foodism, is a massively growing trend. My Instagram feed is always crammed with raw food bloggers posting images of incredible raw cakes, spiralised veggies and superfood salads, which I admittedly go a little wild over.
Raw foodism refers to a diet with a high consumption of uncooked, unprocessed foods. A raw food diet mainly focuses on eating lots of raw fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds, but interpretations of what else is considered part of a raw food diet varies.
You hear a lot of buzz about raw food diets from places like California, Vancouver, Australia and New Zealand’s North Island, but far less so over in Asia. While travelling in Thailand though, I unexpectedly discovered that the raw food movement is slowly starting to set down roots over there too.
I’m not exactly au fait with spas of any sort, but a chicken coop sauna certainly wasn’t something I ever expected to see. In the Chong Changtune community in Thailand’s Trat province, they’ve invented a new kind of sauna experience, simply involving a traditional style chicken coop ideas, a rice cooker and some local herbs.
Are you as intrigued as I was?
Wondering where to stay in Bangkok without breaking your budget? Well, so were we.
While the cost of travel in Thailand can easily be kept on the cheap side, Bangkok is unsurprisingly the most expensive city. The majority of travellers to Thailand will arrive or depart from Bangkok and spend a few days in the city at least. Backpackers can grab a dorm bed for a little as £3 and double rooms in hostels can go for as low as £10 near Khaosan Road.
For the budget conscious traveller who doesn’t want the loud party scene that dominates the Khaosan Road area, finding budget accommodation in a more desirable location takes a bit more hard work. Luke and I set an accommodation budget of £20 per night for two, which is really the upper end of budget for Thailand, and went from there.
With a couple of days to spare in between traversing the neon lit expanse of Bangkok and heading to the green mountain city of Chiang Mai in the north, we pulled out a map to locate an island not too far from Bangkok.
After some flash research, we ended up opting for Koh Samet, an island known for it’s close proximity to Bangkok, it’s silky white beaches and clear waters, and it’s – as we discovered – dubious National Park status.
We only had three days on Koh Samet, and though we prefer to travel slowly as often as possible, I’ve got to say that unless you’re keen to just kick back on a white sand beach for a week, then Koh Samet can be easily covered in that time.
We’re Charlie and Luke — UK travel bloggers, adventurers and storytellers. We travel slow and write about sustainable travel. We want to make responsible travel choices and help you do the same. Get to know us.
