Our top Thailand tours and excursions

Rolling countryside threaded through with rivers, mountains speckled with crumbling ruins and minority villages surrounded by rice paddies: northern Thailand is a walker’s paradise. 

Whether you’re after a gentle half-day hike or a challenging, multi-day trek to remote villages deep in the countryside, northern Thailand really does have something for everyone. This region is mountainous, rural, and home to a patchwork of ethnic minorities, each with their own rich culture and customs. Opportunities abound to get to know the local way of life, as you visit traditional villages, eat home-cooked food, and spend the night in tiny guesthouses and homestays. In between, there’s miles and miles of countryside to be explored — criss-crossing trails through farmland and forest, crumbling jungle temples, secluded valleys, rural markets and even a “lost civilization”. 

Before Bangkok became famous for its busy nightlife and glitzy malls, it was known as the “Venice of the East”: threaded through with hundreds of canals (or khlongs) and lined with teakwood homes and shrines.  

A half-day tour of Thonburi will introduce you to a little slice of that old Bangkok, where transport is by longtail boat instead of skytrain, and where life still moves at a lazy pace in teakwood villages along the khlongs. After puttering past old shophouses and temples, whose eclectic architecture reflects the region’s centuries of trade, you’ll disembark to explore an icon of Bangkok: the sparkling, mosaic-encrusted temple of Wat Arun. From here, it’s a short walk to the Grand Palace, whose magnificent complex of over 100 buildings has been the seat of Thai royalty for over two centuries.

Born during the wars with Burma in the 18th century, Muay Thai is known as the “Art of Eight Limbs” because it makes use of eight points of contact: fists, feet, knees and elbows.

Meet your trainer at a local gym, learn the key techniques, then head on to the stadium for the main event. Go backstage to see the pros prepare, then grab a ringside seat for the fight — including the traditional, dance-like “ring-sealing” ritual. Meet the champion later for a photo op! 

Beginning in the old town center and working outwards to the peak of Doi Suthep, trace Chiang Mai’s spiritual heritage from city-center chedis, up the longest naga stairway in Thailand to one of the North’s most sacred sites.

Stop in along the way at Wat Pha Lat, an enchanting “hidden jungle temple” tucked away from the crowds, and arrive at Doi Suthep in time for the evening ceremony, when monks’ chanting drifts across the landscape as the sun begins to set. 

Get beneath the skin of this eccentric beacon of creative culture as you take in the dazzlingly kitsch vision of Buddhism at the White Temple, contemplate the meaning of life and death at the hellish Black House, then peruse scripture art at the strikingly contemporary Blue Temple. Grab lunch at an arts community with a local art expert, then round off the day in the hills at the home and gallery of a local potter.