Travel Style: Private Couple Journey
Destination: Thailand
Trip Length: 21 Days
Number of People: 2
Route: Bangkok → Chiang Mai → Chiang Rai → Koh Samui
Focus: Temples & Markets • Northern Thailand • Island Days
Introduction
Martin Gatherar and his wife, both in their sixties, traveled from England for a 21-day trip through Thailand. They had taken short vacations in Europe for years, but this was their longest trip together and their first in Southeast Asia. They wanted the whole picture: Bangkok, the north, and an island.
Three weeks is a long time to keep interesting. They had heard from friends that temple after temple starts to blur, and they did not want to spend their vacation working out how to get from one base to the next. They booked the trip as a private journey, with hotels, internal flights, and a driver and guide at each stop arranged in advance.
Planning the Journey
Eva, their UME Travel specialist, worked out the order of the three weeks before any list of sights: Bangkok first, Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai in the middle, Koh Samui last, so the trip ended on the water instead of in a city. She booked the internal flights that covered the long legs and had a driver meet Martin and his wife at each arrivals hall with a name card.
The Chiang Rai leg took the most planning. The drive from Chiang Mai runs about three and a half hours, and the temples around Chiang Rai are spread out, so a day trip would have put them in a car for twelve hours to get a few hours on the ground. Eva gave them one night in Chiang Rai and broke the drive at the Mae Kachan hot spring, where the water comes out hot enough that vendors boil eggs in baskets at the roadside. She also built one Bangkok day around the Maeklong Railway Market, timing it so they were on the platform when the train came through and the awnings folded back — the train passes several times a day, and the stop only works if someone knows the schedule. The days that needed reserving — the sanctuary morning, the cooking class, the boat trip — were booked before they left England.
Destination Experience
Their Bangkok hotel sat on the river, so most days began at a pier, which kept them out of the city traffic. One morning covered Wat Traimit, where the Buddha is solid gold, close to five and a half tons of it, then the reclining Buddha at Wat Pho and the Grand Palace with the Emerald Buddha Temple, started early and dressed for the palace rule on covered shoulders and knees. A guide walked the palace complex with them, which made the layout and the dress rules easier to follow. Another day went out by long-tail boat to Damnoen Saduak, past vendors selling fruit and noodles from boats low in the water, with the Maeklong train worked into the drive back. Ayutthaya, about an hour out of the city, was a day among the ruins of the old capital, which stood as Siam's seat for more than four centuries before it fell in 1767.
In Chiang Mai the days were hands-on. At Elephant Jungle Sanctuary, Martin and his wife spent a morning feeding elephants that have been retired from logging and trekking work, walking with them; there is no riding there. At Suwannee Thai Cooking Class the two of them shopped the market, pounded green curry paste in a granite mortar, and sat down with the rest of the group to eat what they had cooked. Doi Suthep, above the city, sits at the top of a naga staircase of more than 300 steps; they took the funicular up and walked down. Further along the mountain road they stopped at a Hmong village, where the children were dressed in traditional clothes.
Chiang Rai got one night and one full day. The White Temple was the main stop, the white bridge over hands reaching up out of the ground. The two other buildings nearby went into the same day: the Blue Temple, finished in 2016 by a painter who trained under the White Temple's artist, and the Black House, black teak halls holding the work of the artist Thawan Duchanee.
Koh Samui closed the trip. A day by car took them through coconut groves to the Big Buddha at Wat Phra Yai, which stands on an islet joined to the coast by a causeway, then down the south coast to the Grandfather and Grandmother Rocks and Na Muang Waterfall, with a Thai massage fitted into the afternoon. Their last full day was a boat out to Mu Ko Ang Thong, the marine park of islands off the coast, which took the whole day. On Koh Mae Ko they climbed the stairway to the viewpoint above the lagoon, swam from the boat, and ate lunch on board.
Travel Result
Martin and his wife had asked for three weeks covering Bangkok, the north, and an island, without having to manage the moving around themselves. The part they wanted help with was settled before they left England: the flights, the drivers at each stop, and the hotel nights.
They spent their last full day on the water and flew home at the end of day twenty-one.
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