Thailand is one of my dream destinations, visited this new year with my favorite people. I will cherish this trip for a lifetime and i am looking forward to visit again. In this blog i will share complete itinerary of my trip. You all know about the Novel Corona virus situation, during my trip Thailand got about 20+ cases and a human to human transmission case detected at Phuket. We were so worried about the trip, but took a chance.
Places we visited during our trip in order :
Krabi
Phuket
Pattaya
Bangkok
You should never miss Krabi/Phuket during your thailand visit. There are many beautiful islands near thailand and it will be a lifetime experience visiting those islands. Day tours/Private tours to the islands are available from both Krabi and Phuket. (As there is an virus outbreak in Phuket, we changed our plans in the last minute and stayed at Krabi for four days and went to phuket for one day, we did our island hopping from Krabi as we thought of doing this from Phuket before). However after visiting Krabi and Phuket everything and everyplace is fine. There is nothing like an outbreak and everything is normal. We enjoyed our stay in Krabi, Phuket and Pattaya without even wearing masks. In bangkok the situation was precautious.
KRABI :
After a 8-9hrs flight we have reached our hotel at 1PM in the afternoon (cab from airport to Hotel at Ao Nang was 500baht), we did wait until the check in time 2pm in the reception.
Hotel was too good, the service, pool, facilities and shuttle everything was perfect. It was about 1200 baht per night.
We had some pool time and after some rest we went to Ao Nang beach for evening walk and also for booking island tours. Ao Nang beach was good, especially the beach line, full of markets, pubs and all.
Ao Nang beach has a boat service where they provide trips to nearby Phra Nang Cave beach, Railey Beach and islands - Poda islands, Chicken islands, jamesbond islands, phi phi islands etc.. These are not day tours but only pickup and drop service by long tail boats. I dont recommend these services for Poda/Chicken/Phi Phi/Jamesbond tours. Because you need to be on your own after dropping at these islands, instead use these services to visit Phra Nang Cave beach and Railey Beach which are very nearer to Ao nang, Book an up and down ticket as they are very affordable, visit these beaches have your time and return back as they provide you the timings for their last boat. (Mostly the last boat will be 6PM from railey/phra nang to ao nang)
There are many stalls providing Day tours to different islands from Krabi along the Ao nang beach line. You can negotiate and go for the best deal, dont stick to one stall instead roam and negotiate. If you have a gang then you can give your number and negotiate as the vendors will be ready to give you a discount if you have a gang. We visited different stalls and got a good deal for three days, One day for Krabi day tour (As krabi got some places to visit), and other two days for Phi-Phi and Jamesbond island tours. These day tours includes Guide, hotel pickup and drop with lunch, this will be the same from Phuket as well.
Our first day tour includes some of the places in Krabi, this is a half day tour with hotel pickup and drop, Includes tour to Krabi Hot springs, Emerald Pool, Blue Pool and Monkey Temple with entry ticket fee. We got it for a great deal. If you visit these places on your own you should pay the entry fee. (Hotsprings and Emerald pool fee combined will be about 300baht, i recommend you to go through day tour as you will get lunch, pick and drop to hotel and entry fee included, for us we negotiated for 600 baht per head which is a decent deal)
This place is about 65km and the travel time was about one and half an hour. One of the must visit places in Krabi.
(Carry yourself a pool dress to have a pool time,swimming allowed in Emerald pool and Hot springs but not in Blue pool)
The entry for Blue pool and emerald pool will be same, it will be a 1km walk to blue pool from the entry and a 400m walk to Emerald pool from blue pool.
(Trust me you will get insta worthy pics here, most beautiful place)
Then we had lunch and returned to hotel, we had some pool time and we were back to Ao Nang beach, we opted Boat services to have a visit to Phra Nang Cave Beach, (Theres one more beach in Krabi and thats Railey beach, you can skip that if you have time constraints but not Phra nang cave beach).
Later we visited Krabi town market (We took a grab from Ao nang beach after getting down from long tail boat).
We had a day tour to Jamesbond island, we were given Hotel pickup and drop. On this day we covered
Jamesbond island Tour
Canoeing
Lunch at Koh Panyee Village
Return to Pier and travel to Monkey Temple
Hotel Drop
(If you are going to jamesbond island from Phuket you will have an extra island to visit included in this tour, Hong Island, Rest will be the same)
And its day 4 and we went to Phi-Phi island day tour, as it is far compared to Jamesbond so usually the tours will be on Speed boat.
Tour was like :
Visit to Bamboo island
Snorkeling at Koh phi phi don snorkeling area
Phi phi islands tour
Lunch at Ko Phi Phi Don
Return to Ao Nang and Hotel drop.
After spending some time in Koh Phi Phi don island, we returned.
A glimpse of Chicken island during our return (due to time constraints we didnt plan to chicken island visit)
Apart from these there are other places to visit in krabi :
Islands like Ko Poda/Hong island etc (it takes more than one week to cover all of the islands from krabi/phuket)
Tiger cave temple
Railey Beach. (Plan according to your time)
And thats about our Krabi visit, they are many services that provide transport from krabi to phuket, (you can find at the ao nang beach itself all the day tour vendors will provide taxi and bus services to Phuket) If you are not interested in these, you can opt public transport but you need to go to Krabi town bus station to board the bus.
PHUKET:
(Walking street also called as Bangla road is full of pubs, go go bars, nightclubs, gentleman clubs, ping pong shows etc...)
(Walking street is full of pubs, bars, go go bars, gentleman clubs, food joints, street food, ping pong shows, strip clubs etc ....)
Apart from these there are other places to visit in Phuket :
Sunday night market
Phuket Big Budha
Kata Noi beach (A quite and serene beach)
Karon beach and Karon View point
PATTAYA :
And the next day we were on our way to Pattaya, we opted flight to go to pattaya instead of over night bus travel. Thats the better and best way to go to Bangkok/pattaya from Krabi/Phuket. (For pattaya Airport is U-Tapao, 15km away from city)
Day 7, we went to Tiger park and that got ended to be the best in the trip.
They are many tiger parks and tiger temples in Thailand, Big and famous one is in Chiang Mai. Tiger temples got tigers that are drugged where as in tiger parks these tigers are not drugged and you will be under the supervision of experts. (Medium tigers are so tough compared to big ones). Actually we were planned to visit the Tiger park on Phuket, but due to time constraints we came to pattaya, surprisingly it is cheaper than Phuket. Big tiger/Medium Tiger/Small tiger entry will be different (600,700,800 respectively and 200baht for photographer if you want, he will take 50 pictures of yours with any one of the tiger i.e big/small/medium. You need to pay 600 baht if you want photographer for all of the tigers). In phuket tiger park the rates are so costly you can check online.
Later we went to Bali Pier to Visit Coral Island (Koh Larn). You will have passenger boats to Coral island for every half an hour from morning 7AM to evening 6PM and vice versa. Ticket will be 30 baht per person. If you are with family visit coral island on a private speed boat and touch all of the beaches of coral island in that speed boat itself.
You can take a bike for rental and roam around the beaches in coral island, believe me this island got most beautiful beaches. Bike rent will be 250 per day and they will accept any govt id not only passport.
And we are done with pattaya, other than these you can also visit the following in Pattaya
Pattaya floating market (A bit costly for the entry fee, i will recommend bangkok floating markets rather than this)
Jomtien beach.
BANGKOK :
On the first day of bangkok, we opted to visit chatuchak weekend market as my friends want to do some shopping. And this day we spent most of our time at chatuchak and Siam malls.
Basically the first priority for me is to try food (as i am planning to visit Thailand again), so i am full on food hopping on day 9 and day 10 at bangkok(i will write another blog about the food hopping). The only place i managed to visit was Wat Pho. I heard about this place much and just want to see that extraordinary view of golden inclined buddha. Must visit. (Entry 200 baht)
Other than these the following are the places to visit in Bangkok,
Grand Palace & Emerald Buddha Temple (Entry ticket will be same, about 600Baht)
Wat Arun (200 baht)
Floating markets (there are three four in bangkok, you can visit any one or all, upon your interest)
Safari world & Water park (this itself will take a day so plan accordingly, pickup/entry ticket/guide tour and drop at hotel tours are available in markets and bangkok airport too, if you dont find one visit klook.com, cost will be about 1500 baht per head)
Asiatique riverfront
Lumphini park (if you like parks)
Sea Life Bangkok (Available at Siam paragon mall)
Suggestion :
BTS skytrain is best for roaming around bangkok, you can take day pass (costs about 140baht). Some places dont have Skytrain and they are connected with MTS underline train and some places have bus transport, MTS day pass is about 120 baht. Grab is cheaper in bangkok when compared to Phuket and Krabi. I have roamed around bangkok with the help of Skytrain and MTS, never boarded a cab/bus.
And the final day i had best pork noodles as breakfast and had some rest and boarded the flight to Mumbai from Suvarnabhumi Airport.
Thats all folks.
HAPPY TRAVELLING ....HAPPY EXPLORING ....HAPPY EATING !!