3 weeks roadtrip through Thailand

Constanze Daamen
Jun 17, 2017
6 min read

Updated: Dec 10, 2020

3 nights in Bangkok

After a great week in Koh Phanang we arrived end of May in Bangkok to pick up Karin who would join us for a 3 weeks roadtrip through Thailand. Of course, we picked her up in style and spent the first day just catching up.

The weather forecast was not that ideal as it had rained a lot in Bangkok and loads of roads were regularly flooded. Luckily the rain stopped just before we went on our first tourist activity; the Co van Kessel Tour “off the beaten track” (literally just before – we still had to survive the taxi boat down the river in very strong rain).

The next couple of hours we experienced Bangkok from the not touristic point of view while riding our bikes through the backstreets. Although we did not see the highlights such as palaces or anything like that we enjoyed cruising through the small streets and Bangkok’s markets (“mind your head”).

That tour gave us a good impression of how people live in one of the biggest cities in the world.

Ps. We did wander over the Kao San Road but did not participate in any bucket drinking, ping pong show and anything else crazy.

Kanchanaburi

Our first stop of our roadtrip was Kanchanaburi. We took the train (remember Mr Cow) to get there and got very happy when we got to our first countryside guesthouse right next to the river. What a peace compared to the never sleeping city life of Bangkok.

Kanchanaburi is a small city which is filled with history of the second world war as a lot of tragic happened in and around that sleepy town. After Japan invaded Asia, they prisoned above all Dutch, British, American and Australian soldiers and civilians and sent them to working camps in order to build a railwail through the jungle to connect Thailand (Siam) with Myanmar (Birma). The so called POW’s (prisoners of war) lived under very cruel and harsh circumstances and a lot of people (hundred thousand of POW’s and even more Asian workers) lost their lives while building the railway and bridges.

Renting bikes was the perfect way to explore the history of Kanchanaburi so we cycled around the whole day to see the bridge of death, the JEATH museum, the cementary and the railway of death museum.

It was very impressive (and sad) so we decided to end the afternoon with a visit to a waterpark (we were the only visitors haha).

Our tour on the second day was less history loaded as we went to the Erawan national park to hike up the Erawan waterfalls. We even reached the 7th level where Rick and Karin went swimming. It was nice but looked nicer in the brochures (the 6th level was nicer than the 7th).

Ayutthaya

The second city we went to was Ayutthaya (the old capital of Siam – Thailand). After an everlasting bustour we arrived at our hotel (with pool) and immediately booked a longtail boat tour to see some famous temples and to have dinner at the night market.

The next morning we went on a biketour to see more famous temples and Buddha’s (the Buddha head in the tree, the declining Buddha, Buddha in a bat temple, small buddha’s & huge buddha’s).

Everything was beautiful but we were already getting a bit of a Buddha and Wat overload. Wat?

Wat = temple

Sukothai

The original plan was to get a bus to Chiang Mai but we changed our minds and decided to make a stop a small town called Sukothai where we did a short but very efficient biketour through the historical temple park.

Li (Lamphun district)

Once that we tasted the freedom of changing the plan a new plan came up. Let’s find a place in the middle of nowhere that no one really knows: Li. The DEWO Garden and Guest house seemed to be the perfect location (in the middle of the hills with a nice pool to chill at). The only challenge was how to get there. Well, we did eventually :) Trust me, you cannot go from A to B more local than we did. Thanks to Ms Li who taught us counting in Thai!

We spent the next 2 nights in a little paradise “off the beaten track” ;). Wolfgang (the owner of the guest house) and his wife took us on a free tour to the temple cave that not too many tourists visit ( the old monks actually had to unlock the door down to the cave where Monks used to live. Rick and Karin went deep into the cave.. I did not dare because of the dark and the bats). They took us to some more temples with loads of stairs, too.

Chiang Mai

After being on the road for 10 days we decided to go on with our original plan: heading to Chiang Mai.

In Chiang Mai we spent some hours walking through the old capitol, visited the night bazaar and had the worst dinner so far ( but there was this cool band with a 10 years old drummer and 12 years old guitarist + a girl playing hardcore rock).

On the next day all of us did a tour of our own. Karin explored Chiang Mai on her own and Rick and me went on an Elephant caring, hiking and rafting tour. We fed the “rescued” elephants, bathed them and made medicine for them. It was great experience but we left with mixed feelings. Are the elephants really happy there? We will never know.

After that our guide took us hiking for in total 2 hours through the jungle to a waterfall in heavy rain (there was no need to get into the waterfalls as we were already soaked from the hike which we still did for the pictures…).

The last activity included rafting and bamboo rafting (well, bamboo drowning …very very weird).

We were so tired at the end of the day! Karin was completely chilled and had beautiful “new” nails (much nicer than the nails we got in Ayutthaya).

Chiang Rai

We went further north and reached Chiang Rai after 14 days of travelling through Thailand. We had a great night at the night market (which only takes place Saturdays). There was so much great food (challenge: everyone picks some local food to try and it should not cost more than 30 Bath in total).

Remarkable: Experience the 6 pm honouring of the king. They played the king’s song and the national hymn. Everyone got up and the whole town was completely quiet. No-one was moving.

While enjoying all the fresh food some local dancers started dancing in a circle (with live music). More and more locals joined in so did we :). It was a great experience!

Our second day in Chiang Rai was hard work as we booked a hardcore sightseeing tour (12 hours) to see the White temple, the blue temple, the tea plantation, the black house museum, long neck Karen (we skipped her/them ...it is a tribe), the money cave (so many stairs and weird attractions), the checkpoint Myanmar, the opium museum (Rick did go in there we skipped that one), the huge fake elephants (Karin and me went riding them), the golden triangle and finally the Chiang Sean viewpoint. All of us slept like babies that night.

Phuket

To save some time and in order to still be able to visit the Khao Sok National Park we decided to fly to Phuket in order to spent the night there and continue the next day to Khao Sok. All of us enjoyed the hours at the beach there but it was not a really special place.

Khao Sok National park

Coming here was the best decision ever! The guesthouse we were staying at was so gorgeous and we were already almost in the jungle (next to a small river).

The lake experience tour we did while being there was one of the best thing we have done so far. We slept in very very veeeeery simple bungalows at the lake right in the middle of the National Park.

The nature we saw was just breath-taking and even looked unreal (Jurassic park was filmed there).

During the night you could hear all kinds of animals and we think we even heard elephants braking the bamboo (so not much sleep for any of us). In the morning you could hear the Gibbons singing their songs and you woke up in an astonishing surrounding. It was so beautiful and it is hard to imagine that the lake is a result of a dam that was built only in 1980 in order to produce electricity. It is a little contradictive as the flooding destroyed a lot of wild life, yet the lake and its nature around is one the greatest things I have ever seen.