Thailand Heritage & Beach

Your guide meets the group in the arrivals hall at Suvarnabhumi Airport and a private coach runs into the city. Arrival times vary by flight, so the day is built around the schedule rather than against it, with the check-in beside the river timed to when the group actually lands.

Time to settle in and shake off the flight. Bangkok announces itself slowly from the hotel, a capital built on a scale the rest of the country never attempts, before the evening turns to the oldest quarter in the city.

After dark the guide leads a walk through Chinatown, down Yaowarat Road where the gold shops give way to the street kitchens, roast duck and noodle stalls and carts of mango with sticky rice, the solid-gold Buddha of Wat Traimit standing nearby for the quiet of the temple before the noise of the street.

A full morning at the ceremonial heart of the city, the Grand Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, the seat of the kingdom for more than two hundred years, then Wat Pho next door, where the gilded reclining Buddha runs forty-six metres end to end and the country's first centre of public learning still teaches traditional medicine in the side halls.

Across the Chao Phraya to Wat Arun, the temple of dawn, its porcelain-clad prang best seen from the water, then a longtail boat through the canal communities of Thonburi, the old city that still lives at the pace of the river behind the high-rise one bank over.

The evening is free, useful for the Chatuchak weekend market if the dates fall right or a quiet hour in Lumphini Park before dinner in the city.

An hour and a half north by private coach to Ayutthaya, the capital that ran the kingdom for four centuries until a Burmese army burned it in 1767. At Wat Mahathat a sandstone Buddha head sits cradled in the roots of a bodhi tree, grown around the stone over the centuries since the city fell, the single image most travellers carry away from the old capital.

Wat Phra Si Sanphet and its three restored chedis on the royal palace grounds, then the rows of robed Buddhas at Wat Yai Chai Mongkhon beneath a chedi tall enough to climb for the view across the ruins. The scale of the site only registers from inside it.

Back to Bangkok by early evening for the last night on the river, the third in the same hotel so the day trip needs no change of base.

A morning flight north to Chiang Mai, the cultural capital of the north and once the seat of the Lanna kingdom, a little over an hour in the air against most of a day on the road.

The road climbs the mountain on the city's edge to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, the gold chedi that has looked down on Chiang Mai since the fourteenth century, reached by a staircase flanked by two long nagas or by funicular for those who would rather save their legs, with the city laid out on the plain below.

Down into the walled old city for a night market in the Lanna heart of the town, the lanes between the temples given over after dark to food and the crafts of the north.

A morning at an ethical elephant sanctuary in the hills outside the city, where the day is spent feeding and bathing the animals and learning how they are cared for, the model that has replaced the old riding camps across the north. There is no riding.

Back to Chiang Mai and the square old city inside its moat, time among the Lanna temples the north built in its own style, Wat Chedi Luang with its half-ruined royal chedi and Wat Phra Singh at the western gate, with the afternoon left unhurried.

If the dates line up the Saturday or Sunday walking street takes over a whole lane of the old city after dark; otherwise a quiet dinner inside the walls.

A morning flight south to Phuket, the country's largest island and the base for the Andaman coast, the temples and mountains of the north traded for the sea in the space of a couple of hours.

Check-in at the beach resort and the first afternoon of resort time, the pool and the sand after five days of touring, with nothing on the schedule but the coast.

Sunset at Promthep Cape, the headland at the southern tip of the island where the day ends over the water and the Andaman opens out to the west.

A boat day out into the marine national parks of the Andaman, to the reefs of the Surin Islands, far enough offshore to have stayed quiet, the snorkelling rather than the beach the whole reason for the crossing.

The day moves between anchorages over the coral, longtails and a dive boat standing off the reef, lunch taken on the water or on a sheltered beach, with time in the shallows for snorkellers of every level.

Back to Phuket by late afternoon, the boats in before dark, for a last evening on the resort coast.

A slow morning on the coast, the beach or the resort spa, the one unstructured stretch of the route after a week of moving.

An afternoon walking tour of Phuket Old Town, the Sino-Portuguese shophouses of Thalang Road in their faded pastels, the legacy of the tin-mining merchants who built the town long before the beaches were the draw, with the cafes and the weekend market for the last of the shopping.

A final evening on the Andaman coast, dinner by the water to close the route.

Breakfast at the resort. The guide coordinates the departure transfers, timing each vehicle to the individual flight schedules so no one waits at the airport longer than they have to.

Private transfer to Phuket International Airport for outbound flights, whether a domestic connection through Bangkok or a direct international departure. Groups extending onward in the south or across to the islands can be routed from here.

The route ends at the airport. Safe travels.