Thailand Cultural Circuit

Nothing is scheduled. European long haul into Bangkok lands between early afternoon and half past seven in the evening. Across nine real arrivals on our own files the earliest touched down at 12:05 and the latest at 19:05, so the day is built around that fact, not against it.

Your guide meets the group inside the arrivals hall at Suvarnabhumi and stays with it for the next nine days. A private coach runs into the city, about forty five minutes when the traffic behaves and closer to ninety when it does not.

Check in on the river, then a welcome dinner with Wat Arun lit across the water. No ticket, no monument, no coach after dinner.

On the road at eight, which is when Wat Pho opens and roughly ninety minutes before the first coaches reach it. The reclining Buddha runs forty six metres end to end, and the massage school in the side halls has been teaching since the eighteenth century. From the pier behind the temple the cross river ferry takes four minutes to Wat Arun.

Lunch, then back to the hotel and the middle of the day is left alone. Bangkok between one and four is a bad place to walk a group and a good place to sit by a pool. Pick up again at half past four.

Wat Traimit and the five and a half tonne solid gold Buddha that spent two centuries hidden under plaster, then a walk into Yaowarat as the stalls light up, and dinner in Chinatown. The Grand Palace is not on this route by default. Two of our last three clients on this corridor asked us to take it out, and what replaces it is on Day 7. We will put it back as a Day 2 morning for any group that wants it.

Half past eight out of Bangkok, ninety minutes north, at the hotel in Ayutthaya by ten. Wat Mahathat first, where a sandstone Buddha head sits inside the roots of a bodhi tree that grew around it in the centuries after the Burmese burned the city in 1767, then the three restored royal chedis of Wat Phra Si Sanphet on the old palace ground.

Lunch, and then four hours off. The open ruins are brutal between noon and four and there is nothing premium about walking twenty four people through them at that hour.

Back out at four for Wat Chaiwatthanaram on the river, which is the reason the day is shaped this way. The Khmer style prang and the chedis around it take the last of the light with the water running gold behind them. Dinner at the hotel afterwards, on the river, away from the main road.

Half past eight out of Ayutthaya. This is the longest driving day on the route, about five hours of road in total, and it is the only thing on the schedule. The coach runs north through the rice plains of the central basin with a comfort stop on the way.

Lunch in Phitsanulok and one stop, Wat Phra Si Rattana Mahathat, for Phra Buddha Chinnarat. Cast in the fourteenth century, the most copied Buddha image in Thailand, and the bridge into everything the group will look at tomorrow. An hour more and the coach is at Sukhothai by four.

Check in within cycling distance of the historical park, at a low rise resort built in the local style. Dinner on site. Nothing else, on purpose.

Breakfast at six and on the bicycles by quarter to seven, which puts the group inside the historical park while the light is still low and before the first bus reaches the gate. Wat Mahathat, Wat Si Sawai, then Wat Si Chum, where a seated Buddha fills a roofless brick mondop and one finger of one hand stands taller than a person. Back at the resort by half past ten.

The heat of the day is free. The Ramkhamhaeng National Museum and the Sangkhalok kilns are there for anyone who wants them, and nobody is required to go anywhere.

Out again at five for Wat Sa Si and Wat Traphang Ngoen, the two temples standing on islands in the park's lotus ponds. Both are ordinary at noon and neither one is at half past five. Loi Krathong was born in this park, so a November full moon departure sees it lit. Dinner in town.

An hour north to Si Satchanalai, the sister city Sukhothai built and the part of this landscape almost nobody visits. Wat Chang Lom stands on a base of thirty nine elephants and Wat Chedi Chet Thaeo holds the tombs of the city's rulers. On most mornings the group has the ruins to itself.

Lunch, then about two and a half hours to Lampang. The coach stops before town at Wat Phra That Lampang Luang, a walled temple on a mound holding the oldest surviving wooden hall in the country, with a camera obscura in the monks' quarters that throws the golden chedi upside down onto a sheet. This is the seam in the route. Everything before it belongs to Siam and everything after it belongs to Lanna.

Into Lampang and check in. This is a working night on the road and we say so plainly. Horse carriages, teak shophouses along the Wang river, and no luxury hotel in the province, which is exactly why the days on either side of it are kept light.

An unhurried breakfast and an hour on foot through the teak quarter by the river before the coach loads at half past nine. Nothing is booked and nothing needs to be.

Two hours north to Chiang Mai, the shortest driving day on the route. Mangrai founded Chiang Rai in 1262 and moved his capital here in 1296, so this is the one leg that runs forwards in time. Lunch on arrival, check in, and the afternoon is left alone.

At five, a walk inside the moat. Wat Chedi Luang first, whose royal chedi lost its top to an earthquake in 1545 and which held the Emerald Buddha for eighty four years before it went on to Luang Prabang, Vientiane and finally to the Bangkok temple this route deliberately did not enter on Day 2. Wat Phra Singh is fifteen minutes further and takes the last of the light on its gilded gable. Dinner in the old city.

Quarter past six up the mountain. Doi Suthep is a different building at that hour, cold and quiet and empty enough to hear the bells over the terrace. Three hundred and six steps up the naga staircase, and a funicular for anyone who would rather not. Back down for a late breakfast by half past nine.

The middle of the day is free, and that is deliberate. Eight days of temples has earned an afternoon that asks for nothing.

At half past three the group walks a market with a northern cook, buys what the kitchen needs, and spends the rest of the afternoon making the dishes of the Lanna table. Dinner is what the group cooked. Groups who would rather be outdoors swap this for Mae Kampong, a highland village an hour out that grows miang and coffee and receives visitors on its own terms. There is no elephant camp and no staged village stop on this route and there never has been.

Breakfast, and late checkout wherever the flight allows.

Private transfers to Chiang Mai International, each vehicle timed to its own flight so nobody sits in a terminal for four hours.

The route ends in the north instead of doubling back to Bangkok, which is why there is no domestic connection built into it. Groups continuing to the islands, or across the border into Laos, are routed onward from here.