Thailand and china!

Here’s our 16 day itinerary for Thailand with a quick stop in China. Every time we book a trip I wish we had just one more week! but this ended up being a good amount of time. A few days at the end of the trip were spent in Guangzhou, China. If you have the time, and don’t want to stop in China (Hong Kong anyone??), I would definitely recommend spending those three days on the islands.

Our schedule:

Day 1 – Travel day to Bangkok

Day 2 – Bangkok

Day 3 – Bangkok

Day 4 – Bangkok to Chang Mai

Day 5 – Chang Mai

Day 6 – Chang Mai

Day 7 – Chang Mai to Chang Dao

Day 8 – Chang Dao

Day 9 – Chang Dao to Chang Mai

Day 10 – Chang Mai to Koh Lanta

Day 11 – Koh Lanta

Day 12 – Koh Lanta

Day 13 – Koh Lanta to Krabi to Guangzhou, China

Day 14 – Guangzhou, China

Day 15 – Guangzhou, China

Day 16 – Travel day back to the states!

Our planning:

When booking, there was some back and forth on island hopping vs. traveling up north. I’d never been to Asia. T had been to Thailand previously, but not to the northern part of the country. The northern region is known for having unique culture, customs, and, especially interesting to us, cuisine.

After a little researching we decided on Chiang Mai and, north of that, Chiang Dao. Neither of us are the “backpacker” type so we avoided Pai, which has become known as a bit of a backpacker’s paradise (and probably our worst nightmare.)

Both of us would have loved to take more time and gone further north into Myanmar (Burma) but decided to save that for it’s own trip and squeeze in some beach days. Not going to lie, after all of our city adventures it took me almost a full day to get on “island time.” Things felt almost too slow at first but a relaxed beer on the beach was all it took for me to feel very islandly 😉 and I am so glad we made it part of our itinerary!