S5, E50: How to See Thailand’s Wonders Without Feeling Like a Tourist

Travel journalist Kathryn Romeyn shares how to find Thailand off the beaten path—from Nan Province night markets to Khao Sok’s rainforest—plus the best time to visit Thailand if you want fewer crowds and lower prices.

This week on Unpacked, host Aislyn Greene explores Thailand off the beaten path with journalist Kathryn Romeyn, who’s covered Southeast Asia since 2014 and calls Bali, Indonesia home. Kathryn returned to Thailand again and again since her first real trip in 2018, and wrote Afar’s guide to seeing the country differently.

In this episode, part of Unpacked’s Off the Tourist Trail series, she and Aislyn dig into Bangkok’s overlooked neighborhoods, the north’s least-visited provinces, and—critically—the best time to visit Thailand if you want to skip both the crowds and the price surge of high season.

How to See Thailand’s Wonders Without Feeling Like a Tourist

Thailand isn’t just Bangkok’s greatest hits and Koh Samui’s beaches. On this episode of Unpacked—part of the Off the Tourist Trail series—host Aislyn Greene talks with Bali-based travel journalist Kathryn Romeyn, who has covered Southeast Asia since 2014, about the country beyond its 3 most famous provinces. They dig into how to see Bangkok’s greatest hits without the crowds, why some of Thailand’s best stays are 3-star family-run guesthouses rather than 5-star resorts, and how Nan province—a mountainous, coffee-growing region bordering Laos—became one of her favorite corners of the country.

Topics discussed in this episode

• Why finding Thailand off the beaten path means letting go of 5-star expectations, and how a modest family-run guesthouse can outshine a luxury resort
• The best time to visit Thailand: why the shoulder seasons beat the crowded, expensive December–January peak, and why to avoid the hot, rainy August–September stretch
• How to see Bangkok’s “greatest hits,” like the Grand Palace and Wat Arun, without the crowds—and why getting intentionally lost in the back canals pays off
• Inside Nan province, Thailand’s mountainous north near Laos: a region once known for opium cultivation, now for arabica coffee, road trips, and night markets
• Why hiring a local guide or outfitter, rather than researching everything online, is often the difference between a good trip and an unforgettable one

Frequently asked questions

What is the best time to visit Thailand to avoid crowds?

The shoulder seasons—roughly March through July and October through November—offer a good balance of manageable crowds and decent weather. December and January are peak season: the most crowded, most expensive, and hardest to book. August and September bring the hottest, rainiest monsoon weather, so many travelers avoid that stretch too.

What is Afar’s Off the Tourist Trail series?

Off the Tourist Trail is an Afar series of guides and episodes on how to experience popular destinations—from Thailand to Iceland to England—without the crowds, using local tips rather than the standard tourist circuit.

Where can you go in Thailand to avoid the crowds?

Beyond Bangkok, Phuket, and Koh Samui, consider Koh Yao Noi (a quiet island between Phuket and Krabi), Khao Sok National Park in the south, and Nan province in the mountainous north near Laos. Staying in smaller, 2- and 3-star, Thai-run guesthouses instead of international hotel chains also opens up far more of the country.

What is Nan province, Thailand, known for?

Nan province is a mountainous region in northern Thailand near the Laos border, known for winding scenic roads, Buddhist temples, night markets, and rice paddies. A former opium-growing region, much of its farmland was converted to arabica coffee cultivation decades ago as part of a royal development project.

People, places, and resources in this episode

• “How to See Thailand’s Wonders Without Feeling Like a Tourist” — read Kathryn Romeyn’s full Afar story
• Off the Tourist Trail — more guides to popular places without the crowds
• Smiling Albino — Bangkok-based tour operator founded by Dan Fraser
• Red Savannah — bespoke UK travel operator used for Nan province
• Thanyamundra Organic Resort, bordering Khao Sok National Park
• Nan Seasons Boutique Resort and Boklua View Resort, Nan province
• Capella Bangkok — riverside luxury hotel
• Cape & Kantary Hotels and its Cape Kudu property on Koh Yao Noi

Full transcript

Aislyn Greene: I’m Aislyn Greene, and this week on Unpacked, we’re going to Thailand. But we’re going to explore the country beyond the touristy hotspots—beyond what we’ve all seen in countless travel guides, and on movies and shows, including, yes, The White Lotus. Because this episode is part of our Off the Tourist Trail series, where we share local tips on how to get beyond the crowds in the world’s busiest places. You can find the whole series on afar.com.

My guest and our guide today is, Kathryn Romeyn, a freelance travel writer who’s covered Southeast Asia since 2014 and has called Bali, Indonesia, home for years. She’s returned to Thailand again and again since her first real trip there in 2018, and she wrote Afar’s latest guide to seeing the country a little differently. In our conversation, we get into the north’s overlooked provinces, how to approach Bangkok’s greatest hits without rushing them, and where the best recommendations still come from a conversation with a stranger and not an app or AI.

We’re here today to talk about Thailand and we were talking earlier this week about how we both worked in the travel industry for years, and we’d had this kind of knee-jerk reaction to Thailand—we felt, before visiting, that it was overtouristed and that’s true in certain coastal destinations and especially in the wake of season 3 of The White Lotus. But there’s so much more to Thailand, as you’ll share. So I’m curious how you came to visit the country for the first time, and what you experienced?

Kathryn Romeyn: Yeah, well, again as you said, I really had this idea that everyone I knew had been there—which I don’t even think was true, but it felt like, oh, probably all the travel writers have been there, it’s already kind of discovered. I don’t need to spend my time there because I should go places that are, you know, less done.

So when I started travel writing as a freelancer in 2014, I really was intrigued by Asia. I came to Bali, Indonesia, for the first time by myself, and then really wanted to experience more of Southeast Asia. So I went pretty much everywhere but Thailand for years—Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Vietnam. Then I guess, technically, my first time in Thailand was the start of a Seabourn cruise I took, that took off from Bangkok, and the first stop was Koh Kood. But that was just for a beach stop, where there was food set up on the beach, you could get massages, swim in the water—I remember the water being exceptionally clear and beautiful—but that didn’t feel like Thailand to me. So I would count my first time as a trip I took around 2018, I believe to be Bangkok and Krabi.

In Bangkok, what really struck me was being on the water. My best friend was on this trip with me, and we spent a lot of time on boats, going up and down the Chao Phraya River, seeing the temples sort of peeking over the rooftops—these golden beacons almost so beautiful. We wandered through the flower market, took a Muay Thai kickboxing class, that was super fun and took a cooking class that had us start on a tuk-tuk, going into the local market with a chef, picking out ingredients, seeing some of these crazy things that are in the markets that I had really never seen before, and then cooking in this little teak house by the river.

It was just very eye-opening, I think, to experience a major city in I guess Southeast Asia that is so unique and different from, you know, Singapore or Hong Kong—there aren’t really any big cities I’d been to in Indonesia at that time. In the meantime, I had also moved and built a house in Bali and is living there part-time so I now live in Indonesia, in Bali, with my family. But Bangkok felt so unique, such a diverse cityscape, these huge, tall, contemporary buildings, little shophouses, very quaint, charming pockets, that sparked this interest in me for seeing more of Thailand, what was beyond Bangkok. Although Bangkok is somewhere I’ve gone over and over, because it’s such a dynamic and really, really exciting city with insane food. Um but beyond that, I think there is just so much I started realizing that Thailand had to offer that you sort of like have to peek under the surface or kind of ask around and get recommendations from people, or even just talk to a waiter or a server or a reception person at a hotel to see where they’re from, and start hearing the different names and you start realizing how big the country is.

Aislyn: And in your story, you get into some of those places where you are outside the city, in these more forested, mountainous areas. So since 2018, what has that been like?

Kathryn: There are 77 provinces in the country, and I’ve realized that really each of them has its own distinctive culture, its own distinctive landscape or mountainscape, or food is another thing that really is so hyper-local—and there’s so much food. You think of Thai food as pad thai, you know, soups that have coconut milk and it’s like the breath of the food is stunning. So I realized I really only scratched the surface and I do go as often as I can, but I still have so many places I’d like to see um there’s a lot on my sort of Thailand bucket list still, even going somewhat regularly.

I was recently in Khao Sok National Park, which is sort of in the south, not too far, I guess, from Phuket as the crow flies. But it’s this giant national park, it’s ancient with wildlife like elephants—you could touch, like see them just sort of grazing around by the river or by a lake. We didn’t see elephants but I didn’t have as much time to really delve into it, as much as I would have loved to stay there because we were at this amazing boutique hotel—only 6 rooms—called Thanyamundra Organic Resort, and the name means abundance of magic. I really felt that was perfectly, you know, perfectly named.

We’d wake up and she would look out at these lush limestone mountains in the distance, layers of green and the mist kind of hovering and then lifting up as the day went on, and just right on the edge of the park you might see monkeys ahead crossing over, just across the river. We went and did hikes to try to find dusky langurs, which is really cool I would say monkey cousins that look like they’re wearing little white goggles—they are hilarious-looking and very elusive. We found some, which is when we went to this lake—that was one of the most magical moments I’ve ever had traveling. We would see other people around, it’s not like there was nobody, but it felt very very special, very rare and intimate.

Aislyn: So tell us a little more about that journey—how have you explored beyond the main cities?

Kathryn: I think it’s such a sensory experience—there’s so many smells, things to hear, things to see, to feel. You really do need to almost forest-bathe your way through the city or a neighborhood, really noticing the little things, not going too fast, you don’t want to speed walk through it. Bangkok is so huge, you don’t want to try to do too much in the first of the day, or have a reservation for dinner across the entire city, because the traffic can also be kind of horrible—which we learned once in Bangkok with my oldest daughter, when she was a toddler and she woke up with her eyes so swollen from a nap we couldn’t see her eyeballs. We took her to the children’s hospital, and it took us an hour, over an hour to get there—by the time we got there, her eyes were back to normal. So you do want to pick a neighborhood and stick with that for the day, I think.

A lot of people I talk to—whether they’re Bangkok locals who’ve lived there their whole lives, or lived for decades—really do recommend intentionally getting lost like trying to just not look at Google Maps, pick a place, take a bus, stand there and look around, and following your senses, follow your instincts. It’s a very safe city, a very open-minded city, and people are very friendly, especially once you get onto the back streets, back canals. I think there’s a curiosity on both ends but then kind of elicits this friendly response of, oh, how did you end up here? Have Google translation app on your phone, if you like, and try to get a bit lost—see where it takes you, see who you meeting or chatting with, and they might recommend something around the next corner you could go see, or taste, or check out.

Another way I’ve liked to sort of approach things: there are so many amazing hotels in Bangkok, it’s kind of hard to pick just one. So if you have like 3 or 4 days and because Bangkok is so worth the time, it should not just be a stop over on the way to Phuket or Pusnew or something but I’ve also tried splitting my time between 2 hotels. I’ve stayed at one that’s right on the river, so you have that experience of watching the life go by on the water, and can easily hop on a longtail boat or water taxi to go do things that are river-oriented, like Capella Bangkok, is a beautiful option right on the river. And then you could go somewhere like The Standard, Bangkok Mahanakhon, which is in a completely different neighborhood, a very different vibe—there’s a train running through right by there, different cityscapes to enjoy, different places to walk. You can kind fo also use that to your advantage, too: do the stuff around this one area for a couple of days, then move locations and get a different perspective, a different energy, and focus on that side of the city.

Aislyn: And for people who do want to experience some of those more iconic sights, like the Grand Palace, what do you recommend?

Kathryn: The earliest you can get there is always going to be best, as far as crowds and avoiding them. So for some of those major sites in Bangkok, like the Grand Palace, it opens at 8:30, so it would be great to be there right around otherwise I’ve also been told the end of the day is a bit slower, closer to the 3:30 closing. Another nice thing to do would be waking up early around sunrise and hop on a boat to kind of cruise over to the other side of the city and see Wat Arun, which is the Temple of Dawn, and that opens at 8. So you could kind of go over and see the sunrise vibe there, take a quick look there, and then hop back across the river to the Grand Palace when it opens first thing, to have fewer people around. And the other thing is definitely avoid any national holidays in Thailand—they are crazed when there’s a national holiday. I would say don’t travel there then unless you’re really trying to get in the middle of all the action, I guess. You want so many people around because the national holidays, like Thailand is traveling during that time so it gets very, very busy in the high season, and more expensive and all of that.

Aislyn: That’s a really great tip. So for people who do want more of the iconic beach or coastal destinations that you mentioned?

Kathryn: There are still so many islands in Thailand that aren’t busy and overtouristed. Koh Yao Noi is one I personally haven’t been to, but I’ve heard amazing things about—it’s far less developed, there’s a small island, there is one gas station, one 7-Eleven, one doctor at the hospital, and there is a Six Senses. There’s also a family-owned Thai hotel that’s part of a bigger Thai hospitality business. But there is much more of that local feeling that you get there on this little island—the fish you’re eating was caught that morning by fishermen, the rice you’re eating on the island was locally grown on the island.

It’s a really great area to do island hopping, because whereas there are all the famous beaches and famous islands around nearby to go to on boats. Most of them are coming from places like Phuket or further away so they are all on these big group boats, they’re going to arrive at the same time.You can get there earlier in the morning to enjoy it in peace, or wait til they leave at 4 o’clock and then go and enjoy the afternoon and sunset on your own,kind of private little longtail boat that’s much more affordable and accessible. I’ve also been told that Trang province, which is on the Andaman Sea side on the west, has apparently some of the most stunning water and sand, especially have been told Yungbok and Bang Dam.

But so much of Thailand is really very rural and mountainous, up in this region bordering Laos—it’s so green, so lush, super fascinating. I was there in Nan province, and we had an amazing guide she would tell us stories about where we were going. We were sort of on this road trip through Nan province for like 5 days and you know we would driving through this one area super windy, gorgeous, but also very well-maintained, very nice roads—apparently it’s a great area for cycling, there and Hial, motorcycling too, so people who like to get on two wheels can really do that. She told us about this whole area that, at one point in the 20th century, had become a big opium agriculture area. The king at the time caught wind of it, came up, saw it, and said, “oh no, we can’t do this. We have to take this out”—it was also deforesting the jungles. So they did this royal project to switch it all over, after some studies, to arabica coffee, and so coffee it became a big coffee-growing area. It’s interesting just being able to just driving around and getting a sense of how diverse the landscapes are in different parts of the country, because I think so many people associate Thailand with the beaches—The White Lotus, everything sun-and-bikini-focused. But the bulk of the country really has nothing to do with the beach.

Aislyn: I’m a big cyclist, so I’m making a little note to myself—I would love to do that trip, it sounds so cool.

Kathryn: If you’re interested in that, talk to Smiling Albino. They’re a local operator that was started by Dan Fraser, who I spoke with for my story—he’s lived in Bangkok, in Thailand, for 26 years, and has really explored every corner of the country. They do cycling trips and take you to some incredible, very off-the-beaten-path places.

Aislyn: You’ve talked about this idea how one of the keys to getting off the tourist trail in Thailand is letting go of the idea of what luxury travel there might look like—so if you only want to stay in 5-star hotels, that’s just not something you’re going to find outside of the big cities. Can you tell me a little more about what you mean by that, and what travelers outside the big cities might expect?

Kathryn: Thailand developed in such specific places over the last few decades—Bangkok, Phuket, Koh Samui, Krabi, Chiang Mai. In talking with someone, she’s part of the family that owns Cape & Kantary Hotels, including Cape Kudu, she remembers being a child and going to Phuket with her family, when there was one hotel, the Club Med—this was back in the ’80s, ’90s. Phuket was, she said, so remote at the time, the reef was still so technicolor it was just really remote at the time. In the last 30, 40 years, it’s completely become what it is today; back when I was a child, there was basically nothing built there, it was so off the beaten path.

Things changed so quickly, and the effort from 5-star hotels and international hotel chains has really concentrated in those major destinations, leaving the majority of the country really with very much 2-, 3-, 4-star guest houses and hostels. Obviously there’s a big backpacker culture in Thailand, which has made it very accessible to people who don’t have a big budget, but there are guest houses and little boutique hotels and little tiny resorts, anywhere from 5 or 6 rooms to 15, that are all in these tiny little destinations. You might look at one online and think, their website doesn’t look great, there’s barely any English, it’s a 3-star hotel, it’s only $50 a night—and I think for luxury travelers, or people used to really high-end, you know these properties, that would be a turn off. They’d think, no, I need to stay in a place where I can stay in comfort, or I can stay in a place where I can have this amazing breakfast buffet, I can have yoga classes provided, have a pool, a spa,and the programming.

But in Thailand, that really limits what you can actually experience, especially if you want to go feel the genuine culture in a smaller place , in a secondary or third destination as they call them, and really get more of that local flavor. I think a nicer way to dip a toe into that idea is to do 4 or 5 days in a place like Nan province—I stayed in 2 different little boutique properties that had around a dozen rooms each , they were so charming. One was by a little creek which was burbling with some little waterfalls, very local decor, a little teak house—Nan Seasons Resort—where I was looking out over rice fields, and even this little bungalow had one of those kind of built-in hammocks like you see in the Maldives sitting on the wonderful villas. You could sit out there and look at this expanse of green and the mountains in the distance, butterflies flying around, pollinating flowers.

It’s just so beautiful, and a lot of these places end up having more charm than what can be kind of soulless, large hotels—if you give yourself a chance to, you might see a couple ants or see a couple bugs. You won’t get turn down but you’re gonna be okay but you get so much more back in return, just in the feeling of it. Thanyamundra, next to Khao Sok National Park, was one of my favorite places I’ve ever stayed. It’s a 3-star hotel, but that doesn’t compare at all to the experience is. I would have chosen that over many 5-star hotels I’ve been at, because it had this magic, and the atmosphere, and the people, and the food was amazing and it was grown on the property at their organic farm.

Dan, from Smiling Albino, told me they’ll sometimes do a kind of itinerary where you fly from Bangkok up to Nan, and you do a sort of road-trip through Nan and Phayao province for 5 or 6 days, and then end up in Chiang Mai to fly out. You could stay in Chiang Mai for a couple of days, stay at the Four Seasons or one of the elephant camp properties, and really do that luxury thing at the end—you get to look forward to all those amenities, but really enjoy being in the moment in the places you are along the way, feeling the local culture, people, and food.

Aislyn: And going with an outfitter as well, right? They’re going to pick properties that they know—that seems like a great tip for someone who doesn’t want to do their own booking.

Kathryn: Yeah, I would say, in Thailand, I do think it really pays to have an operator or travel outfitter put together the itinerary. If you really do intentionally want to get away from the tourists, they’re going to be really great at that, as well as even having them show the day-to-day, if you have a guide with you everywhere, they’ll be able to, you know, okay, we’re not going to this temple at this time because it’ll be too crowded, I’ll take you there in the morning, then I’m going to this thing, this lunch spot is popular, so we’ll go at 11 a.m. to miss the rush. We had an amazing guide in Nan with Red Savannah, who did an incredible job of putting together just so many surprises that I could never have discovered on my own going through a Google search. You can spend so much time researching and reading and looking at stuff but there’s stuff that really only someone local might know.

Aislyn: That human element really makes such a big difference, right?

Kathryn: Definitely.

Aislyn: And speaking of humans—as you’ve been traveling throughout the country, what would you say the perception is around tourism right now in Thailand? Of course it’s hard to speak for all people, but generally, what’s the vibe you’ve gotten?

Kathryn: Generally, people are very enthusiastic toward tourists. I do live in Bali, where we’re getting very overtouristed, and I have very mixed feelings about what’s happening here. So being in Thailand was a very different attitude, I think—very positive. Everywhere I’ve been, people seem excited to see us coming. Even in Bangkok, I’ll talk to people who say, we really need to get the word out about our city and how amazing it is. And I think, don’t people know how great Bangkok is? I think they do.

Aislyn: But that was surprising.

Kathryn: Maybe people don’t really know. People want you to know there’s more than pad thai, there’s more than the beaches—it’s not one note by any means. It’s such a dynamic destination.

Aislyn: I know that in recent years the Thai government has tried to pull back on tourism, and they put some measures in place to reduce the impact in the really, really high trafficked areas. It seems like part of the goal is to actually spread the tourists out—to have people go and do what you’re doing, and see all these other amazing places. Have you seen anything else, in recent years, in terms of efforts to try to redirect or to spread tourism out?

Kathryn: Thai AirAsia, has the predominant domestic airline, goes to so many as they call second and third cities and destinations now. The only problem is sometimes you have to route back through Bangkok—it is not like you can’t always go between these cities. But there are so many tiny little airports now, in places where they’re really trying to spread the wealth intentionally to these secondary destinations, and focus more on local culture being a draw: local food, local arts and crafts and heritage, to spread out the tourists and travelers.

I also just read recently that for next year, Thailand tourism’s strategy is focusing on sustainability, emotional impact, and quality. I’m curious to see how that will play out in their campaigns. I can attest personally that going to some of these places where you really do feel immersed in local culture has such a strong effect on me motionally. I’ve traveled a lot in Southeast Asia, and night markets are a thing and in different places they look different. In Thailand, these markets there’s like a section for all the food sellers which is mind-bogglingly huge, with so much diversity in food it is incredible.

But then there are 2 major temples in the city that face each other, and they’re gorgeous—as the night was falling, the moon was out, this beautiful crescent, and the temples were golden and lit up and illuminated. Between them were these really long rows of mats laid out, and something called a khantoke—a kind of bamboo, rattan sort of tray floor table thing. It’s just these rows and rows of rattans, and people started filling in: families, groups of friends, little kids, grandmas, all just sitting around their little floor tables with all the food. You basically go just gather all your dishes to share, and sit. There were local musicians playing—a father with his daughter, who was maybe 10 years old, playing instruments and singing folk songs in Thai, and we were sitting there eating the most amazing food for one. I had my youngest with me, who was like 20 months old at the time. She normally sits in a high chair at a restaurant when we go out, but there she was on her feet, twirling around, dancing, playing peekaboo with other kids, making faces, rolling up little sticky rice balls to pop in her mouth—she even tried an entire fried frog. She’s not even the most adventurous, so she was having the time of her life, dancing, feeling this.

It was just the feeling of being there, the energy of it, the people—everyone happy, everyone peaceful. It was quiet, in a way, because no one’s screaming or talking too loud; everyone’s having their own moment and their own conversations, enjoying the music, enjoying the beautiful full blue night sky, and the temples. I just kept looking around. I kept thinking, how does it get better than this? I have everything I need, addressing all my senses. I have so much joy and pleasure in seeing people who love each other, enjoying each other in such a wholesome, genuine, and easy way. And this happens every night—I thought this was like a special occasion, you know, like you realize there are these people, event planners, who put on these group dinners where you all sit at a table together and eat and it’s so cool but that happens once and awhile but this is like a daily occurrence. The other really cool part was at the end, because everything’s served in plastic bags and a lot of plastic containers but they have the most incredible recycling. There’s a big bin for straws, a big bin for cup tops, there’s a big bin for chopsticks, there’s a bin for plastic bags, there’s a bin for plastic plates—everything has its place.

Aislyn: And people follow the rules.

Kathryn: They really do. There are people manning it. There are volunteers who are monitoring and they are being really sustainable about it, recycling everything. I thought it was really cool to see everyone is on the same page about this just being such a lovely experience. It was really, really wonderful.

Aislyn: We don’t have time to talk about all the things you’d send people to Thailand to eat, but are there one or two dishes you feel like you absolutely must get off the tourist trail to go eat this one thing?

Kathryn: Yes—in Nan, there is a type of sausage that’s sort of specific to their region, it’s really great. Another thing there, in Nan and I guess a little bit beyond—there might be this in Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai too—there’s a pepper called makhwaen, that is kind of like found in the jungle. Do you know Sichuan pepper? It makes your tongue kind of tingly, numb—this is a bit similar ot that. It’s used a lot in dishes; I even had chicken wings with makhwaen on it, kind of like a crust almost. Really delicious, does fun things to your mouth. At Thanyamundra, I have to call out this amazing tamarind crunchy shrimp—one of the best things I’ve ever eaten in my entire life. I can’t stop thinking about it, and I will probably go back there just for that.

Aislyn: I’m a big shrimp fan, and it’s almost dinner time here, so very inspiring—it’s making my mouth water. I’d love to close with this: you’ve shared so many great tips throughout. What is your general advice for people who are planning a trip—we talked a little about seasonality, but are there times of year that are really great, and times to avoid, beyond the national holidays or even join those national holidays?

Kathryn: Yes, definitely avoid the national holidays. Definitely I would avoid December if you don’t like crowds— festive is really, really, really popular in Thailand, so December and January are really the peak, high season. It’ll be the most expensive, the hardest to get reservations or hotels, but the weather is really nice then, so there’s a reason it’s great. I think the shoulder seasons are a really nice time to travel—that tends to be March to July, and then like October, November. You might get some rain a bit, but it kind of only adds to the mood in a lot of places, makes it even cozy and cool. The hottest and rainiest, monsoon kind of time is August, September, so I’d avoid that time unless you really, really love lots of rain and humidity.

Other than that, I just love having a local guide, because I feel like they add so much more depth and richness to anything you’re looking at. You can see an amazing temple and love the beauty and the aesthetics, but without having someone tell you what it means, or what the story behind it, you’re kind of missing out on an extra layer that you can get into. Especially in Thailand, in the more remote, lesser-touristy places, you might not have menus in English—you can use a translation app, but I think a local can help a lot with making it really over-the-top amazing. Another thing: it’s a very quite affordable place to travel. Obviously you can spend a lot of money on the highest-end luxury hotels, but generally speaking it’s pretty accessible, and so I think it’s really worth spending the money on private experiences or tours if you’re going it alone, because then you have the flexibility to sort of adapt to your interests, and don’t have to do the big group thing. The price difference between a group tours and private tours is really pretty negligible. So I’d always recommend your own private boat, your own private tour of a temple, your own private cooking class—it’s going to be much more tailored to what you’re personally interested in, and you can go off script a bit too.

One of my most favorite memories in Thailand is being in a longtail boat on Cheow Lan Lake, in Khao Sok National Park. There were other tourist boats that took off before us from this sort of dock, but we sort of took off, we didn’t see anyone else on the lake. It was beautiful. Our boat driver pulled into this little lagoon area, and there were all these sheer limestone karst formations popping out of the lake like teeth. They all had this lush foliage on top—we were kind of surrounded by this, and it fells like something out of a fairy tale or a film. They asked, do you want to take pictures, we’re going on the tour? And I said, I have to swim here—this is too beautiful to miss. No one really spoke English, but we said, we want to jump in the water, can we jump in the water, please? Part of the trick was going to this floating resort on the other part of the lake to have lunch later, where there was a buoyed-off place to swim there and kayak—but we said, we want to swim here though, this is really special. And they finally let us, as long as we wore our life jackets. So we jumped in with our life jackets on, and it was like the most incredible feeling of being in this crystalline water, looking up at this otherworldly kind of scene, and feeling like we were the only people here—we couldn’t hear another boat, another voice. It felt so private, so intimate, and so special. And you can’t have that if you don’t ask for it from your tour guide—no one’s gonna like take you there and say, this is the swimming spot.

This was another good tip I picked up while writing that story: a lot of times, a concierge will try to suggest things that will make sure you’re comfortable and safe, and sometimes that’s not what you want—especially if you’re someone who really is a bit more intrepid, who doesn’t mind sitting on the floor, or doesn’t mind being a little hot. Someone told me: the concierge are not going to go too far with their recommendations, because they don’t want you coming back and say, I was so sweaty, or it was sort of dirty looking. They don’t know what you’re willing to put up with in the name of a good experience, or a memorable beautiful thing. So no one’s going to say, here’s this secret lagoon for you to swim in alone, because this is the place that doesn’t have tourists—a lot of people want to be where other people are swimming, and maybe know it’s a bit more safe. Before we jumped in, they did show us, on a phone, a picture of this giant, fish like human-sized, and were like—

Aislyn: We’re like, okay—

Kathryn: —well, it can’t eat us.

Aislyn: Right, don’t worry, watch out for that—was that the idea?

Kathryn: And we’re like, okay, well, I’m still jumping in, I don’t care—I’m like, that’s not a shark, so I’ll be okay.

Aislyn: But if I feel something brush up against me—that’s really interesting. People want people to have a good time, so that’s typically the known thing, right? But the unknown thing is often the most memorable, or the most interesting.

Kathryn: Exactly. And as my 4-year-old is always reminding us: everyone has different taste, everyone likes different things—you never know what someone else is going to enjoy, what’s going to resonate with them. I don’t envy the job of a concierge in that sense—in that perspective, you want to make people happy and keep them happy, but everyone’s different. So I think in a private tour setting, you can really advocate for what makes you happy, what you enjoy, and what you’re going to want to remember, and you can kind of adapt those sort of experiences in a better way than in a group setting where you have no control.

Aislyn: Well, Kathryn, thank you so much for lending us your wisdom. And hopefully we’ll have an episode or a story one of these days about Bali or Indonesia, because I feel like there’s a lot to unpack there too, as you hinted at earlier in this episode.

Kathryn: Thank you so much. It was such fun to blab on about Thailand.

Aislyn: Well, that brings us to the end of our journey through Thailand. Head to the show notes for a link to Kathryn’s full story at Afar.com. We’ve also included details on where to find her writing, and a few of the other stops in our Off the Tourist Trail series, including Iceland and England.

If you’re ready for more travel inspiration and intel like this, visit afar.com, and be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok, where we’re @AfarMedia. This has been a production of Afar Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Greene and Nikki Galteland. Music from Chris Colin and Epidemic Sound. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen to and subscribe to their other great shows, like Culture Kids and The Explorers Podcast.