Things to do in Thailand: what there is, what it costs, and when it is actually open

The scale of it, and why the obvious circuit is the wrong plan

Thailand received 32,974,321 international visitors in 2025 according to the Ministry of Tourism and Sports, who spent about 1.53 trillion baht between them. The largest source markets were Malaysia (4,520,856), China (4,473,992), India (2,487,319), Russia (1,898,837) and South Korea (1,555,227). Those numbers matter to a resident for one reason: a very large share of that traffic goes to a very small number of places. The Grand Palace, Phi Phi, Maya Bay and the Chiang Mai old city absorb the crowd, and everything else — 150-odd national parks, four regional cuisines, nine World Heritage properties spread across eight provinces — is comparatively empty midweek.

So the useful organising question is not “what are the top ten sights”. It is: what kind of day do you want, what does it cost to get in, and is it open. The rest of this page answers those three in that order. If you are choosing a base rather than a trip, start instead with the city comparison and then what a home actually costs in each.

National parks: what they actually charge

Thailand’s national parks are run by the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP), and 155 of them are in the department’s QueQ advance-booking system. Entry is priced on a published two-tier structure — one rate for Thai visitors, a higher one for foreign visitors. This is normal, it is government policy rather than something invented at the gate, and it is worth knowing before you arrive so that the number on the sign is not a surprise.

The point of putting Khao Yai next to the standard schedule is that there is no single national rate. Fees are set park by park, the headline parks charge more, and any source quoting one flat figure for “Thai national parks” has simplified something that is not simple. Khao Yai’s own site adds two practical details worth carrying: one ticket covers entry and exit on a single day only, and you pay either through the DNP QueQ e-ticket or at the Pak Chong or Noen Hom gate.

Booking through QueQ is straightforward — pick the park, the date, your visitor details, vehicle type and a time slot, and the ticket is issued in the app. Pre-booked visitors get priority; walk-ins are still admitted where a park has not filled its quota. More on individual parks in the national parks guide, and on the coastline in beaches and water safety.

The closures nobody mentions until you have booked

Several Thai marine parks close for months at a time, by department order, for reef recovery and monsoon safety. This is not a weather call made on the morning; it is a published annual closure, and it is the most expensive planning mistake a first-time visitor makes here.

Mu Ko Similan and Mu Ko Surin, both in Phang Nga province, are closed from 15 May to 15 October 2026 — five months. If a tour is being sold to you for a date inside that window, something is wrong with the booking, not with the calendar. The closure dates are re-issued each year, so check the current order before you buy flights around a dive trip. The Andaman’s open season is broadly the northern winter; the Gulf coast runs on a different and roughly opposite pattern, which is why Koh Tao and the Similans are rarely good in the same month. The diving and snorkelling guide goes into the two-coast season split; weather and seasons covers the rest of the year.

The nine World Heritage properties, and where they are

Thailand accepted the World Heritage Convention on 17 September 1987 and now has nine inscribed properties — six cultural and three natural, with six more on its tentative list. Between them they cover the Bronze Age, two former capitals, the Dvaravati period and three of the country’s largest forest complexes, and only two of the nine are on the standard tourist circuit. If you want a structure for a year of weekends, this list is a better one than any “top ten”.

Two of these connect directly to the section above: the Dong Phayayen–Khao Yai Forest Complex is the World Heritage property that contains Khao Yai National Park, so the 400-baht foreign adult fee is the entry price to a UNESCO natural site; and Ban Chiang and Phu Phrabat are both in Udon Thani, which makes Isaan the province group with the most inscriptions and the fewest visitors. More on that region in the Isaan guide, and on the country’s religious sites in temples of Thailand, province by province.

Festivals: one fixed date, and a lot of moving ones

The most useful thing to understand about the Thai festival calendar is which dates are on the solar calendar and which are lunar, because the lunar ones move every year and a great deal of what is published about them online is a guess.

Songkran is the fixed one. The Tourism Authority of Thailand states it is officially observed as a three-day national holiday from 13 to 15 April, with celebrations in some provinces running longer. It is also the one with international recognition: Songkran in Thailand, traditional Thai New Year festival was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity on 6 December 2023, at the committee’s 18th session in Kasane, Botswana, under decision 18.COM 8.b.10. It is the fourth Thai element on that list, joining Khon masked dance drama (2018), Nuat Thai traditional Thai massage (2019) and Nora, the dance drama of the south (2021).

The moving ones. Loi Krathong falls on the full moon of the twelfth month of the Thai lunar calendar, which normally puts it in November. The Vegetarian Festival — biggest in Phuket, but observed in Bangkok’s Yaowarat and across the south — runs nine days from the first day of the ninth Chinese lunar month, normally late September or October. We have deliberately not printed 2026 dates for either: see section 08 for why. Background on each in the Songkran guide, the Loi Krathong guide and the Vegetarian Festival guide; the working list of which days close banks and government offices is in Thai holidays explained.

Bangkok, with the two numbers people get wrong

Bangkok is where most people start, and two of its best-known destinations have published details that a surprising number of guides get wrong.

The Grand Palace, on Na Phra Lan Road in Phra Nakhon, publishes an admission fee of 500 baht and opens daily 08:30 to 16:30 — but the ticket office closes at 15:30, an hour before the site does. That single hour is the difference between getting in and not. It is a working royal and religious site with an enforced dress code, so check the current requirement on the palace’s own site rather than a tour listing.

Chatuchak Weekend Market is open Saturday and Sunday, 09:00 to 18:00, with some zones trading on Friday afternoon, and entry is free. It is in Chatuchak subdistrict, Chatuchak district, and it is unusually well served by rail: MRT Kamphaeng Phet Exit 2 comes out at the plant and pet zone, and BTS Mo Chit Exit 1 has a direct walkway in. The five main zones are plants and pets, art and antiques, food, fashion, and rare books — worth knowing, because arriving without a zone in mind is how a first visit becomes three hours of the same T-shirt stall.

Beyond those two, the resident’s Bangkok is the everyday layer rather than the landmark one: neighbourhood wat you can walk through for free or a small fee, the big parks — Lumpini, Benjakitti, Chatuchak Park — that double as outdoor gyms, the Chao Phraya express boat as both transport and river cruise, and Yaowarat after dark. Getting between them is the whole skill: see getting around Bangkok and the rail guide for which lines are actually open. For markets and street life outside the capital, the walking streets and night markets guide; for what to eat when you get there, food and dining.

Sport, the outdoors, and the one rule that is not about sport

Sport is one of the more common reasons a long stay turns into a move. Golf courses run at green fees that would be a driving-range rate in much of the West, Muay Thai camps take genuine beginners rather than only fighters, and the diving covers both coasts on opposite seasons. The national parks in section 02 are also the hiking network — Doi Inthanon in Chiang Mai province is the country’s highest point, and Khao Yai is three hours from Bangkok.

One rule sits underneath all of it and has nothing to do with fitness: taking part recreationally is fine on a tourist entry, but being paid to teach or coach is work and needs a work permit. That applies to a dive instructor, a Muay Thai trainer, a yoga teacher and a golf pro equally. If the plan is to teach rather than train, start at the visa routes before you start at the gym.

Deeper on each: Muay Thai training for foreigners, golf in Thailand, scuba diving and snorkelling, and island living if the answer is that you want to be on the water permanently.

What we could not confirm

Everything above is sourced. These are the things we went looking for and could not stand behind, listed rather than filled in:

• The 2026 date of Loi Krathong. It is the full moon of the twelfth Thai lunar month and normally falls in November, but we could not confirm the exact 2026 date from the Tourism Authority of Thailand or another official source, and the dates circulating on travel sites disagree with one another. Check the current year rather than trusting a printed date, including ours.
• The 2026 dates of the Vegetarian Festival. Same problem, worse: the sources we found split between 9–19 October and 10–18 October 2026. The rule — nine days from the first day of the ninth Chinese lunar month — is reliable; the specific dates are not, until Phuket province publishes the programme.
• A complete current national park fee schedule. Fees are set per park by ministerial notification. We have the standard 200/100 foreign and 20/10 Thai schedule from the government’s own QueQ page, and Khao Yai’s 400/200 from the park, but we could not retrieve a consolidated, current fee table for all 155 parks from dnp.go.th. Assume the fee at any given park may be higher than 200 baht and check before you go.
• The official 2026 Thai public holiday list. We could not retrieve it from a Thai government source in this pass, so this page does not print one. The 13–15 April Songkran holiday is stated by the Tourism Authority of Thailand; the rest of the year is not confirmed here.
• The year-on-year change in 2025 arrivals. The Ministry of Tourism and Sports figure of 32,974,321 is confirmed; the percentage change against 2024 was not stated in the source we used, so we have not given one.
• Named restaurants, bars, gyms and tour operators. Deliberately absent. This page names public sites, parks and markets with published details; it does not recommend private businesses it has not verified, and BAANLYY takes no paid placement.

Turning it into a routine, not a checklist

The failure mode for a long stay is not boredom, it is never building a week. Newcomers arrive with a tourist’s list, exhaust it in a fortnight, and then default to eating and drinking. The residents who settle tend to have one or two recurring anchors — a sport, a class, a market, a run club — and treat everything on this page as the bonus on top.

• Recurring beats spontaneous. Friendships past the backpacker stage come from showing up to the same thing repeatedly, not from meeting people once.
• Coworking is the nomad equivalent of a club — see coworking spaces and expat communities.
• One trip a month out of your city. The park fees above make a weekend cheap; weekend trips from Bangkok has the two-to-three-hour options, and the airport guide covers the rest of the country.
• Plan the burning season. Air quality in the north is the single biggest reason people who love Chiang Mai keep a second base — see air quality in Thailand.

Let this decide where you live

In Thailand, and in Bangkok especially, where you live shapes how much of this you actually do, because traffic makes distance expensive in time and willpower. If the parks and the coast are the point, a base in the south or the north beats a condo you rarely leave. If it is food, markets and a night out, proximity to a rail station is worth more than square metres.

Compare the trade-offs with the area comparison tool, the best areas for nightlife and dining and the Neighborhood Finder. When you have a shortlist, building profiles tell you what is actually on the rail network, and cost of living puts a monthly number on it.

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