Weekend trips from Bangkok: five escapes, and what they actually cost to enter

Start with the gate fee, not the guidebook

Most weekend-trip guides tell you the distance and skip the price, or quote a number nobody can trace. That is the wrong way round, because for four of these five destinations the entrance fee is set by a government department, published, and easy to get wrong by a factor of two. Here is what the departments themselves say.

Three rules sit behind that table and are worth carrying to every national park in the country. The vehicle is charged separately — 20 baht for a motorcycle, 30 for a four-wheeled vehicle, 100 for a six-wheeler, 200 for six to ten wheels, on top of every head in it. “Foreigner” means non-Thai nationality, full stop: a long-term resident on a Long-Term Resident visa or a retirement visa pays the foreign rate. And a child is three to fourteen inclusive, or under 140 cm; under-threes, monks and novices and ordained religious resident in Thailand, and persons with disabilities are exempt. The personal fee covers up to five days in that park at a time.

Ayutthaya — the ancient capital (~80 km north)

The former Siamese capital, sacked in 1767, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1991 as the Historic City of Ayutthaya, under criterion (iii), with a property area of 289 hectares. That is small enough to matter to how you plan the day: the core is flat, compact and ringed by rivers, which is why the standard way round it is a hired bicycle rather than a car.

The Fine Arts Department charges per monument, not per park. A foreign visitor pays 50 baht at each ticketed monument, or 220 baht for a combined ticket; a Thai visitor pays 10 or 40. The combined ticket covers six sites: Wat Phra Si Sanphet and the Ancient Royal Palace, Wat Phra Ram, Wat Mahathat, Wat Ratchaburana, Wat Chaiwatthanaram and Wat Maheyong. Wat Mahathat is the one with the Buddha head held in the roots of a fig tree; Wat Chaiwatthanaram, on the far bank of the Chao Phraya, is the one that photographs best at dusk and is the reason the combined ticket usually pays for itself.

A figure of 300 baht for seven temples circulates widely. It does not match the department’s own published price, and we have not been able to source it to any Thai government page. Buy at the gate and check the ticket.

Getting there: about 80 km north; roughly an hour and a half by road, and served by frequent trains from Krung Thep Aphiwat (Bang Sue) Grand Station on the Northern Line. How long: a full day is enough, though an overnight buys you the ruins at dawn without the coaches. For the resident’s view of the town, see cost of living in Ayutthaya.

Kanchanaburi — river, railway and a 300-baht waterfall (~130 km west)

Kanchanaburi is two trips wearing one name, and they run in different directions out of town. West is the wartime railway: the bridge over the Khwae Yai, the war cemeteries, and Hellfire Pass at Konyu Cutting. North is Erawan National Park, which the Tourism Authority of Thailand places 65 km from Kanchanaburi town along Route 3199, at Tha Kradan in Si Sawat district. Trying to do both in one day is the single most common way people ruin this weekend.

Hellfire Pass is free, and it is the outlier here in more ways than one: the interpretive centre and the memorial walking trail are operated by the Australian Government’s Department of Veterans’ Affairs, not by a Thai agency. There is no charge for the museum, the trail or the audio guide. It opens 09:00 to 16:00 and sits at 207 Moo 11, Tha Sao, in Sai Yok district. More than 166,000 people visited in 2025, so it is not a secret — but it is an hour beyond town, which keeps the coach traffic thinner than at the bridge.

Erawan costs 300 baht for a foreign adult and 150 for a foreign child under the national parks fee regulation, where it sits in the third of four bands; Thai visitors pay 60 and 30. TAT describes the waterfall as running about 1,500 metres in seven tiers. Honest caveat: TAT’s own page for the park publishes different Thai and child rates — 100 and 50 baht for Thais and 200 for a foreign child. The rates are set by the parks regulation, so that is the figure we quote, but two government sources genuinely disagree here and you should expect the gate to be the tie-breaker. Sai Yok National Park, further up the same road, is in the same 300-baht band.

Getting there: about 130 km west, two to two and a half hours by road, with buses from the Southern (Sai Tai Mai) terminal and a slow branch-line train service to Nam Tok over the surviving stretch of the wartime railway. How long: one night minimum, two if you want both directions out of town. Erawan is one of many parks covered in the national parks guide.

Hua Hin — the calm beach town (~200 km southwest)

Hua Hin is the quiet half of the beach question. It is a royal resort town rather than a resort strip: green, low-rise by Thai coastal standards, with night markets, hillside vineyards and a heavy concentration of golf, which is why it turns up so often on the shortlist of people scouting a base rather than a holiday. The beach itself is gentle rather than dramatic; the appeal is the pace.

There is no headline entrance fee to quote here, which is itself the point — Hua Hin is the one of the five where the weekend’s cost is accommodation and food rather than gates. Getting there: about 200 km southwest, two and a half to three hours by road, and on the Southern Line by rail. How long: one or two nights. If you are weighing it as somewhere to live rather than visit, see cost of living in Hua Hin, the best Thai cities for golf, and the area comparison tool.

Pattaya — the closest beach, and a 500-baht wooden cathedral (~150 km southeast)

Pattaya is the nearest coast to Bangkok and the most developed, and it has a reputation that does it no favours with people who would actually enjoy the quieter parts of it. Jomtien, the southern stretch, is the family and swimming end. Koh Larn, a short ferry out of Bali Hai pier, has the clear water the mainland beach does not.

The one genuinely unusual sight is the Sanctuary of Truth on Pattaya–Naklua Road, north of the main beach. The museum publishes an entrance fee of 500 baht and opens daily 08:00 to 18:00, with a separate evening session from 18:20 to 20:30. Construction began in 1981 and has never formally ended: the building is entirely wood, joined in the traditional Thai manner rather than nailed, which is why there are always carvers working somewhere on it. Treat the permanent scaffolding as part of the exhibit rather than a disappointment.

Getting there: about 150 km southeast, an hour and a half to two hours — the quickest of the five — with frequent buses from the Eastern (Ekkamai) terminal. How long: an easy overnight, and doable as a long day. For the resident’s view, see living in Pattaya and cost of living in Pattaya.

Khao Yai — the gate that doubles your ticket (~150–200 km northeast)

Khao Yai is not separately listed by UNESCO. It is the western end of the Dong Phayayen–Khao Yai Forest Complex, inscribed in 2005 under criterion (x), covering 615,500 hectares across five protected areas — Khao Yai, Thap Lan, Pang Sida and Ta Phraya national parks and the Dong Yai wildlife sanctuary — and spanning 230 kilometres from the Cambodian border in the east. It protects more than 800 recorded animal species, wild elephants and gibbons among them.

The thing nobody tells you before you drive up is that Khao Yai does not have one entrance fee, it has two, and the difference is 200 baht a head. Under the national parks regulation in force since 7 June 2022, Khao Yai sits in the second fee band: 200 baht a foreign adult, 100 a foreign child, 40 and 20 for Thais. But a departmental announcement dated 19 September 2022, approved by the National Park Committee ten days earlier, designated the stretch from the Nern Hom checkpoint to the Chao Pho Khao Yai shrine checkpoint a special-fee area at 400 baht a foreign adult and 200 a foreign child. The park’s own site states the range flatly as 200 to 400 baht for adults, depending on entrance gate. Two foreign adults in a hired car entering that zone pay 830 baht including the 30-baht vehicle charge.

Outside the park boundary, the surrounding countryside has turned itself into a weekend industry of its own: working vineyards including GranMonte and PB Valley, ranch resorts, and a dense cluster of design cafes along the approach roads. None of that is inside the park, so none of it costs a park ticket — which is worth knowing if the wine and the cafes, rather than the wildlife, are the actual plan.

Getting there: about 150–200 km northeast, two and a half to three hours by road. You can reach Pak Chong town by train or bus, but the park, the viewpoints and the vineyards are spread across rural distance with little linking transport, so a car or a car with driver is close to essential — see private driver vs car rental vs rideshare. How long: one night minimum, two if you want both a wildlife morning and the wine-and-cafe side.

Getting out of the city: the transport cheat-sheet

Four ways out cover all five trips, and the right one is decided by the destination rather than the budget:

• Train — the Northern Line from Krung Thep Aphiwat (Bang Sue) Grand Station serves Ayutthaya; the Southern Line serves Hua Hin; and a branch line runs to Nam Tok over the surviving stretch of the wartime railway west of Kanchanaburi. Slow, cheap and the only one of the four with a view. The trains and rail-travel guide has the network in full.
• Bus and minivan — Pattaya and the east leave from the Eastern terminal at Ekkamai; Kanchanaburi, Hua Hin and the south and west from the Southern terminal, Sai Tai Mai, on Borommaratchachonnani Road. Minivans are faster and tighter; coaches are slower and more comfortable.
• Private car or car with driver — the only sensible option for Khao Yai, and the difference between seeing one Kanchanaburi and seeing both. Compare the three ways of doing it in private driver vs car rental vs rideshare, and check what a foreign licence does and does not cover in the international driving permit guide.
• Tours — genuinely useful for Khao Yai, where a guided vehicle solves the park-fee gate, the wildlife spotting and the distances in one booking.

For what to do once you are back in the city, the things-to-do guide is the wider view, and weather and seasons explains why a waterfall trip in March is a different experience from the same trip in October.

Planning tips and the mistakes people actually make

What we could not confirm, and did not print

This page holds itself to a rule: a price, a time or a rule appears only if we can say which official or primary source it came from. Several things a reader would reasonably want are missing from it for exactly that reason, and we would rather name them than fill them in.

• Train fares and departure times. The State Railway of Thailand’s timetable and fare pages did not respond when this page was written, so no fare or departure time is printed here. Check the SRT’s own timetable or the D-Ticket app before you plan around a train.
• Bus and minivan fares from Ekkamai and Sai Tai Mai. We could name the terminals from long-standing public use but could not open Transport Co.’s own fare pages, so no figure is given.
• The Koh Larn ferry fare. A 30-baht crossing from Bali Hai pier is widely quoted, and every source we found for it was a blog or listing site rather than Pattaya City or the harbour authority. It is not printed.
• Bang Pa-In Royal Palace admission. Real, close to Ayutthaya, and worth adding to that day — but we found no Bureau of the Royal Household page giving a current fee, so no number appears.
• Ayutthaya Historical Park opening hours, and Erawan’s cut-off for the upper tiers. Both matter to a day plan. The Fine Arts Department page carrying the fees does not state hours, and the Department of National Parks site was unreachable when this page was written.
• Whether the Khao Yai special-fee zone has since been widened. The 19 September 2022 announcement is the most recent one we could read in full. If the department has revised it, the park gate will be right and this page will be behind — tell us and we will correct it.

Everything above is the shape of an honest gap rather than a hedge. If you need a figure we have not printed, the national parks guide carries the fee bands in full, and the BAANLYY tools cover the money side of a longer stay.

Weekend trips from Bangkok: common questions