We spent two-and-a-half weeks travelling around Thailand with our two teenage children, which also included a 3-day stopover in Doha, Qatar on the way there. We moved between Bangkok, Krabi, Elephant Hills in Khao Sok, and Phuket. Here’s a full day-to-day breakdown of our Thailand family holiday itinerary…
We were travelling in April, in easter school holidays, which was an excellent time to visit both Qatar and Thailand.
It avoided the intense heat of the Qatar desert in the hot summer months, giving us plenty of pleasant, warm weather in Qatar – and the driest part of the dry season in Thailand, with nothing but endless hot sunshine and blue skies in Thailand (albeit it was unbelievably hot – the hottest weather we’ve ever experienced anywhere – but still extremely enjoyable).
Flying to Thailand via Qatar
We flew from London Heathrow to Doha, Qatar on Qatar Airways.
Qatar Airways has an excellent reputation as a high quality airline and the experience flying with them was superb, brilliant service throughout and a very comfortable flight, especially as we had paid extra to upgrade to their extra legroom seats, which were very comfortable.
Landing for our 3-day stop-over in Qatar in the early evening, we were met exactly as planned by Travel Center UK by a driver in the arrivals lounge of Doha airport with our name on a sign – and he drove us the 30-minute or so drive to our hotel.
Best Western Plus Hotel, Doha
This was a perfectly decent hotel for a few nights in Doha.
Nothing particularly special or luxurious, but we knew we’d only be using it to sleep in overnight and it was perfectly comfortable with big spacious rooms, comfortable beds, good air conditioning, a decent buffet breakfast included – and it was very conveniently located for access to Doha’s major sights and attractions.
Night one in Qatar: Souk Waqif and a Doha skyline boat trip
After a brief rest in the hotel to recover from the flight, we headed in a taxi to Souq Waqif – an area of Doha resembling an ancient marketplace (although it’s all relatively newly built) with hundreds of small shops selling all manner of souvenirs, textiles and food, along with various restaurants selling traditional Arabic food.
It was an interesting, photogenic place to wander around and we eventually found ourselves down at the waterfront, with the impressive Doha city skyline lit up across the other side of the harbour – and lots of traditional ‘dhow’ boats touting for business for trips around the harbour.
It was reasonably cheap to take one of the boat tours for an hour or so around the harbour, which gave us some good photo opportunities of the city at night, before we headed back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep.
Day two in Qatar: Banana Island Day Pass
After the first long day of travelling, we decided a relaxing day was in order so booked ourselves a day-trip to Banana Island.
This was one of the excursions we booked ourselves, independent of the company that’d arranged our travel (Travel Center UK) – to a luxury resort hotel on an island about a 20-minute boat ride off the coast of Doha, with its own private beach, restaurants and water sports.
Day three morning in Qatar: Doha city tour by taxi
We’d planned to explore Doha city ourselves in the morning of this day, but a conversation with a taxi driver led to us arranging for him to come and pick us up from our hotel and give us our own private guided tour of Doha.
He obviously knew all the best places to visit and the right order to visit them in, so was a much better option than us trying to find our own way around.
Day three afternoon in Qatar: 4WD desert safari
This was another excursion we booked for ourselves independently of Travel Center, having found Qatar International Tours on Tripadvisor.
We were picked up from our hotel by our desert 4WD driver who whisked us off to the desert for an absolutely brilliant afternoon and evening driving over dunes to a remote desert camp by the sea.
An amazing end to our few days in Doha before getting ready to head off on the next leg of the trip to Thailand.
The originally-suggested itinerary from Travel Center was simply to use Doha as a short stop-over for a few hours on the way to Thailand, but we were really glad we adjusted the plan to stay in Doha for longer.
It probably isn’t a place we’d go to on a holiday in its own right, but for three or four days to break up the journey further east, it was a great place to visit.
Day four: Flights from Doha to Bangkok
Travel Center had arranged an airport transfer for us at 4am from our Doha hotel to the airport and sure enough, the driver was downstairs waiting for us bang on time ready to take us to our flight to Bangkok.
We had decided to push the boat out a bit on this leg of the trip and had upgraded to business class flights, taking advantage of a late special offer as we were checking in the night before.
Qatar Airways claim to have the best business class in the world and having experienced it on our Doha to Bangkok flight, it’s hard to disagree with that claim as the experience was absolutely incredible.
It was a stunning experience – right from the moment of arriving at the airport.
The food on the plane was absolutely stunning, with a full menu of gourmet restaurant-standard food and drink – which you can order as much from as you want, at any time in the flight (not like sitting around waiting for a flight attendant to bring your meals at set times in economy class).
But the highlight was the seats – huge, spacious lay-flat beds built into their own self-contained cubicles, easily large enough for me, at almost 6’3″ to comfortably lay completely flat and get a full 8-hours sleep on (not that any of us did sleep – we didn’t want to miss a moment of the experience of the luxury flight!)
It’s the ony flight of our lives where, when the pilot announced we were about to start the descent to land, that we were all disappointed about a flight coming to an end!
Day five: Bangkok city tour
Bangkok is a massive, hectic city with so many sights to see that’s not too easy to find your way around if you’re not familiar with the area.
For this reason, rather than risk wandering aimlessly around following Google Maps, we decided to book a personal, private tour guide who would show us around the city, taking us anywhere we wanted to go, recommending the best sights, the best routes to take and the best methods of transport to get us around.
The company we used was called Your Thai Guide and it was money very, very well spent.
We had a full day visiting every place in Bangkok we wanted to visit in an extremely efficient way and, having used the personal Thai Guide service, we realised that trying to get around Bangkok and see all the best sights ourselves would’ve been virtually impossible.
Day six: Bangkok markets and shopping
This day we felt we wasted and should have either planned something specific in advance, or maybe even just shortened our time in Bangkok in favour of lengthening the time in later destinations.
Because we’d managed to cram so much in using the Your Thai Guide service the previous day, there wasn’t much else left that we wanted to do in Bangkok on this day. Perhaps if you’re touring the city by yourself without the speed and efficiency of a personal guide, a second day is worth having here, but for us, we could’ve used the time better if we’d have known in advance.
So we made our way under our own steam by taxi to the giant MBK Center shopping mall in central Bangkok, which took a long time to get to (thanks to the nightmare Bangkok traffic) and which wasn’t a great shopping experience.
Then we went by taxi to the Train Night Market Srinagarindra, which is a large outdoor market full of street food, clothing and souvenir sellers.
It was a great market with a huge variety of products and Thai foods, but the journey was so long because of the traffic, by the time we arrived we’d spent most of our day sat in uncomfortable, hot taxis – several hours in total – and we were a bit fed up.
Because we’d had such an excellent, extensive tour of the sights of Bangkok the day before, we felt we could’ve got away with cutting this day out.
Day seven: Flying to Krabi
Travel Center had booked us an afternoon hotel transfer to the airport for an internal flight to our next stop, Krabi.
However when we tried to check in to the flight online in the morning, it turned out it had already departed – and we were still sat in our beds in our Bangkok hotel room!
The flight time had been changed, but the airline hadn’t notified us (or Travel Center) so we had no idea.
And as Travel Center are UK-based, it was still the middle of the night back there, leaving us with no way of contacting anyone to sort the problem out.
In the end we took it upon ourselves to find our own alternative flight – and considered ourselves extremely lucky that there was space on another flight that was leaving at almost exactly the same time as our original flight, albeit from Bangkok’s other airport Don Meuang.
To be fair to Travel Center, it was clearly out of their hands as the Thai airline hadn’t told them about the change and they proactively chased up getting us a refund almost immediately, which we’d all but resigned ourselves never to receiving, having had bad experiences trying to get airline refunds in the past!
Aside from an hour or so of panic on this day, no real harm was done to the trip and we arrived in Krabi that evening at pretty much exactly the time we’d originally planned anyway.
Day eight: Phi Phi Islands speedboat tour
An excursion arranged for us by Travel Center, with a pickup from outside our hotel reception, taking us out for a day to the incredibly stunning Phi Phi Islands which, if you’re visiting Krabi, are absolutely essential to visit in order to get the fullest experience of the mind-blowing beauty of this region.
Day nine: Ban Sainai Hotel
After some hectic back-to-back days of travel and excursions we had a relaxing day by the pool at our hotel in Krabi, the absolutely amazing Ban Sainai hotel.
We loved this hotel – it was one of our favourite places that we’ve ever stayed in, with such an amazing layout and design within a jungle setting but just minutes away from the superb town and beaches of Ao Nang in Krabi.
Day 10: 7-Islands Sunset Tour, Krabi
Whilst wandering around the beach-front town of Ao Nang in Krabi we came across various tour operators selling boat trips around the islands off the coast of Krabi so having done a daytime boat trip earlier in the week, decided a sunset one would be good.
This was our least favourite boat excursion of the holiday, though we still had an enjoyable day.
Day 11: bus transfer from Krabi to Phuket
Travel Center had arranged a bus journey for us to our next destination of Phuket, leaving from Krabi bus terminal, which was about 20-minutes from our hotel.
Ban Sainai hotel in Krabi had their own transfer service that we could use to drive us to the bus terminal, from where we took the pretty uncomfortable 3-hour bus ride to Phuket bus terminal – and then a taxi to our next hotel, the Andaman Sea View.
The Andaman Sea View hotel in Phuket was a pretty basic hotel that we weren’t massively impressed with, especially given how much we’d loved the previous hotel in Krabi, but it was perfectly OK as a base to sleep and was at least very conveniently located right next the beautiful Karon Beach in Phuket.
And the Karon Road, which runs the length of the beach right outside the hotel, is lined with tons of restaurants, bars and shops and was a really lively but laid-back part of Phuket that was a great place to stay (try the Red Chopsticks restaurant if you stay here – it was amazing and gave us our favourite meals of the entire holiday several nights running).
Day 12: James Bond Island boat excursion with Crystal Sea Marine
Relocating to Phuket gave us the chance to explore the islands on the other side of Phang Nag Bay, so we picked an excursion that would take us to various beauty spots including so-called ‘James Bond Island’, which was featured in the Bond film the Man With the Golden Gun.
This was an amazing day seeing some of the most beautiful sights we’ve ever seen.
Day 13: Phuket Old Town, Karon Viewpoint and the Big Buddha
We made our own way by taxi into Phuket Old Town, which is the most picturesque part of the Phuket town, with streets of brightly coloured buildings with distinctive, photogenic architecture.
After looking around the old town and getting our lunch here, we took a taxi up to the ‘Karon Viewpoint’ – a place high up on the hillside above Karon Beach with views stretching along the coast and out to sea.
And from there, we got another taxi up to the famous Big Buddha statue that towers over the whole of this region of Phuket.
Day 14, 15 & 16: Elephant Hills, Khao Sok
To end our Thailand family holiday itinerary, we’d booked two nights (three days) at the jungle adventure camp Elephant Hills.
It’s a luxury tented camp where you sleep in extremely large and luxurious tents in the jungle and get to do canoe trips through jungle rivers, boat trips to a remote lake camp, jungle trekking – and the highlight – meeting elephants that have been rescued from the logging trade.
As with all our other transfers and excursions arranged by Travel Center (barring the mishap with the internal flight), everything ran smoothly and we were picked up from our Phuket hotel by Elephant Hills’ own minibus and taken on the three-hour drive into the Khao Sok national park jungle where Elephant Hills is based for a truly memorable three day stay.
Day 16 & 17: Transfer back to Phuket and flight home
Our 16th day was a half-day jungle trekking activity at Elephant Hills before being taken back to a hotel close to Phuket airport ready for our flight home early the next morning.
We only had a very short stay at the Patong Lodge Hotel in Patong Beach, Phuket, arriving late in the evening and then being picked up at 4am for our final transfer to the airport.
Our short experience of Patong Beach in Phuket was that it’s an extremely lively party town part of Phuket – Thailand’s version of Ibiza – with clubs and bars that attract a young student travel / party crowd.
The hotel was full of guests that were there for that reason, so wasn’t ideal for us middle-aged parents with their children.
And it may have left our two teenage children questioning if they’d rather have been here with their own friends partying rather than with their mum and dad!
The Patong Lodge Hotel, incidentally, was pretty bad and we were very pleased only to spend literally a few hours here before leaving early the next morning.
Day 17: Flight home
We flew back with Qatar Airways again from Phuket back to Doha on an extremely comfortable flight – not business class this time but on their premium Comfort Plus seats which were very spacious with loads of width and legroom which made the 7-hour or so flight very comfortable even for my tall 6’3” body.
On the return journey we only had a short stop in Doha – three hours – before the final leg back to Heathrow, which we were nervous about as it left little margin for error in the event of any delays.
We were lucky though and all flights ran on time – and Doha airport, which is one of the world’s most popular for stops on long-haul flights from the west to the far east, is an incredible place to spend your stop-over time.
It’s absolutely huge and very modern with an enormous shopping centre as big as (probably much bigger) than many actual shopping malls.
So we had plenty to occupy us during the wait for final boarding at the airport before the final flight with Qatar Airways back home.
This holiday to Thailand was the most epic holiday we’ve done yet and the itinerary we followed, which was put together for us by the Travel Center UK travel agency, was virtually perfect for us.
Though maybe we’d have tweaked one of the days in Bangkok to give us more time in Krabi (which was our favourite place there), the itinerary gave us exactly the right amount of time to experience and enjoy four very different parts of Thailand – and it was all enjoyed equally by us parents and our two teenage children, who are increasingly hard to please!
- Read much more detail on all the activities and excursions we did on our family holiday to Thailand here