VISIT THAILAND

Thailand is making it easier for foreign visitors to spend like locals. Through its Cross-Border QR Payment initiative, travelers can increasingly pay for everything from street food to shopping with a simple scan using familiar digital wallets and banking apps.

Each June, the quiet town of Dan Sai transforms into a riot of colour, sound and spectacle as Phi Ta Khon, Thailand’s famed ghost festival, returns. Blending Buddhist ritual, animist belief and exuberant folk performance, the festival will take place from June 20–22, 2026, as part of the annual Bun Luang and Phi Ta Khon Festival.

Thailand has launched a nationwide digital immigration platform that allows foreign visitors to complete arrival registration before landing, part of an effort to reduce waiting times at border checkpoints and modernise the country's immigration services.

Bangkok’s electric water taxi service along Khlong Phadung Krung Kasem is quietly reshaping how visitors move through the city. Linking a string of central piers, the six-seat boats offer a low-emission alternative to Bangkok’s congested roads, gliding almost silently between historic districts, markets and civic landmarks. More than a novelty, it functions as a practical canal-based transit route—revealing a slower, more intimate way to navigate the capital’s often fast-moving urban landscape.

In Sukhothai, where Thailand’s first kingdom once flourished, the past is not preserved behind glass—it is walked, circled and quietly illuminated. Each year on Visakha Bucha Day, the ancient grounds of Sukhothai Historical Park become the setting for Wian Tian Takan, a ritual that feels less like a festival and more like a return.

Each May, the shoreline of Chaweng Beach shifts its rhythm. From 23 to 30 May 2026, Ko Samui hosts the Samui Regatta, drawing an international fleet to the Gulf of Thailand for a week of tightly contested yacht racing set against an unhurried island backdrop.

If you want to understand Thailand’s fruit culture at its most immediate, this is where to start. Held 21–24 May at the peak of...

Once Bangkok’s main railway gateway, Hua Lamphong Station now functions less as a transport hub than a cultural anchor. As long-distance services shift to Krung Thep Aphiwat Central Terminal, the surrounding district is being quietly redefined—a walkable urban layer where temples, canals, cafés and contemporary art sit in close proximity.

From April 29 to May 1, the village of Ban Ta Klang in northeastern Thailand gathers for Buad Nak Chang — the Elephant Ordination — a rare ceremony where Buddhist ritual, local belief systems, and a centuries-old relationship between people and elephants come together in vivid, living form.

Thailand is preparing to scale back its widely applied 60-day visa-free entry scheme, as the government shifts its tourism strategy toward attracting higher-spending, long-stay visitors and tightening screening of arrivals.

Visitors to Bangkok can take a more measured approach to the Songkran Festival this year, trading the city’s high-velocity street revelry for a slower drift along the Chao Phraya River.

For years, Songkran in Bangkok unfolded along a predictable axis. The chaos of Khao San Road—where water guns, buckets and crowds turned the street...