When to visit Thailand

Friday, 7 Jul 2006 | Miscellaneous

A lot of people are telling me they will come to visit me in Thailand. I hope they do. A question I regularly get asked is when is the best time to come. So I decided to write a little article about that, sitting in B&S’ garden at the start of what looks to be another beautiful Amsterdam summer day.

Thailand does not have the seasons that we’re used to in the west. There is no winter and summer. Instead, there is the mild, rainy and hot season. I’ve also seen these referred to as the hot, very hot and the very, very hot season.

Season	Period	Avg. highs
Mild	March - May	34C/93F
Rain	June - October	32C/90F
Hot	November - February	31C/88F

I personally think the mild season is the best time to visit Thailand. It combines relatively mild temperatures (especially the evenings I think can be very nice, they certainly were in November last year) with fairly low humidity in the air. It brings the best time of year to actually see the sights and touring the cities without feeling like you need to take a shower every hour.

The rainy season is not as bad as it sounds though. It doesn’t mean there will be constant rain like the west can sometimes see in the fall for instance. Instead, the rainy season typically sees torrential rains that last 30 minutes to 2 hours before the skies clear and the sun comes back out. It typically rains at the end of the afternoon and is a daily occurrence. But it will sometimes not rain for a week at a time. I certainly hope this will be the case in September, I’m going for a beach holiday at the peak of the rainy season soon! The good thing apparently is that there is little tourism, so prices are good.

There are two peaks in tourism. One is around the Christmas holiday, when a lot of people I guess escape the cold for a few weeks of sunshine. This lingers on well into February and is the main tourism season for Thailand. The other peak is at Songkran, the traditional Thai New Year , in the middle of the hot season. Songkran means party time. I can’t wait to experience it.

The worst time to visit Thailand, I’m told, is May & June. It’s when the hot season changes to the rainy season. It combines heat with humidity and that is just about the worst combination to be had.