Ten days in Thailand: two short flights instead of a week on the road

Land, get to the hotel, and do one thing. Wat Pho is the right one: it is next door to the Grand Palace but nothing like as demanding, and its hall is filled almost exactly by a reclining Buddha forty six metres long, brick and gilded plaster, with mother of pearl worked into the soles of the feet. The same grounds hold the country's best known school of traditional massage, and an hour on a mat there is the correct response to a long flight.

Then Chinatown as the light goes. Wat Mangkon Kamalawat was built in 1871 in Teochew style and is the busiest temple in the quarter, thick with incense and people praying rather than photographing. Come out onto Yaowarat Road at seven and the street has changed character completely: shutters down on the gold shops, carts out on the pavement, and queues at the ones worth eating at.

Eat where the queue is Thai. Grilled river prawns, oyster omelette, kuay jab, a plastic stool and a bottle of beer. This is the best cheap eating in Bangkok and it starts at about six.

At the palace gate for opening at half past eight. By eleven the courtyards hold thousands of people and offer no shade whatsoever, and the difference between arriving at half past eight and half past ten is the difference between a good morning and a queue.

The Grand Palace was begun in 1782 and every reign since has added to it, so you cross from pure Ayutthayan temple architecture to Victorian facades under Thai roofs within a few minutes' walk. The Temple of the Emerald Buddha stands inside the same walls and holds a small jade figure high on a gilded pedestal, whose robes the king changes three times a year with the seasons. Long trousers and covered shoulders, or you will be buying both at the gate.

In the afternoon, the river. From Tha Tien pier the cross river ferry runs to the Thonburi bank for a few baht and takes three minutes. Wat Arun's central spire is covered in broken Chinese porcelain pressed into the stucco, and the steep stairs partway up give you the palace back across the water. Its name means temple of dawn and late afternoon is when it looks best, which is one of the small jokes of Bangkok.

Finish at Wat Saket. The Golden Mount beside it is an artificial hill: the first chedi built on top collapsed into soft ground, and it took a thousand teak logs to stabilise the mound before a more modest one could stand. A spiral staircase of 318 steps climbs it, mostly in shade, and the terrace at the top is the one place left to see the low old city rather than towers.

The other Bangkok, the one most visitors skip. Start at Jim Thompson's House before the tour buses arrive. Thompson was an American who rebuilt the Thai silk trade after the Second World War, then walked into the Malaysian highlands in 1967 and was never seen again. His house is six traditional teak buildings brought from around the country and reassembled beside a canal, full of the Asian art he collected. Entry is by guided tour and the wait can run half an hour, so arrive at opening.

Spend the middle of the day indoors and cold. Siam is two Skytrain stops away and is essentially a district of air conditioning, which in April counts as infrastructure.

Lumphini Park comes alive at about five, when the heat drops and half of Bangkok arrives to run, do aerobics in formation and rent pedal boats on the lake. Rama VI gave the land to the city and his statue stands at the south western gate. The monitor lizards in the water are large, wild and best admired from several metres away.

Then up. The enclosed deck at Mahanakhon is on the 74th floor of a 314 metre tower, and the open rooftop above it has a glass floor at 310 metres that a good number of people cannot make themselves stand on. Book for the last hour of daylight and stay while the city lights come on.

Take the earliest flight you can stand. It is a little over an hour to Chiang Mai, the airport is 3 km from the old city, and a flat fare taxi or the shuttle minibus has you inside the moat before lunch.

Chiang Mai's temples are Lanna, with Burmese and Sri Lankan influence layered in, and they look nothing like the ones you have just left: dark teak, tiered roofs coming almost to the ground, serpent balustrades, carved gables instead of glass mosaic. Start with the two best, five minutes apart.

Wat Phra Singh is the busiest temple inside the walls. Walk past the main hall to Wihan Lai Kham at the back, whose interior walls carry Lanna murals in gold on black, full of court and market scenes that repay ten minutes of standing still.

Wat Chedi Luang is a ruin and better for it. The brick chedi was begun in 1401 under King Saeng Muang Ma and grew into the tallest thing in the kingdom until an earthquake brought its top down in 1545. Nobody rebuilt it. What remains is a huge stepped block with elephants around the base and an empty eastern niche where the Emerald Buddha stood for about eighty years before it went south. In the late afternoon monks sit at tables in the grounds to practise English with anyone who wants to ask about monastic life.

Doi Suthep is the full day, and the good way up is on foot. A pilgrim path climbs through forest from behind the university, marked here and there with orange cloth tied around trees, and takes about an hour of steady uphill. Start at eight while it is cool, carry more water than you think you need, and wear something with grip: the top section is rock and root rather than steps.

Wat Pha Lat is the reward, and almost nobody driving past stops there. A small temple built into a gorge with a stream running through the grounds, moss over the stonework, and none of the crowd higher up. Sit for half an hour before going on.

Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep was founded in 1383, and the legend has the site chosen by a white elephant carrying a relic, which climbed until it stopped, trumpeted three times and died. A naga staircase of about three hundred steps climbs to the terrace, where a gilded chedi stands in a cloister hung with bells and the city lies flat below on a clear day. There is a funicular for anyone who has had enough of stairs.

The road carries on above the temple to the royal winter gardens and the viewpoints near the summit, which are worth the extra half hour if you have a truck for the day.

West out of the moat along Suthep Road, and a completely different set of temples from the ones inside it.

Wat Suan Dok stands in what was a royal flower garden. Its open sided hall is full of roughly finished Buddha images under a huge whitewashed chedi, and beside it is a field of white memorials holding the ashes of the Chiang Mai royal line, which at the end of the day catch the light against the mountain behind. It is one of the few places in the city where a photograph does the thing justice.

A little further out, Wat Umong is a forest temple with brick tunnels dug into a hillside, built by Mangrai for a monk who kept wandering off into the countryside. The tunnels are cool and dim with Buddha images set into alcoves, the grounds are full of trees hung with proverbs on wooden boards, and there is a lake full of catfish. It is several degrees cooler than anywhere inside the moat and the quietest place in Chiang Mai.

Save Wat Si Suphan for the evening. The ordination hall on Wualai Road, the old silversmiths' street, is clad head to foot in beaten silver and aluminium, chased into scenes across every wall and the ceiling, and floodlit after dark. Women are asked not to enter the ordination hall itself under an old northern rule about that particular building; the rest of the compound is open to everybody and much of the best work is outside.

The longer flight. Direct services from Chiang Mai to Krabi run a few times a day in season; otherwise change at Bangkok and check which airport each leg uses, because the two are 30 km apart and connecting between them is slow.

From Krabi airport it is about half an hour by road to Ao Nang, either in an airport car or on the shared air conditioned bus that drops at hotel doors for a fraction of the price. Then do nothing. The eastern half of Ao Nang beach is the better swimming; the western end near the creek is not somewhere to get in the water.

Late in the afternoon, walk to the southern end of the sand and take the wooden boardwalk around the headland to Pai Plong, a small cove with about five metres of beach at high tide. A resort backs onto it and its guards will ask you to sign in. Sign in: every beach in Thailand is public, this one is far prettier than anything you can walk to in town, and it faces the right way for sunset. The walkway is lit for the way back.

The Rai Leh peninsula is ten minutes south of Ao Nang by boat and has no road to it at all. Limestone walls cut it off from the mainland, so the longtails leaving from the end of the beach are the only way in, and that fact is why the place feels the way it does.

Boats land at Rai Leh West, a long stretch of sand facing the sunset. Walk across the neck of the peninsula to Rai Leh East, which is mangrove rather than beach, then take the path south to Phra Nang. That is the beach from the photographs: white sand under an enormous limestone overhang, water the colour of a swimming pool, and a cave shrine at the end filled with carved wooden phalluses left by fishermen asking for a good catch and a safe return.

Above the east side, a rope and mud scramble climbs to a viewpoint over both bays and drops from there into a hidden lagoon. It is short, genuinely steep, muddy in all weather, and not something to attempt in flip flops.

These cliffs are among the best known climbing in Asia, with hundreds of bolted routes straight off the sand. Half day beginner sessions run from the peninsula and from agencies in Ao Nang and need no experience at all. Watch the macaques: they open bags and they are not friendly.

Inland, and early, because the day begins with a staircase. Tiger Cave Temple sits against a forested hill a few kilometres from Krabi Town, and 1,237 concrete steps climb the rock face to a gilded Buddha on the summit. It takes most people between forty five minutes and an hour, the steps are steep and uneven, and there is nowhere to buy water above the bottom. Go at seven, carry a litre each, and stop as often as you need to. The reward is karst towers standing out of a flat green plain in every direction, which explains this province better than any beach can.

At the foot of the hill the temple spreads out through forest, with meditation caves, monks' huts and a large population of macaques who will take anything not held.

Krabi Town in the afternoon is a working river port rather than a resort, and after Ao Nang that is restful. Wat Kaew Korawaram stands on a rise above the main street, white from its staircase to its roof, and takes twenty minutes to see.

Finish at the pier, where a longtail runs out in about a quarter of an hour to Khao Kanab Nam, the two limestone rocks standing in the river mouth that appear on every piece of provincial signage. Steps are cut up inside caves at their base, and human remains found in them are thought to be very old indeed.

Nopparat Thara is the beach immediately west of Ao Nang and it is the better one: longer, quieter, backed by casuarina trees instead of restaurants, and protected as national park. A creek splits it in two, with the pier for speedboats and longtails at the divide.

Time it for low tide if the flight allows. The sea pulls back a long way and leaves walkable sand running out towards the islands offshore, which is the last good memory of the trip and costs nothing.

Then the airport: about thirty minutes in a car, roughly double that on the shared bus from the beach road. Krabi is small enough that two hours before a domestic connection is plenty, though give yourself three if you are flying straight home from Bangkok on the same ticket.