Thailand Travel Tips for Over 30 Nightlife
If you’re still following Thailand travel advice you heard when you were in your 20s, you’re going to end up wasting days in bed hung over in cheap hostels without ever experiencing what truly makes Thailand great. After 30, there are better ways to travel, from choosing the right nightlife to meeting people and travelling in comfort without breaking the bank.
Skip Khao San Road and Full Moon Parties for Better Thailand Nightlife
Have you ever rented a film from Blockbuster? Are your hangovers getting worse? If you answered yes to these questions, then you might just be too damn old to visit some of Thailand’s most famous spots. But don’t worry, because they actually completely suck anyway.
There are two spots in particular in Thailand that are world famous, that many travellers plan their whole trips around, but in my opinion are completely overrated and you’ll want to give them a miss. These spots were once considered a rite of passage for many backpackers, but nowadays they feel like paint by numbers fun. By that I mean a lot of people doing the exact same thing and having the exact same experiences.
Some of the other problems with these spots are that they’re overcrowded, overtourism has destroyed the environment, and, at the risk of sounding like an old man, the music’s just too damn loud. It’s not fun, and I’m not sure why anyone enjoys it.
The two places I’m talking about are Khao San Road in Bangkok and the Full Moon Parties in Koh Phangan. I still meet a lot of people that have these places as a must visit, but honestly, they’re just a bit crap.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a couple of wild nights in Thailand. I just think there are far better nightlife spots in the country. In Bangkok, even just a few streets over from Khao San is Soi Rambuttri, and the bars around Sukhumvit Road have a far better atmosphere. These places are all about exploring some of the side streets to see where the night takes you.
If you’re looking for something a little swankier, Yaowarat in Chinatown has some of the best cocktail bars in the country, and Sukhumvit Road is home to some amazing sky bars that overlook the city. In terms of the Thai islands, Thai people love a beer too, so all of the major islands have a good nightlife and you’re going to have a wild one on any night of the week. You do not need a pile on the beach with 10,000 other people to kill all the fish nearby.
How to Meet People Safely in Thailand
This leaves us with an interesting dilemma. How the heck do you meet people without getting absolutely shitfaced? It’s definitely something I’ve struggled with over the years because, when I was younger, that was the only way I ever met new people.
Luckily, I’ve learned a few tricks that can help you nowadays. We can rely on the power of the internet to help us meet people that we might actually like, but it’s important to stay safe. There are lots of Thailand travel groups online, and some of them have hundreds of thousands of people in them, but these groups can be some of the most toxic places on the internet. With so many members in these groups, do you really want all of them knowing when and where you’re travelling and what you look like?
Luckily, there’s one app that you can use where you don’t have to give away your private information, and you can look to meet up with people with similar interests and tastes as you. It’s not Tinder. In the past, I’ve used it to meet up with people in hiking groups, where everyone will meet up to go on a hike near Bangkok, but there are regular meetups to visit temples, coffee shops, museums or food tours taking place every single day. The app is called Meetup, and it’s the best way to meet people who have similar interests as you.
If you want to do things the old fashioned way, though, in Thailand there are plenty of opportunities to do group classes or group activities. Living in Bangkok, I train Muay Thai a few times a week, and there’s a constant stream of people travelling through the country. The gym is where they get to meet new people, and some of them meet up afterwards to go explore.
All throughout the country there are opportunities to take classes for yoga, meditation, photography and all kinds of different things. When I was in my early 20s, I spent a lot of time trying to pull birds on dating apps, and now, even though I’m happily married, I still spend lots of time looking at birds on an app. The only difference is now I use this nifty talent bird watching app that I’ve downloaded. Bird watching joke. So if, like me, you’re cuckoo for cuckoos or horny for hornbills, perhaps you’d benefit from spending some time in Thailand’s stunning nature spots.
Thailand Nature Trips Beyond the Tourist Crowds
Whether it’s deserted beaches, dense jungles or stunning mountain peaks, Thailand has it all. When I was travelling around the country in my early 20s, I was far too hung over to take advantage of these stunning sights, but now these are some of my favourite places to explore.
In fact, if I was planning a trip to Thailand now, planning which spots I would want to go to would be one of the first things that I would decide, and then I would build the rest of my trip around that. Because you’re going away from the crowds, these spots are often a little trickier to get to and require more time there, so you probably need to plan ahead.
Some of my favourite places to visit are Khao Sok National Park for wildlife spotting. Here you can see wild elephants, gibbons, lizards and snakes. You can really immerse yourself in nature by staying in floating hotels either on the biggest lake in the country at Cheow Lan Lake or in the River Kwai in Kanchanaburi.
If you want to see how people really live in rural Thailand, you can do multiple day guided treks from northern Thailand. These treks have you staying in far flung village areas away from the city and trekking through forests and rice paddy fields. These are just some of the less explored parts of the country that are far removed from Khao San Road, and most people never make it to them.
Why Smaller Thailand Tours Are Worth Paying For
If you don’t want your tour to be ruined before it even starts, I have one tip that will make sure you can see and do more, travel in comfort and not have your trip ruined by obnoxious people. A while back, I actually did an overnight trek with a big group, and it was kind of ruined by a couple of gap year kids.
It was during the night after a long day’s trek. I looked up at the sky and saw thousands of stars. It was one of the most beautiful and peaceful things I’ve ever seen. That was until a group of teenagers started blasting Taylor Swift on their speaker. They were drinking and shouting all night, which to me wasn’t really the point of escaping to the jungle, and I really regretted not spending a bit of extra money on a smaller group tour.
The cheapest tours usually try cramming as many people as possible into them, which means you’re more cramped, have less freedom about where and when you can travel, and have a higher chance of being with a group of knobheads. It can be much worse. Some island hopping tours will cram in about 40 to 50 people, which is just a miserable way to travel by boat. Because the group size is so big, you’re always waiting around for someone and have less time to actually explore the islands.
Admittedly, some private tours will be out of a lot of people’s budgets, and it can actually be fun meeting people on these tours, but I think you really need to avoid the massive group tours. Size does matter, but less is more.
Choose Comfortable Accommodation in Your 30s
If there’s one thing worse than being crammed on a tour bus with a load of sweaty tourists, imagine sharing a room with them. This was my reality of backpacking in my 20s, and that’s not even the worst of it. Sometimes you’d be woken up by people having sex in the bed below, and one time I’m pretty sure a guy did a line of coke off my head when I was asleep.
I’ve had some good times staying in cheap hostels, but after experiencing Thailand on a slightly higher budget, I promise you I will never ever go back. The good thing about travelling in Thailand in your 30s is you’re probably not completely broke anymore. Congratulations on that, by the way.
By spending a little bit more on hotels, you can experience luxury without breaking the bank. There’s a lot of travel advice online about how to do everything in Thailand as cheaply as possible, but did you really travel halfway across the world to not experience the best of what the country has to offer?
In Thailand, you have the opportunity to experience some of the best resorts in the world, resorts that you would never be able to afford if you were travelling in Europe or America. I’ve personally stayed in rooms where there were pools, hot springs and private beaches, and what’s more, I did it without breaking the bank.
