How to travel without planning ahead
6 tips and 7 places to stay in Thailand!!!
Aug 27, 2017 · 5 min read

- Travel book: Before we left for Thailand, we bought a travel book called Le Routard. It has been of great help while we were on the road. Each time we were on our way to a new city, we’d look at their advises. It helps to know where you want to book a ho(s)tel, how to move around the city and what range of prices to expect. That is step one.
- Step two was to book/look for a room somewhere on booking.com. Booking is great because it has so much choice and people write honest opinions. What we would do was look at three things: rating, price and location. Most important for us was to find a cheap clean place with friendly people. It is always the people you meet who make your trip a good experience. And obviously we had a budget so we tried to find cheap places. Apart from Bangkok, we were able to find relatively cheap accomodations. We also got lucky and most places we visited were either special by their architecture or special because of their amazing staff.
- Best places we’ve stayed (my opinion): 1. Been hostel in Bangkok. It was amazing. The owner is very kind, and foreigners are taking care of the place in exchange for free meals and beds. The atmosphere inside the building is relaxing and homey. The location is GREAT!!!! 2. Slow tree in Ayutthaya. The staff was so very kind and the rooms were wooden built and cute. There was a shared terrasse with a great view and the city itself was great. 3. Pudsadee hostel in Chang Mai old city. It was a bit more expensive than the other place I recommend in Chang Mai; 700 baths a night which we negociated to 500. It is number 3 because of the staff. The girl in charge was great and got us amazing prices for treks in the mountains. She helped us and her prices were the cheapest. We checked many places. In front of it was number 4. J.j’s guesthouse in Chang Mai old city. The room was sooo cheap (250B a night), clean, big and their was a small private balcony. 5. Noom guesthouse in Lop Buri. Great staff, great food, great rooms. It looked like it was out of a Harry Potter movie. Loved it! Also the city is a must see with monkeys walking all around the city. 6. Lime and Soda resort in Koh Phangan (Thong Sala). It was great quality-price wise, great staff, great location, etc. Located walking distance from the port which is good because taxis and tuk-tuk are expensive. The staff at the bar and restaurant was soo cool and nice. Also we found a nice restaurant with the best food in Thailand for cheap prices. It was always empty but really amazing and so cheap. 7. Last one worth mentioning is Sports Bar resort in Pak Chong. It was a bit expensive (500baths the smallest room) and so was the restaurant. But the place was very clean and cute and I loved waking up in the morning and see the pretty and sunny garden. I’ll post pictures below. They had good bicycles for 100 baths a day and good prices on treks. Also there was a pool very clean and we were always alone there. There isn’t much to do in Pak Chong so don’t stay too long.
- Don’t expect anything and you’ll be amazed. Every time we’d look for a place, we’d say: let’s try and see. If we like it we stay. If we don’t, we leave. Great expectations lead to great disappointment.
- Not booking ahead feels like you’re wasting time. You loose an hour for each place but it also allows you to read about the city you’re going to. I loved booking on the way, eventhough sometimes it was tiring.
- You are more flexible. I will talk about this in another post, but our trek in Pak Chong didn’t go as well as we expected. We went back to the hotel instead of sleeping in a camp. In Koh Samui, we wanted to stay one more night where we were at, but the room was booked already amd they were full. We were actually happy to change islands as we didn’t like Koh Samui. But the point is sometimes you will have to.make unexpected decisions. It makes the whole experience fun though.
Hope this is helpful! Have a safe trip!
On pictures:
- NOOM HOSTEL
- SPORT BAR RESORT
- Sport bar resort view from our room
- LIME AND SODA RESORT with friendly staff and new friends
- Lime and soda’s room
- Lime and soda’s view from the pool






