Thailand: Jungle & Islands

A driver takes you back to Bangkok this morning for your flight north to Chiang Mai, the old capital of the Lanna kingdom. Na Nirand Romantic Boutique Resort, your base for three nights, is a hideaway of teak buildings and gardens in the old riverside quarter along Charoenprathet Road. Spend the evening by the pool or walk out to the Night Bazaar.

Your guide takes you up the mountain that watches over Chiang Mai to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, where a golden chedi rises above the city and the plain spreads out below. Higher still is Doi Pui, a Hmong village of wooden houses and flower gardens, with stalls selling embroidered cloth. The afternoon back at the resort is yours.

Shop for ingredients at a local market with your teacher, then cook together at an organic farm outside the city: a curry paste pounded by hand, a soup, a stir-fry and a Thai dessert. Lunch is everything you made. Spend the rest of the afternoon on a massage or among the temples of the Old City.

Today you swap the mountains for the sea, with a direct flight from Chiang Mai to Koh Samui and its small open-air airport. SALA Samui on Chaweng Beach is home for your last five nights, in a suite with its own pool looking out over the Gulf of Thailand.

A private longtail boat collects you for a day among the small islands to the south. Snorkel in the clear shallows off Koh Tan, stretch out on the quiet sand of Koh Rap and stop at Koh Madsum, better known as Pig Island for the pigs that wander along its beach. You are back at the resort by mid-afternoon.

Breakfast arrives this morning on a tray floating in your private pool. After that nothing is planned: book a spa treatment for two, walk the length of Chaweng Beach, or take a table in the Fisherman's Village at Bophut for dinner.

See the green interior of the island today at Na Muang waterfall, where you can cool off in the pool beneath the falls. Then drive down the coast to Lamai for Hin Ta and Hin Yai, the Grandfather and Grandmother rocks, whose shapes have made them Samui's most talked-about landmark. The evening is back at the pool.

A last free day on the island. Swim, read on the beach, have a massage by the sea, or book a dinner on the sand for your final evening in Thailand.

After breakfast, transfer to Samui Airport for the flight back to Bangkok and your connection home, with the rivers, mountains and islands of Thailand behind you.