I spent the second evening of our honeymoon sitting on a rooftop bar in Bangkok at the top of a sixty-storey hotel, with my new husband, both of us slightly drunk on Singha beer and badly cooked Italian food, and I realised that we were the only Indian couple in a room full of European retirees and Chinese businessmen. The view across the Chao Phraya river was the kind that makes you forget which country you are in. The lights of the city, the dark snaking river, the long-tail boats moving slowly against the current. We had been at the rooftop for two hours and I had not checked my phone once.
That was last March. We did the standard Thailand honeymoon, Bangkok three nights and Phuket four, and even though it is one of the more well-trodden Indian couple itineraries out of Bangalore, I want to write about it properly because it remains the trip I recommend more than any other to first-time honeymooners at our office, especially the ones who are nervous about doing their first international trip together. The visa change of May 2026 made some couples nervous in a way they should not be. The trip itself is exactly what it was. Only the paperwork on entry is slightly different.
Briefly on the new visa situation, because it changes the planning for some couples. Indian passport holders, since 19 May 2026, can either get a Visa on Arrival at Thai airports for a fifteen-day stay (the fee is around two thousand baht, roughly five thousand nine hundred rupees, payable in cash at the immigration counter, carry the exact change in baht) or apply for a Thailand e-Visa before travel for stays of up to sixty days (around two and a half thousand rupees application fee). Either way, the Thailand Digital Arrival Card, the TDAC, is mandatory and you fill it online up to three days before the flight. For a seven-night honeymoon, the VoA is enough. For longer holidays, get the e-Visa in advance and you can use the e-gate at Bangkok airport which saves about thirty minutes in the queue.
The route. Bangkok for three nights, Phuket for four. A short domestic flight between them (one and a half hours, every airline runs it). Some couples ask me whether Krabi is a better choice than Phuket. Krabi is quieter, more dramatic, the limestone cliffs are genuinely jaw-dropping. Phuket has more variety, more variety of beaches, an old town worth half a day, more dining and nightlife if that matters. Pick by mood. If your partner is the introverted one and you want quiet evenings, Krabi. If you both want the option of a livelier evening when you feel like it, Phuket.
Bangkok. Three nights. We flew the late-evening flight from Bangalore which lands around midnight local time, took a taxi straight to the hotel in Sukhumvit, and slept. The next morning we did the Grand Palace and Wat Pho. Start early. We were at the Grand Palace gate at quarter past nine. By eleven the queue was forty minutes long. The dress code is enforced strictly, no shorts, no bare shoulders, no flip-flops. The temple is gold-on-gold-on-gold and worth at least two hours. Wat Pho is a five-minute walk away and has the giant reclining Buddha, forty-six metres long, fifteen high, the soles of the feet inlaid with mother-of-pearl pictures of Buddhist symbols.
Lunch was at a riverside restaurant near the palace called Supatra River House, a beautiful old Thai-style house with a terrace on the Chao Phraya. The afternoon we went to Jim Thompson House, the small museum and old teak Thai house preserved exactly as the American silk magnate left it in 1967 when he mysteriously disappeared on a holiday in Malaysia. The house is calm and air-conditioned and a lovely break from the Bangkok heat. The story of Jim Thompson himself is fascinating enough that I would call it the most interesting hour in Bangkok.
Evening shopping. IconSiam if you want the high-end mall experience, MBK if you want the mid-range, Chatuchak weekend market if you are there on a Saturday or Sunday and want the bargain-hunt experience. Dinner that night was the rooftop I mentioned at the start. Vertigo at Banyan Tree and Sky Bar at Lebua are both classic options. Book ahead. There is also a smarter dress code at most rooftops. No flip-flops or shorts.
The third day we did the Chao Phraya river properly. The local long-tail boats from Tha Tien pier are cheaper and much more atmospheric than the tourist hop-on-hop-off cruises. We hired one for the morning for around fifteen hundred baht. The boatman was a small old gentleman who spoke about ten words of English. He took us through the canals on the Thonburi side of the river, past wooden houses on stilts, past temples with the spires just rising over the trees, past kids waving from the bank. We stopped at one tiny canal-side temple where a saffron-robed monk gave my husband a small woven bracelet and a quiet blessing. We do not know what the blessing said. My husband still wears the bracelet on his right wrist a year later.
Lunch at the famous Pad Thai shop in Yaowarat (Bangkok's Chinatown). One hundred baht. Twenty-minute queue. Worth it.
Afternoon Thai massage at a proper traditional place, not a hotel spa. Around five hundred baht for an hour. They will stretch you in ways your body did not know were available.
Phuket next. We flew at eleven in the morning, landed at half past one, taxied to the hotel by three. We had split our Phuket stay into two halves, two nights at a quieter beach (we picked Nai Harn, which is south Phuket, much less developed than Patong) and two nights at a more lively area (we picked Surin, which is north Phuket and slightly more upscale than Patong). The transfer between the two was thirty minutes by taxi.
The fifth day was the classic Phi Phi Islands day trip by speedboat. Around three thousand baht per person. The famous Maya Bay (the beach from the Leonardo DiCaprio film) is now visit-by-permit and the queue for the permit is genuinely an hour, but the other Phi Phi islands (Bamboo, Mosquito, the snorkelling stops) are quieter and easier. We had lunch on Phi Phi Don. Salt water in everything I owned afterwards. Worth it.
The sixth day was slow. Late breakfast, lazy morning, afternoon at Phuket Old Town for the Sino-Portuguese shophouses, narrow streets of bright-coloured two-storey buildings with shuttered windows and cafes. Coffee at a place called Bookhemian. Souvenir shopping at the small textile shops on Thalang Road. Evening cocktail at a beach club called Catch at sunset, the sand was orange, the sky was pink, the bartender made my husband a Thai basil mojito that he has been trying and failing to replicate at home.
The seventh day was the couples' spa morning at our hotel. Two-hour package, mostly massage with a small herbal facial, around four thousand baht for two. Then lunch, then the flight back to Bangalore via Bangkok, landing close to midnight.
On food. Indian food is everywhere in Thailand if you need a break. But the Thai food is the entire point. Pad Thai, tom yum (the spicy-sour soup), green curry (which tastes nothing like Indian green curries), massaman curry (more familiar to the Indian palate, peanut and warm spices), sticky rice with mango as a honeymoon dessert. Street food in Bangkok at Yaowarat is genuinely outstanding, pick the stalls with long Thai queues, not the ones with tourist signs. Vegetarian options at street food are less common but easier at restaurants. If you are strict vegetarian, learn the phrase "mai sai nam pla" (no fish sauce), which most Thai cooks use as a default flavour even in dishes that look vegetarian.
Cost. For two, seven nights, four-star hotels, all flights from Bangalore to Bangkok return plus Bangkok to Phuket, all meals, daily activities, came in around one lakh forty thousand. Going premium with five-star resorts, private transfers, and the more upscale dinners pushes it to two lakhs fifty to three. The mid-range works very well for first-time honeymooners and I would not recommend going premium for a first international trip together.
Best window is November to February when it is cooler and drier. March to May is hotter but still doable. June to October is the wet season, cheaper and quieter, and Phuket actually has many dry days in this period (the rain tends to come in afternoon bursts rather than all day).
I have planned many Thailand honeymoons since my own. The thing that I have noticed is that the couples who come back happiest are the ones who do not over-schedule it. Bangkok for three is the right balance. Phuket for four lets you have one day of slow nothing at the resort. Adding a third destination (Krabi after Phuket, or Chiang Mai after Bangkok) compresses the trip and most couples do not enjoy the back-and-forth on a seven-night holiday. Keep it to two cities. Take a couples' spa on at least one day. Eat one street food meal in Bangkok even if you are nervous about it. Stand on a rooftop on at least one night and not check your phones for an hour.