Hitchhiking around the land of smiles is a roller coaster of emotions! Enriching, tiring and exciting all at the same time. We hitchhiked a total of over 2000 km all over Thailand, over a 2 month period in 2023, all without spending a single penny on public transport! To hear how, why, where and what we experienced along the way, check out the rest of this article; Our ultimate guide to Hitchhiking Thailand. By the end you too should be ready to experience this amazing country and its incredible people yourself in your own hitchhiking Thailand adventure.
Note: This article applies to Thailand, and we know first hand that experiences will differ country to country. If in doubt, check the hitch-wiki here. Whilst we felt completely safe, we were travelling as a group of two. We also heard from single women who had the same or similar experiences to us without issues. Use common sense!
Why Hitchhiking?
Our hitchhiking journey started in the northern town of Pai in Thailand, about 2 hours north of Chiang Mai. Camilla had just spent a week at the Wat Pa Tam Wua monastery on a meditation retreat with the Buddhist monks and had joined her friend Paolo hitchhiking back to Pai. Read about that here!
This guy is an incredible hitchhiker and wonderful person! He hitchhiked solo from Italy to Australia, going through Balkans, Turkey, the Caucasus, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines! We couldn’t have a better teacher and inspiration to start our hitchhiking adventures.
We planned to be down to the islands in the south of Thailand by the start of 2023 for a new year’s party on the beach, and it was currently mid December 2022.
The options were, a minibus to Chiang Mai, then a flight to Surat Thani. Or a combination of sleeper buses / trains. We estimated the cost of these to be somewhere around €100 euros, or potentially much more if we intended to make stops along the way to see things. So why not hitchhike! The following weeks turned out to be one of the biggest adventures of our lives!
Hitchhiking in Thailand is free, surprisingly easy and will take you to places and experiences that most tourists don’t ever get to see. We spent nights in regional Thai cities where we were the only foreigners, got invited to parties and dinners by locals, and even offered places to stay almost on a daily basis.
The People of Thailand 🙏
The people of Thailand are some of the most generous and helpful people you will ever meet around the world. What they sometimes lack in English language skills they more than make up for in every other respect. They will usually go above and beyond what anyone else would expect to help you out, even if they aren’t driving in the direction you need. We’ve had people stop their truck on the other side of the highway and walk across through traffic to check we weren’t lost!
On one occasion we were taken to a party with our driver who lived in Surat Thani, with all his family, to eat a seafood feast. We were also given a hotel room when we got a ride from a bunch of elderly Thai ladies going to see their nieces’ university graduation. They took us to the night market in the evening, and we had breakfast with them the next morning before they took us to the highway to find our next lift. These are all experiences that we never would have had just sticking to normal public transport and tourist attractions, and these were some of the most memorable parts of our journey around Asia.
How much will I save?
Transport is relatively cheap in Thailand, especially compared to western countries. But as part of a long trip around the country it can start to add up. To get from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, buses start at €15 (and that’s for the basic daytime ones, you can pay double for a sleeper bus!), trains at €25 and flights usually around the €40 mark.
If you wanted to spend a week travelling from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, making stops along the way, this can easily reach triple figures. On average before hitchhiking we were spending close to €50-70 a week per person for public transport, usually through a combination of buses and trains, and infrequently flights. So over a month period you can expect to save a decent amount of money by hitchhiking, leaving you much more to spend on other things like experiences, food and accommodation.
How to Hitchhike Thailand?
1. Sign or no sign?
There are different schools of thought around this, and we have tried both methods, and have come to the agreement that no sign works best for us. We originally tried using signs with the name of our destination on. Usually one sign each, one in English and one in Thai, but because hitchhiking is an unfamiliar concept to a lot of Thais, people wouldn’t stop unless they were going all the way to our destination (which some days was a 4+ hour drive).
We found it better to just position ourselves on the correct road out of the city or town that we were in, and stand with our thumbs out 👍 This way you get everyone willing to give you a lift stopping, and can ask them where their destination is. If they’re heading in the right direction, jump in! You can always get another lift when they drop you off again if you need to travel further.
Write a note and keep it handy
One tip if you decide to not use a sign, is to get a note ready on google translate to show people when they stop. Something along the lines of, “We are headed south, can you take us in that direction?”, or “Further down the highway”. This way you can show the driver of the car / truck when they stop at the side of the road in case they don’t speak English.
2. Get out of the city
This is probably the hardest part about hitchhiking, because people in the city are usually just making short journeys to run errands, and not looking to go long distances. Our tactic was not using a sign saying where we were going, as this discourages people making smaller journeys from even stopping to ask where you are headed, and just stick to the thumb method.
If people stop to pick you up, try just asking them to take you to the highway, or as close to it as possible. If they can’t take you the whole way, just try to get closer where you can find another lift. It sounds like a laborious system, but we saved more time and money this way rather than waiting for one car to take us directly to our destination or using public transport to the highway.
Of course if all else fails you can usually find a local bus, Songthaew or train that will go there for less than 50 cents. Check out local bus times and prices anywhere in Thailand here.
3. Use the highways
If you aim to travel a large distance, the best place is always the inter-provincial highways that run throughout the whole country. These connect all the large towns and cities in the country together, so check the map for the town or city that you’re in and work out which highway you need to get to that leads to your destination.
We have collected some tips and tricks to hitchhiking along the highways in Thailand.
Sometimes, especially near to cities and towns, the highways split into 4 lanes, with the 2 central ones being for people travelling long distances, and the 2 outer ones being for local journeys. You need to get to a part of the highway where there are just 2 lanes! We can’t stress this enough. You can’t stand on the inner 2 lanes with your thumb out for safety reasons, and the people aren’t able to stop to pick you up even if they wanted to. Your chances of getting a lift from anyone in the outer lanes more than a few km are also slim.
4. Use the gas / petrol stations
We like to position ourselves just at the exit of a gas / petrol station on a 2 lane stretch of the highway. Personally we prefer the PTT ones as they’re the biggest and have the most people stopping (as well as 7-11). The other benefit to this is there are toilets 🙏 drinks / snacks, and on those extra hot days you can escape into the air conditioning in 7-11 if you need to.
Your best chance of finding a good spot is to study the map of the highway out of town and find a place where it becomes 2 lanes, and / or there is a large petrol / gas station where people are likely to stop and refuel.
Note: To get out of the city of Hua Hin we took a Songthaew for 10 THB / 25 cents to get to an outer part of the city closer to the highway. From there, we hitchhiked without a sign and got picked up by 2 cars which eventually took us to the PTT petrol station on a 2 lane stretch of highway heading South. From there, our rescuers arrived in 5 minutes and took us all the way to Chumphon. We asked if they could drop us off at a big gas station on the highway near Chumphon, and lo and behold in another 2 minutes, the final lift to the South, Surat Thani 😁 In this day we did over 4 separate hitchhiking lifts and travelled almost 500km
5. Choose your rides carefully!
Chances are you won’t have to wait long for a ride, sometimes we get picked up within minutes! We learned quite quickly that not all rides are equal in terms of comfort, especially if the journey is over an hour long. If you’ll be in the vehicle for a number of hours you can afford to be picky when getting into a ride! Having tried them all we give you are pros and cons below;
Cars: This is by far the best and most comfortable way to hitch around. Usually with air con, plenty of leg room and space to move, and nice cushioned seats!
Pickup truck: This is the most exciting way to hitch the first time but you quickly realise it’s not very comfortable. Think carefully before deciding to sit in the back of a pickup truck for a multiple hour journey on the highway, as they are both loud and can be very uncomfortable for anything other than a short journey, and you run the risk of getting major sunburn or rained on if the heavens open.
Minibus: If a minibus stops to pick you up, even on a remote part of highway, make sure you check if they expect you to pay for the journey or not. We’ve been burned once jumping into a minibus then being asked for payment when we went to get out. We have also had some free minibus journeys super long distances though, and they were a lot of fun!
Trucks: Whilst these are super cool to look at and have lots of bright colours, they are extremely slow, maxing out at about 60 kph. If you need to go a long distance it can take much longer in a truck than a car / minibus. We think it’s worth doing at least once though for the experience!
Top Tips
- Use common sense. We never ran into any issues but if a situation feels dangerous to you then trust your gut!
- This is not a recommended method of travelling around if you have tight time constraints.
- Some days are better than others. We travelled over 500km on some days but felt tired, exhausted and defeated on others.
- Persistence! If you feel like it’s not working, change location, or take public transport down the road and try a new spot.
- If you don’t feel confident doing it alone, try finding someone to try it with you in a hostel! We spoke to many like minded people during our travels like this.
- Suncream! If you’re sat in the back of a pickup truck under the Thai sun, make sure you wear suncream or you risk getting burnt.
- If you need to stop over somewhere for the night, the highway hotels or ones close to it will allow you to start early the next day and you won’t have to travel across the town / city to get there. Check out hotels and hostels here.
- When spending money abroad we use the WISE international debit card. You can withdraw up to 200 euros in cash per month free of charge. After that, you only pay a very low withdrawal fee.
- Travel insurance is a must for all south east Asian countries. Although problems rarely arise, you want to be covered in the case that they do. We use SafetyWing and recommend it for anyone travelling around the world.
If you’ve tried hitchhiking Thailand before, or any other country, leave us a comment below; we’re interested to hear your experiences! For more articles on Thailand and South East Asia, check out the rest of the blog.
Leave a Reply