Buses in Thailand – What You Need to Know

Thailand has a very developed network of intercity and international buses, and you can travel almost the entire country by bus, and even visit neighboring countries. At the same time, bus travel will be the cheapest way to get around the country, provided you're willing to put up with some inconveniences. A bus ride over a similar distance in cheaper classes will cost even less than a train, not to mention that trains in Thailand won't get you just everywhere.

What Buses Are There in Thailand

Generally speaking, all buses in Thailand can be divided into two types:

• Tourist Buses in Thailand

  

  These are buses run by private companies that organize routes between popular tourist cities at their own discretion and are intended for tourist purposes, meaning tourists usually use them to travel from one resort to another. Tickets are sold at travel agencies and transport companies, and cost a bit more than regular buses on similar routes. However, they are much more convenient because they typically depart from tourist areas rather than bus terminals, which you'd otherwise have to reach by local public transport or taxi. Moreover, the ticket price often includes a transfer from your hotel to the tourist bus departure point – so they pick you up and drop you off from hotel to hotel.

  Among tourist buses, a separate category stands out – minivans. They're quite convenient for short trips, but they usually lack luggage compartments, making travel with large suitcases difficult (you can barely fit a small backpack). You should check this issue in advance, before buying tickets.

  

  But honestly, we should also mention the downsides of tourist buses, which make us recommend thinking twice and checking everything before using their services:

  • Punctuality, or rather the complete lack of it. Situations where they tell you the bus departs at 8 AM, but they actually pick you up at 7 or 9 AM are not rare. Also, don't be surprised if when selling tickets they assure you that you'll arrive at your destination exactly at 6 PM, but you actually get there only at night. Tourist companies intentionally give unrealistically early arrival times to lure tourists, and along the way, they'll make many detours to pick up and drop off goods. We wouldn't really recommend relying on minivans if you need to catch a flight or a train.
  • Many transfers. If the route involves changing buses or transferring to a ferry, it's not great. It can happen that on one journey you have to make several bus transfers, move your luggage around, and even ride practically on your haunches hugging your suitcases. For example, the route from Pattaya to Koh Chang by tourist minivan involves: pickup from hotels in a minivan, transfer on the city outskirts to a larger bus, arrival at the ferry and disembarkation on the ferry, and then another transfer to a minivan on the island.
  • Little luggage space. This problem occurs both in minivans and medium-sized tourist buses. Large suitcases sometimes simply don't fit, so they get stacked in aisles and on seats, leaving very little room in the cabin. So you might end up suffering even because of other people's huge suitcases.

• Regular Buses in Thailand

  

  Regular buses run between almost all cities in the country, are used by locals as well, are cheaper, and depart from bus stations. That is, they are exactly the same intercity buses as back home. Some regular buses belong to private companies, but most are government buses or buses from very large companies. They run strictly on schedule and arrive on time, or with slight delays.

  

  But unfortunately, they also have their downsides:

  • Difficult online ticket purchase. Tickets for these buses are mostly available either at station ticket offices or online on Thai websites. And those Thai websites often don't even have an English interface and may not accept foreign cards.
  • Hard to find schedules. There are many buses and transport companies, but there's no single website where you can get complete schedule information. In our experience, sometimes the only reliable way to find out anything about the schedule or even whether buses run from one city to another is to personally go to the station and ask at the ticket offices. This makes it difficult to plan your travel route in advance.

Which buses to use is up to you. If you don't want to complicate your life by figuring out routes and schedules in Thai, tourist buses between the country's main resorts will suffice. But keep in mind what's written above about their quality and punctuality.

So, regular buses depart from and arrive at bus stations in Thai cities. Along the way, they pick up or drop off passengers, making stops at designated places or at other bus stations. To board a passing bus, you need to buy a ticket at a bus station and get information about the time and place of the bus stop, because passing transport might not even enter bus stations but instead pick up passengers at bus stops along the route. Sometimes you can board a bus without buying a ticket in advance (but not at the bus station – they watch drivers for that kind of "side work" there), but you need to know the schedule and route.

Tickets are purchased in advance or just before the trip at bus stations, or at city ticket offices (these ticket offices are called Boh Koh Soh), and are often available at local travel agencies (with a small markup) alongside tourist buses. Tickets for VIP class are best purchased in advance. Sometimes travel agencies supplement your ticket with their own transfer from the hotel to the bus station, which is very convenient but naturally not free. And sometimes they slip you a more expensive tourist bus ticket instead of a regular bus. So the best option is to buy them yourself at bus terminals. It's worth noting that at bus terminal ticket counters in tourist-frequented cities, the staff speaks decent English, but in small provincial towns, you'll have to communicate with gestures and write down the destination and time on paper.

There are five classes of regular buses, among which the most popular and comfortable are VIP, First Class, and Second Class.

VIP – the most expensive, comfortable, and fastest. Air-conditioned, in terms of comfort no different from tourist buses. Onboard toilet. They make almost no stops along the way.

First Class – cheaper than VIP, air-conditioned, with onboard toilet, but slower and with more stops along the way.

Second Class – the cheapest. Not always air-conditioned (if air-conditioned, they are marked as Air Conditioned or A/C in schedules and on tickets; if not air-conditioned, they are marked as Ordinal or not marked at all), and even if air-conditioned, it's weak. No onboard toilet. They make many stops along the way, including for bathroom breaks, making them very slow. Mainly used for short routes.

There are also Silver Class and Economy Class.

Where to Find Schedules and Prices for Thailand Buses?

Unfortunately, there is no unified online booking system (at least, we don't know of one) for bus tickets that covers ALL ROUTES. However, quite a few popular routes are now collected and available for search and booking on the following sites:

• transport.co.th - here you'll find the most complete bus schedules, though not all of them.
• 12go.asia - a reliable search engine, you can pay for tickets with a foreign card or book them and pay at the counter in Thai stores.
• Trip.com – but there's no actual bus schedule – they offer transfers, including group ones that work like buses.
• busonlineticket – another reliable aggregator, but you can only pay online.

In practice, however, it's much easier to buy tickets on the spot at travel agencies; we almost always do it that way. Yes, you might have to pay a little extra, but the price usually includes a minivan transfer from the hotel. But this, of course, depends on the destination, since in some cities there are simply no travel agencies where you can buy them, and then you have to go to the station or buy online.

And here we've gathered bus and train schedules for Thailand by route.