One of the great family trips.

What works, by kind of event

Illuminations and lantern nights are the perfect family evening: outdoors, spectacular at child height, and early enough to end before bedtime. Temple fairs and night markets feed everyone differently from ten stalls in one evening, which solves the picky-eater problem completely. Songkran in April is the world's greatest water fight: with small children, watch from a side street or join a hotel or mall celebration rather than the main battlegrounds. Beach and island days carry the middle of most trips: pick the coast by season (the Gulf islands are driest roughly February to August, the Andaman roughly November to April).

The logistics that help

Convenience stores (7-Eleven above all) are on every corner with milk, snacks, nappies and suncream at all hours. Intercity travel is easiest by domestic flight for long legs; the overnight sleeper train to Chiang Mai is a genuine adventure for older children, booked ahead. In Bangkok the BTS and MRT beat traffic with a stroller, and the river boats turn transport into sightseeing. Heat is the real planning constraint: sightsee early, rest or swim through the middle of the day, and go out again for the evening markets.