Ayutthaya or Chiang Mai?

Neither city is a beach destination, so plan any sea days elsewhere. In Ayutthaya the rivers are busy working waterways and the hotel pool is the only place to swim. Chiang Mai at least lets you swim outdoors, at the Huay Tung Tao reservoir, the quarry lakes and the pools under its waterfalls.

Chiang Mai is the place to eat well. Northern Thai cooking is the main event: khao soi, herby sai ua sausage and sticky rice, served cheaply at Warorot market and the stalls at Chang Phueak Gate. Coffee grown in the surrounding hills supports a café culture you won't find in Ayutthaya.

Ayutthaya has a few good things of its own. Bowls of boat noodles, grilled river prawns by the water and roti sai mai from the stalls near the old Muslim quarter are all worth eating. Beyond those, the night markets cover most meals, and you will run out of new dishes long before you would in Chiang Mai.

Ayutthaya has the greater historic site. For four centuries this was the capital of Siam, and its ruins cover a whole island: the three chedis of Wat Phra Si Sanphet, the Buddha head caught in tree roots at Wat Mahathat, and the Portuguese and Japanese quarters south of the island. It is almost all ruin and temple, but nowhere else in the country shows history on this scale.

Chiang Mai's heritage is still in use. Monks live and pray in the Lanna monasteries inside the moat, and Wat Phra Singh's wooden halls, the silver Wat Sri Suphan and Doi Suthep above the valley reward slow walks over a few days rather than a single overwhelming sight.

Ayutthaya goes quiet after dark. There is a short strip of backpacker bars, and you can have a drink at a riverside table looking at the floodlit temples. Most visitors are in bed long before midnight.

Chiang Mai gives you a real choice of evening, though it is sociable rather than wild. Nimmanhaemin has cocktail and craft beer bars full of students, the lanes around Tha Phae Gate have rooftop terraces, and Loi Kroh Road is the rowdier strip. Few places stay open much past midnight.

Here the two cities are very different. Chiang Mai sits in a mountain valley, with Doi Suthep-Pui National Park starting at the edge of town and Thailand's highest peak, Doi Inthanon, about an hour and a half away. Rafting, jungle treks to hill villages and watching elephants at the sanctuaries are all easy to arrange.

Ayutthaya's countryside is flat river plain, with rice fields, canals and storks over the paddies. You can enjoy it from a bicycle or a long-tail boat at dusk, but the nearest wild landscape is Khao Yai, two hours away by road.

Ayutthaya is the better base for day trips, mainly because of where it sits. Bangkok's Grand Palace and markets are about an hour and a half away by train, Bang Pa-In's mix of Thai, Chinese and European palace buildings is twenty minutes off, and Lopburi's Khmer temples and macaques are an easy rail trip north.

Chiang Mai has good short outings to the old towns of Lamphun and Lampang and to the craft villages of Bo Sang and San Kamphaeng. Its best-known excursions, Chiang Rai and Pai, are too far for comfort and are better done with an overnight stay.

Chiang Mai keeps children busy for longer. Feeding elephants at a sanctuary, the zoo and Night Safari, the quarry swimming parks and the weekend walking streets give you several days of plans, though broken pavements and heavy traffic around the moat make getting about tiring.

In Ayutthaya, children usually enjoy a morning at the ruins, especially the stone head at Wat Mahathat, and a boat trip round the island. After that there is little aimed at them, and the shadeless sites in the midday heat are hard going for small ones.

Getting around is equally easy, and equally imperfect, in both. In Ayutthaya the classic way to see the ruins is by bicycle on the quiet, flat back lanes of the island, with a tuk-tuk circuit or a short ferry crossing to reach the far banks. Chiang Mai's old city is walkable within the moat. Beyond it you flag down the red songthaews or use ride-hailing apps, and you need a scooter or a hired driver to get into the hills.

Chiang Mai is by far the better place to shop, as long as you want handmade things rather than brands. The Sunday Walking Street, the Saturday market on Wualai Road and the nightly Night Bazaar are full of textiles, silver, celadon and hill-tribe embroidery, and there are craft villages for umbrellas and silk weaving just outside town.

Shopping in Ayutthaya means amulets and clothes at the night markets, souvenir stands at the temple gates and floating markets staged for visitors. The royal crafts centre at Bang Sai, downriver, is its one real source of traditional goods.

Both are very cheap places to travel, with inexpensive rooms, street meals that cost very little and cheap massages. What you end up spending on differs. In Ayutthaya the main costs are the separate entrance fees at each ruin and a tuk-tuk for the day. In Chiang Mai the temples are free or nearly so, and the bill grows with organised activities such as sanctuary visits, treks and cooking classes.

Neither city has a formal stage, but Chiang Mai has live music most nights. There are jazz and blues jam sessions near the north gate of the old city, bands in Nimmanhaemin, and khantoke dinners with Lanna dance, plus Muay Thai fight nights and the processions of Yi Peng.

Ayutthaya's one real performance comes at its annual World Heritage fair, when light-and-sound shows retell the old capital's history among the ruins. For the rest of the year there is little more than the occasional temple fair.

Chiang Mai is one of Thailand's best places to slow down. It is the country's best-known place to learn Thai massage, and it has yoga studios, herbal steam rooms, meditation at Wat Umong and Wat Suan Dok, and the San Kamphaeng hot springs within an hour.

Ayutthaya's wellness is simpler. A foot massage in a shophouse parlour after a day of cycling, and an evening by the river once the tour buses have gone, are restful, but there is little more to it.