VacationSelector

Bangkok or Cologne?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Bangkok
✓ Best match
62
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Cologne
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

BangkokCologne
Beaches & swimming. Bangkok leads by 40 points.40
BangkokCologne
Score400
Swim season months120
Beaches 10 km040
Coast distance23 km256 km
Water distance23 km
Places to eat. Bangkok leads by 11 points.11
BangkokCologne
Score8372
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,9571,142
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2635
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 14 points.14
BangkokCologne
Score4660
Museums within 10 km10347
Museums within 2 km of centre3027
Share of museums within 2 km %2957
Unesco sites within 50 km03
Nightlife. Bangkok leads by 19 points.19
BangkokCologne
Score8364
Drinking venues within 4 km3,3831,107
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,396727
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4166
Nightclubs within 4 km7290
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 20 points.20
BangkokCologne
Score5171
Protected land share 50 km %53
Landscape blanket share 50 km %052
Land share of disc %83100
Park area within 2 km42 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 15 points.15
BangkokCologne
Score5772
Tourist attractions within 2 km3143
Park area within 2 km42 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km46
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 5 points.5
BangkokCologne
Score4853
Notable places within 2 km6281
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bangkok leads by 33 points.33
BangkokCologne
Score9360
Price level global29.775.9
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Cologne leads by 4 points.4
BangkokCologne
Score5660
Monthly daytime high32.4 °C to 35.8 °C6.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall7 mm to 331 mm48 mm to 81 mm
Dry months30
0255075100

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Bangkok
33
34
35
36
35
34
34
33
33
33
33
32
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Bangkok
27
28
29
30
31
30
30
30
29
29
29
28
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Bangkok
18
22
43
92
221
187
184
227
331
276
42
7
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Daylight, hours per day
Bangkok
11
12
12
12
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Bangkok
8
8
8
8
7
5
5
4
4
5
7
8
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bangkok: 1991-2020 normals, Bangkok (5.7 km from centre). Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBangkokCologne
IstanbulIST, SAW
9 h 30 m
no fares
BKK · 26 km
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 55 m
€438-523
BKK · 26 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
MunichMUC
11 h 0 m
no fares
BKK · 26 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
ViennaVIE
10 h 35 m
no fares
BKK · 26 km
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
11 h 20 m
no fares
BKK · 26 km
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
RomeFCO, CIA
11 h 5 m
no fares
BKK · 26 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
ManchesterMAN
12 h 0 m
no fares
BKK · 26 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
ZurichZRH
11 h 20 m
no fares
BKK · 26 km
1 h 10 m
€174-186
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€409-425
DMK · 21 km
6 h 35 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureBangkokCologne
Official languageThaiGerman
CurrencyBaht (THB)Euro (EUR)
SocketsABCF220 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+7UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 191, ambulance 1669, fire 199112
Elevation2 m59 m
Main airportSuvarnabhumi Airport (BKK)26 km from centre142 non-stop destinationsCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBangkokCologne
City population5,676,6481,024,621
People per km²3,6192,530
Museums within 10 km5940
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km03
Distinct cuisines in the centre9184
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bangkok or Cologne somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.