VacationSelector

Bangkok or Seoul?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Bangkok
62
match

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

Seoul
63
match

Wins on museums & heritage 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.

BangkokSeoul
Beaches & swimming. Bangkok leads by 25 points.25
BangkokSeoul
Score4015
Swim season months122
Beaches 10 km01
Coast distance23 km28 km
Water distance23 km28 km
Places to eat. Seoul leads by 2 points.2
BangkokSeoul
Score8385
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,9573,559
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2632
Museums & heritage. Seoul leads by 37 points.37
BangkokSeoul
Score4683
Museums within 10 km103203
Museums within 2 km of centre3090
Share of museums within 2 km %2944
Unesco sites within 50 km05
Nightlife. Bangkok leads by 3 points.3
BangkokSeoul
Score8380
Drinking venues within 4 km3,3833,291
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,3961,630
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4150
Nightclubs within 4 km7229
Nature & day trips. Bangkok leads by 19 points.19
BangkokSeoul
Score5132
Protected land share 50 km %1
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8395
Park area within 2 km42 hectares126 hectares
Good for families. Seoul leads by 22 points.22
BangkokSeoul
Score5779
Tourist attractions within 2 km3162
Park area within 2 km42 hectares126 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km48
Sights concentration. Seoul leads by 11 points.11
BangkokSeoul
Score4859
Notable places within 2 km62118
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bangkok leads by 21 points.21
BangkokSeoul
Score9372
Price level global29.759.4
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Seoul leads by 5 points.5
BangkokSeoul
Score5661
Monthly daytime high32.4 °C to 35.8 °C2 °C to 30 °C
Monthly rainfall7 mm to 331 mm18 mm to 422 mm
Dry months34
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
Seoul
2
5
11
18
24
28
29
30
26
20
12
4
Sea temperature, °C
Bangkok
27
28
29
30
31
30
30
30
29
29
29
28
Seoul
6
4
5
8
12
17
21
24
23
20
15
10
Rainfall, mm
Bangkok
18
22
43
92
221
187
184
227
331
276
42
7
Seoul
18
28
38
70
104
138
422
390
156
49
50
20
Daylight, hours per day
Bangkok
11
12
12
12
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
Seoul
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Bangkok
8
8
8
8
7
5
5
4
4
5
7
8
Seoul
5
5
6
7
7
6
4
5
6
7
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bangkok: 1991-2020 normals, Bangkok (5.7 km from centre). Seoul: 1991-2020 normals, Seoul (2.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBangkokSeoul
TokyoHND, NRT
6 h 5 m
€318-365
BKK · 26 km
2 h 5 m
€140-229
ICN · 49 km
OsakaKIX, ITM, UKB
5 h 35 m
€293-335
1 stop
BKK · 26 km
1 h 40 m
€139-234
ICN · 49 km
Hong KongHKG
2 h 40 m
€175-181
BKK · 26 km
3 h 5 m
€172-189
ICN · 49 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
4 h 5 m
€176-184
BKK · 26 km
1 h 40 m
€197-199
1 stop
ICN · 49 km
Ho Chi Minh CitySGN
1 h 30 m
€127-140
BKK · 26 km
4 h 50 m
€178-194
ICN · 49 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
4 h 35 m
€178-179
BKK · 26 km
1 h 45 m
€198-221
ICN · 49 km
HanoiHAN
1 h 50 m
€132-139
BKK · 26 km
3 h 50 m
€152-181
ICN · 49 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 55 m
€438-523
BKK · 26 km
11 h 5 m
€603-659
1 stop
ICN · 49 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
16 h 20 m
€646-679
1 stop
BKK · 26 km
12 h 0 m
€637-697
ICN · 49 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€409-425
DMK · 21 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
ICN · 49 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

MeasureBangkokSeoul
Official languageThaiKorean, Korean Sign Language
CurrencyBaht (THB)Won (KRW)
SocketsABCF220 V, 50 HzCF220 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+7UTC+9
Emergency numberPolice 191, ambulance 1669, fire 199Police 112, ambulance 119, fire 119
Elevation2 m38 m
Main airportSuvarnabhumi Airport (BKK)26 km from centre142 non-stop destinationsIncheon International Airport (ICN)49 km from centre161 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year18 days

By the numbers

MeasureBangkokSeoul
City population5,676,6489,668,465
People per km²3,61915,973
Museums within 10 km5980
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km05
Distinct cuisines in the centre91156
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months2 months

Where else could you go?

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