VacationSelector

Bangkok or Washington DC?

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 value for money and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage 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.

BangkokWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Bangkok leads by 22 points.22
BangkokWashington DC
Score4018
Swim season months123
Beaches 10 km01
Coast distance23 km34 km
Water distance23 km34 km
Places to eat. Bangkok leads by 6 points.6
BangkokWashington DC
Score8377
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3,9571,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2636
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 9 points.9
BangkokWashington DC
Score4655
Museums within 10 km10383
Museums within 2 km of centre3055
Share of museums within 2 km %2966
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Bangkok leads by 22 points.22
BangkokWashington DC
Score8361
Drinking venues within 4 km3,3831,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,396593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4158
Nightclubs within 4 km7254
Nature & day trips. Bangkok leads by 9 points.9
BangkokWashington DC
Score5142
Protected land share 50 km %10
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %8394
Park area within 2 km42 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Bangkok leads by 19 points.19
BangkokWashington DC
Score5738
Tourist attractions within 2 km317
Park area within 2 km42 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 28 points.28
BangkokWashington DC
Score4876
Notable places within 2 km62305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bangkok leads by 50 points.50
BangkokWashington DC
Score9343
Price level global29.7100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Washington DC leads by 6 points.6
BangkokWashington DC
Score5662
Monthly daytime high32.4 °C to 35.8 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall7 mm to 331 mm65 mm to 108 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
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Bangkok
27
28
29
30
31
30
30
30
29
29
29
28
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Bangkok
18
22
43
92
221
187
184
227
331
276
42
7
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Bangkok
11
12
12
12
13
13
13
13
12
12
12
11
Washington DC
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
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bangkok: 1991-2020 normals, Bangkok (5.7 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBangkokWashington DC
SeoulICN, GMP
5 h 0 m
€175-251
BKK · 26 km
13 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
TokyoHND, NRT
6 h 5 m
€318-365
BKK · 26 km
13 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
16 h 20 m
€646-679
1 stop
BKK · 26 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 55 m
€438-523
BKK · 26 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
4 h 35 m
€178-179
BKK · 26 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 25 m
€409-425
DMK · 21 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Abu DhabiAUH
6 h 30 m
no fares
BKK · 26 km
14 h 5 m
no fares
IAD · 37 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 2026-09 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

MeasureBangkokWashington DC
Official languageThai
CurrencyBaht (THB)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsABCF220 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+7UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 191, ambulance 1669, fire 199911
Elevation2 m72 m
Main airportSuvarnabhumi Airport (BKK)26 km from centre142 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBangkokWashington DC
City population5,676,648689,545
People per km²3,6193,896
Museums within 10 km5999
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre9182
Swim season, months above 21 °C12 months3 months

Where else could you go?

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