VacationSelector
Santo Domingo church behind agaves, Oaxaca
OaxacaSanto Domingo church behind agaves
The Sanctuary of Truth by the sea, Pattaya
PattayaThe Sanctuary of Truth by the sea

Photos: Oaxaca by Öskr Rck, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped; Pattaya by Matrix, Pexels License.

Oaxaca or Pattaya?

Our verdict in twelve categories, each scored against the same fixed benchmark cities, and the climate month by month, so you can choose for your trip.

Choose Oaxaca for

  • culture and sights
  • food and drink
  • nature and the outdoors

What lies behind each score is written up on Oaxaca’s own page.

Choose Pattaya for

  • beaches
  • nightlife
  • families

What lies behind each score is written up on Pattaya’s own page.

Scoreboard

Twelve categories on one fixed scale from 0 to 100. The shaded stretch is the gap between the two.

Beaches & swimming. Oaxaca 5, Pattaya 66: Pattaya leads by 61 points.
Food & drink. Oaxaca 84, Pattaya 58: Oaxaca leads by 26 points.
Culture & sights. Oaxaca 74, Pattaya 30: Oaxaca leads by 44 points.
Nightlife. Oaxaca 40, Pattaya 76: Pattaya leads by 36 points.
Nature & outdoors. Oaxaca 62, Pattaya 40: Oaxaca leads by 22 points.
Day trips. Oaxaca 65, Pattaya 52: Oaxaca leads by 13 points.
Good for families. Oaxaca 40, Pattaya 55: Pattaya leads by 15 points.
Getting around. Oaxaca 55, Pattaya 36: Oaxaca leads by 19 points.
Shopping & style. Oaxaca 62, Pattaya 42: Oaxaca leads by 20 points.
Affordability. Oaxaca 77, Pattaya 84: Pattaya leads by 7 points.
Live music & performing arts. Oaxaca 38, Pattaya 30: Oaxaca leads by 8 points.
Wellness & relaxation. Oaxaca 50, Pattaya 58: Pattaya leads by 8 points.
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What lies behind each score is written up on the two cities’ own pages: Oaxaca and Pattaya.

Your match

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders, and both match scores follow your weighting.

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Oaxaca
54match

Wins on culture and sights and food and drink with your weighting.

Pattaya
52match

Wins on beaches and nightlife with your weighting.

What matters to you?

When should you go?

Pick your month. The climate figures are measured averages, not a forecast.

Oaxaca in July

28 °Cdaytime high
15 °Cnight-time low
80 mmrain in the month
7 hsunshine a day
No seasea
13 hdaylight a day

Pattaya in July

32 °Cdaytime high
26 °Cnight-time low
102 mmrain in the month
6 hsunshine a day
30 °Csea
13 hdaylight a day

Daytime high, °C

0°10°20°30°40°JFMAMJJASOND

Rainfall in the month, mm

0100200300JFMAMJJASOND
OaxacaPattaya

Where the figures come from

Pattaya's temperatures are measured 31 km from the centre, at Sattahip.

Pattaya has no rain gauge within 25 km of the centre, so its rainfall comes from a gridded climate dataset read at the city rather than from a gauge further away.

Pattaya's sunshine is measured 86 km from the centre, at Bangna Agromet / Ban Khlong Samrong.

Temperature and rainfall are climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Oaxaca: 1961-1990 normals, Oaxaca, Oax. (1.1 km from centre). Pattaya: 1971-2000 (sunshine 1961-1990, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Sattahip (31.2 km from centre).

Before you go

MeasureOaxacaPattaya
Official languageSpanish, Nahuatl, Yucatec MayaThai
CurrencyMexican Peso (MXN)Baht (THB)
SocketsAB127 V, 60 HzABCF220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-6UTC+7
Emergency number911Police 191, ambulance 1669, fire 199
Elevation1,555 m35 m
Main airportXoxocotlán International Airport (OAX)7 km from centre14 non-stop destinationsSuvarnabhumi Airport (BKK)83 km from centre150 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year9 days-

By the numbers

MeasureOaxacaPattaya
City population258,913119,532
People per km²3,028-
Museums within 10 km100
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Swim season, months above 21 °C-12 months

Where else could you go?

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

Browse every destination

Sources

Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Rainfall where no rain gauge is within 25 km is from the TerraClimate 1991-2020 climatology (Abatzoglou et al. 2018, Scientific Data), read at the city. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm.

Category scores are our editorial verdict under rubric v3, each placed against the same fixed benchmark cities; the climate figures are measured. How the scores are set. Snapshot generated 2026-11-02. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.