After almost three weeks in Thailand — and all the advice we received from the community before the trip — it's time to give back. We're a religious couple, just over 50, first time in Thailand, celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary. I organized everything myself, from flights to the very last tour — and almost all of it ran through one place: the TUlon app.
Before the trip I set a total budget in TUlon, and from that moment every expense was logged on the spot — most of the time I didn't even type anything: snap the receipt, and the app reads the amount, currency and date and files it in the right category by itself. By the end I knew exactly what went where, and we finished at 90% of budget without over-scrimping. The full trip itinerary — flights, hotels and tours day by day — lived there too, so every morning we knew exactly what was ahead.
Direct El Al, premium class — we had plenty of frequent-flyer points, and at our age that's the only way to survive an 11-hour flight. It was the biggest expense of the trip. Domestic flights with Thai Airways and Bangkok Airways — punctual, fast processes, decent planes.
On flight day, TUlon popped a reminder to arrange a transfer from the airport — and I had genuinely forgotten. One tap, booked through GetTransfer, and a driver with a name sign was waiting when we landed. At our age, after an 11-hour flight, that's worth gold.
The day before the flight I realized we had no data plan for Thailand. Opened TUlon, tapped the Airalo eSIM, and within five minutes we had a digital SIM installed — no hunting for kiosks at the airport, no swapping cards.
I booked all the hotels through Agoda — straight from TUlon's planning screen, so the bookings and dates flowed into the trip calendar without double entry:
- Bangkok — Chilax Resort: charming and close to the Chabad House, which mattered for meals.
- Chiang Mai — The Empress Premier: very pampering, with staff who understand Shabbat so well they approached us proactively to explain they'd handle the elevator and door for us.
- Koh Samui — Synergy Resort: beachfront, two pools, a minute from Chabad and surrounded by kosher restaurants. They upgraded our villa on arrival — zero complaints.
- Bangkok to finish: the hotel attached to MBK (whose name I will apparently never remember).
The big tours I booked from home through a local agency: Doi Inthanon, Chiang Rai, the 42 islands by slow boat, an elephant rescue farm and a kosher cooking workshop. The spontaneous local tours I booked through GetYourGuide right from TUlon's Discover screen — a day ahead, with English-speaking guides: the Grand Palace and several temples. You can wander alone, but the knowledge a guide adds is worth every baht (and it's genuinely cheap).
Important tip about the 42 islands: to experience it fully — arrive fit. A serious 500-meter climb to an insane viewpoint, kayaking, then another climb to the green lagoon. The views are worth every drop of sweat.
For our 30th anniversary we hired a couples photographer in Koh Samui and got an amazing keepsake from the trip.
Mostly Bolt, occasionally tuk-tuks (mainly in Chiang Mai), and on foot whenever possible.
Koh Samui sometimes felt like a resort town back home: Hebrew in the streets, kosher restaurants on every corner. They say Thailand got expensive — I can't compare to the past, but you can absolutely enjoy it on a sane budget. And eating kosher every day? Elsewhere in the world that's a serious financial burden. Not here.
If I had to sum it up in one sentence: the itinerary, the bookings, the expenses and the receipts — all in one place. That's what a calm trip looks like.