Home »  Thailand Hostels » Chiang Rai Hostels

There are no traditional hostels in Chiang Rai in the sense of having dorm beds and community kitchens, but there are many budget places suitable for anyone interested in a Chiang Rai hostel. First off, you probably realize that Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai are different cities that are a couple hundred kilometers apart, so if you are looking for Chiang Mai you are in the wrong place, but only a click or two away from the correct page.

This area is the center of the tourism industry in the Golden Triangle near the borders with Burma and Laos, so the city is filled with businesses to serve the giant population of travelers coming through. Even though there are no dorm-style hostels in Chiang Rai, there are many cheap sleeping options with beds starting as low as $US5 per night and going all the way up the scale from there.

This is a resort area so many of the places listed on the Chiang Rai hostels page call themselves resorts, but of course not all resorts are created equally. You generally get what you pay for in this part of the world, or actually by Western standards you really get a lot more than you pay for in Southeast Asia. A hotel room that would cost $US300 per night in Hawaii might only be $US50 per night in Chiang Rai.

But one nice thing to know for visitors is that the pricing of the hostels in Chiang Rai, or the resorts that list themselves as hostels in Chiang Rai anyway, tends to be fair. If one place charges $US25 per person and another charges double that, you can be sure that the second place is going to be quite a bit nicer than the first place.

The only official hostel in Chiang Rai is the Hostelling International Sabun-Nga Chiang Rai, and even though they don’t have dorm rooms they definitely have the cheapest beds in town. Their private twin rooms with ensuite bathrooms start at around $US5 per person so they are affordable even as singles if you have to pay for both beds. They are about 1.5 kilometers from the city center so it’s not ideal if you want to enjoy the nightlife of Chiang Rai, but they do have their own restaurant and bar so it’s not like there will be no opportunities to get some food and drinks.

The White House Hotel is in the heart of the city and they’ve also got their own swimming pool. It gets blazing hot in this part of the country, particularly during March through May, so the pool will come in handy. They have private twin rooms starting around $US15 per person and private single rooms starting around $US28 per night.

Hostels in Chiang Rai