Where to Go on the 23–25 Oct 2026 Long Weekend: 10 Years of Rain in 12 Cities + Pattaya, Rayong and Hua Hin Room Prices

The whole page in four lines, in the order you need them before booking.

• If you're flying: Seoul (85 mm), Fukuoka (98), Busan (103) and Sapporo (109) are the four driest Octobers on our 12-city list.
• If you're driving to the sea: Pattaya, Rayong and Hua Hin are all in their wet season, with the data points around them averaging 232–266 mm in October — too close together to pick a town by.
• Prices: the median room rate for 23–25 October matches the ordinary weekend of 16–18 October exactly (1.00×) in all three towns — but a minority of stays did raise prices by more than 3%: 38% in Hua Hin, 25% in Pattaya, 16% in Rayong.
• What to hurry for is the scarce good stuff: some high-scoring stays were already unbookable for the long weekend 23 days out, while the weekends before and after were still open.

Seoul is the driest city on the list (85 mm), at an easy 18.6/9.4°C, right in autumn-foliage season.

Fukuoka (98 mm) and Busan (103 mm) follow close behind — shorter flights than Tokyo and roughly half the rain. Sapporo (109 mm · 15.4/6.8°C) is Hokkaido's foliage month, per the temperature mechanism in our autumn-leaves article.

Tokyo averages 201 mm in October — the second-wettest month of its year, wetter than the June rainy season. Taipei (207 mm) and Hong Kong (176 mm) aren't in their dry windows either; they're doable, but bring a serious indoor plan.

The clearest "save it for another month" cases are the Andaman coast and central Vietnam: October is the wettest month of the year for both Phuket (290 mm) and Da Nang (491 mm).

Chiang Mai gets 178 mm in October — well down from its August peak (412 mm) but not yet dry. That suits green-season travellers with waterfalls at full flow; the fully clear-sky season starts around late November.

If you'd rather not fly, a beach you can drive to from Bangkok in a day is the obvious long-weekend pick — but know first that October on this coast is not past the rains. The 10-year averages (2016–2025) at all four data points around the three towns run 232–266 mm, above the 150 mm line at which the weather calendar in our search bar paints a month "wet".

Rayong has its own data point in town (256 mm); Pattaya and Hua Hin don't. So instead of borrowing one neighbouring point and calling it their weather, we give the range between the two nearest: Pattaya sits between Chon Buri (232 mm, 48.9 km north) and Rayong (256 mm, 49.4 km away), and Hua Hin between Phetchaburi (266 mm, 60.2 km north) and Prachuap Khiri Khan (232 mm, 85.5 km south) — and October is the wettest month of the year at both of Hua Hin's points.

The good news is how fast it dries out after this: November drops to 72–129 mm and December to 17–37 mm at all four points. If your dates can move, the end of the year is clearly drier on this coast. But for this long weekend, the three towns' rain figures are too close to choose between — decide on price, what's still bookable and where the rooms are instead, which is what the next three sections measure.

We did not search each night and compare the medians, because each night's search returns a different set of stays. Instead we listed the stays first — 334 within 8 km of central Pattaya, 186 within 8 km of central Hua Hin, and 111 within 20 km of the point 12.611, 101.384 in Rayong, a circle that covers both the town and the coast to its east (Rayong gets a wider radius so there are enough stays to measure) — then priced that same set on every night compared, 2 adults in 1 room, from rooozt's own search feed, pulled on 30 September 2026.

The comparison nights are ordinary weekends of the same shape (check in Friday, out Sunday): 16–18 October, the weekend before, and 6–8 November. The result points the same way in all three towns: matching the same hotel's price on the long weekend against 16–18 October gives a median ratio of exactly 1.00× (307 pairs in Pattaya, 94 in Rayong, 160 in Hua Hin), and against 6–8 November it is 0.94× in Pattaya and 1.00× in Rayong and Hua Hin.

A median that doesn't move doesn't mean nobody raised prices. The share of stays charging more than 3% above 16–18 October is 38% in Hua Hin (60 of 160), 25% in Pattaya (76 of 307) and 16% in Rayong (15 of 94) — and the steepest 10% went up by at least 1.26× in Hua Hin, 1.20× in Pattaya and 1.08× in Rayong. So if you have a stay in mind, compare that stay's own price with an ordinary night; don't trust either "the whole town is pricier" or "nothing changes".

We checked with a second method: the ordinary results of our search page (searched by town name), pairing only stays that appear on both nights. The median ratio came out at 1.00× in all three towns again. That method also shows why comparing medians across searches misleads: Hua Hin's long-weekend search had a median of 1,562 baht against 1,171 baht for 16–18 October — which looks like a jump of more than a third — yet the 122 hotels that appear in both searches have an unchanged median ratio. The whole gap comes from the two searches returning different sets of stays.

If price isn't the problem, the thing to hurry for is choice. On the day we pulled the feed (23 days before the long weekend), 311 of 334 measured stays in Pattaya, 99 of 111 in Rayong and 164 of 186 in Hua Hin could still be booked for 23–25 October — only 5–8 fewer per town than for 16–18 October. Overall, things are not tight yet.

Count only the stays that clear our bar (a score of 8.5 or more from at least 500 reviews) and the picture shifts: 54 of 57 left in Pattaya, 23 of 28 in Rayong and 39 of 42 in Hua Hin, against 56, 27 and 42 still bookable for 16–18 October. Rayong shows it most clearly: there are 5 qualifying stays outside town along the coast to the east, and 2 of those 5 can no longer be booked for the long weekend, although both are open for 16–18 October and 6–8 November. (We re-ran the query to confirm, and tried the single night of 23–24 October — also unavailable.)

The practical takeaway: if there is one high-scoring stay you really want, check your actual nights now. If you're flexible on where you sleep, there's still time to compare prices at leisure.

Straight-line distances from our Bangkok reference point: Pattaya 100.2 km, Hua Hin 144.1 km, Rayong 144.7 km. The road is always longer, and none of these is a travel time.

Pattaya: the closest, with the most to choose from — 334 stays in our feed within 8 km, against 186 in Hua Hin within the same radius. The central Pattaya circle (1.8 km) holds 15 stays that clear our bar, all 15 still bookable for the long weekend, and 11 of them carry the feed's "near the beach" tag.

Rayong: the stays that clear our bar cluster in town — 15 within 2 km of the town reference point (14 still bookable for the long weekend), but not one of them carries the feed's "near the beach" tag. If sleeping by the sea is the point, the qualifying options sit 11.8–32.9 km from the town reference point, and they're the group filling fastest, as the previous section showed. Rayong is also where long-weekend prices held steadiest: only 16% of stays raised them by more than 3%.

Hua Hin: the town where the largest share of stays raised long-weekend prices (38%), but within 2 km of the centre 16 of 18 qualifying stays are still bookable, and it's the circle with the highest share carrying the "near the beach" tag (16 of 18).

All three towns are a same-day drive from Bangkok, and Hua Hin has a railway station (pictured) if you'd rather not drive. Timetables and ticket booking are on the State Railway of Thailand's official site (link at the end of the article).

Worth knowing as of our check on 30 September 2026: the railway's home page carries a notice to follow train running status nationwide because of flooding. If you plan to go by train, check your service again close to departure. For the actual weather on 23–25 October, use the Thai Meteorological Department's forecast nearer the date — every figure on this page is a 10-year average, not a forecast.

In the order worth doing them, if you're set on this long weekend.

• Pick the town on distance and where the rooms are, not on rain — October rainfall at the three towns is very close (232–266 mm at the surrounding data points).
• If there's a high-scoring stay you want, check 23–25 October now — some were already unbookable 23 days before the holiday.
• Compare the same room against an ordinary weekend — the median didn't rise, but 16–38% of stays raised prices by more than 3%, depending on the town.
• Read the cancellation terms in full before paying — in a wet month, a cancellable room lets you change plans if the forecast near the date looks bad.
• Check the Thai Meteorological Department forecast and the railway's service status close to departure — on 30 September 2026 the railway site carried a flood-related running notice.

Spelled out, so nothing here is read as a promise.

• Not a weather forecast — every rainfall figure is a 10-year (2016–2025) monthly mean at each data point.
• Not today's prices — prices and availability are a snapshot of the feed on 30 September 2026, 2 adults in 1 room.
• Not every stay in town — only those in our search feed and inside the radii stated above.
• Every distance is a straight line between coordinates, not a road distance and not a travel time.
• Not a trip or hotel agent — we compare prices and state each town's trade-offs, nothing more.