Bali or Thailand in January: Which Is Actually Better for Working Remotely?

Verdict: Thailand is the drier January pick: Bangkok 19 mm and Chiang Mai 8 mm against 313 mm in Canggu. The exception is Koh Samui, still wet at 152 mm, though about half of Canggu's rain.

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Which is better in January, Bali or Thailand?

For weather, Thailand wins in most places, and by a lot. In our 11-year data January brings 313 mm of rain to Canggu, 332 mm to Ubud and 391 mm to Uluwatu, with rain on about 19 of 31 days in Canggu, 18 in Uluwatu and 21 in Ubud. Bangkok gets 19 mm, Chiang Mai 8 mm and Hua Hin 32 mm. Temperatures are close: highs of 29°C on Bali against 27°C in Chiang Mai to 31°C in Bangkok across the Thailand bases.

That is the headline every site gives you. The part that decides where you should actually book is that "Thailand" is three different January climates, and one of them is not dry.

How wet is Bali in January, really?

Very wet, and cloudy. Canggu is mostly overcast in January (cloud cover averages in the high 80s) and has rain on about 19 of 31 days. A rain day here means at least four millimetres, the amount a rain gauge counts as a proper rain day, so drizzle does not make the list. Read it together with the millimetres: 313 mm in a month is heavy: afternoon downpours, grey mornings, wet scooters.

The surprise is the timing. January is not the tail of the wet season; it is the middle of the peak. December has 288 mm in Canggu, January 313 mm and February 295 mm, and in Ubud and Uluwatu January is the wettest month of the year. Anyone who says "just wait until the rain eases in January" is looking at the wrong month. Nomads who arrive for a "late wet season" tend to meet the wettest stretch of the year. If Bali is your plan, see the Bali rainy season guide for how nomads handle those months.

Which Thailand base is dry in January?

Three groups, from driest to wettest:

• Dry and sunny: Bangkok (19 mm, rain on about 1 of 31 days, 31°C high), Chiang Mai (8 mm, about 2 of 31 days, but a cool 16°C average low) and Hua Hin (32 mm, about 2 of 31 days, 30°C).
• Drying, with showers: the Andaman coast. Ko Lanta 54 mm, Phuket 73 mm and Krabi 79 mm. January is better than December here (Krabi 98 mm in December, Ko Lanta 88 mm), but the clean window comes in February: Ko Lanta and Phuket drop to 23 mm, Krabi to 38 mm.
• Still wet: the Gulf island of Koh Samui, at 152 mm in January with rain on about 5 of 31 days, the most rain of any base here by millimetres, with rain days in the same range as the Andaman coast (Krabi about 4 of 31). That is well under half of Uluwatu's rain, but it is no dry-season island: December is wetter still at 318 mm. The Gulf coast catches its rain later than the Andaman side, so "Thailand is dry in January" does not hold there.

What would we do?

If January is a working month and you want sun: Bangkok or Hua Hin, with a long weekend on the Andaman coast at the end of the month. Hua Hin is the quiet beach option, with rain on only about 2 of 31 days. Chiang Mai is the dry-and-cool choice, and it comes with smoke that builds from February to April (see the Chiang Mai page).

If your heart is set on Bali, accept the weather: choose between Canggu, Uluwatu and Ubud on flat and internet, since none is clearly drier (313 to 391 mm, rain on about 18 to 21 of 31 days), plan to work indoors, and budget for a few lost days. If you have a flexible calendar, move the Bali month to the dry season, and use January for Thailand.

If you need a beach in January, choose Ko Lanta, Phuket or Krabi over Koh Samui, and aim for the last week.

What do people get wrong?

Three things. First, they treat Thailand as one weather zone. Koh Samui (152 mm) gets more than four times the rain of Hua Hin (32 mm), and rain on about 5 of 31 days against about 2. Second, they read "tail end of the wet season" for Bali, a line some guides use, and expect it to dry out. In our data it does not, until May. Third, they compare daytime highs. They are near-identical, so highs tell you nothing; rainfall and cloud do.

For the wider picture of warm, dry places in this month, see where is warm in January, and for Thailand's three coasts, the Thailand rainy season by coast.

How we got these numbers

Temperatures, cloud and rain days are 11-year averages from the Open-Meteo archive for each destination's coordinates, grouped by calendar month by NomadWeather. Monthly rain totals come from CHIRPS (satellite and rain-gauge data) over the same years, except for Canggu and Ubud, which keep Open-Meteo's totals because CHIRPS reads their dry-season rain two to three times wetter than the Denpasar airport rain gauge nearby. "Days with rain" is the share of days with at least four millimetres of rain in the tropics (two elsewhere), which is what rain gauges count as a rain day; the model's lighter drizzle is not counted. Because Canggu's and Uluwatu's totals come from different sources, read the gap between those two as rough; Ubud has the most rain days of the three, and Uluwatu the most rain by millimetres. This is weather only: it does not include prices, crowds, sea conditions or air quality. A particular year can be wetter or drier than the average. See Data Sources.