Things to do in Bangkok
Visit Thailand’s Capital and Ancient Siamese Kingdom
Intro
Bangkok is a city of extremes. Modern, luxury skyscrapers tower in the distance above old temples. Traditional long tail boats and humble ferries float down the Chao Phraya river next to yachts and party boats. Street food stalls and luxury dining options compete for hungry pedestrians. Seedy bars are eclipsed by nice rooftop bars. Vendors at outdoor markets selling cheap goods and trinkets compete with luxury malls. Whenever someone asks me what they should expect when visiting Bangkok, I usually respond with “anything you want to.” This is because Bangkok has so much to offer on every level (be it budget, luxury, or anything in between) that every visitor’s experience will be worthwhile and yet so different.
Things to do in Bangkok
Grand Palace: The grand palace is a huge complex of buildings located in the heart of Bangkok that serves as the official residence of the crown. The design of the buildings is rather opulent (as expected of a royal palace) with gold and jewel encrusted buildings, mythical creatures and the famous “Emerald Buddha” statue; considered to be so precious that taking pictures of it are not allowed.
The grounds of the palace are so big that you can easily spend half a day just walking around and marveling at all of the architecture. Also make sure to note that since there are a lot of crowds at the Grand Palace, pickpockets are in abundance.
Wat Pho: Also known as the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, Wat Pho is famous for housing a giant golden statue of the Buddha in a reclining position. The statue itself is so big that it is impossible to take a picture of the whole thing on your cell phone. Additionally, a series of bronze bowls (108 in total) are placed in front of the Buddha statue and it is said that placing coins in these bowls will bring good luck.
Wat Arun: Also known as the Temple of Dawn, Wat Arun is a beautiful white colored temple complex on the banks of the Chao Phraya river. It consists of one main tower surrounded by four smaller towers raising up toward the heavens. The mosaic patterns on the tower and religious imagery make this an interesting visit.
Khaosan Road: This is the famous backpacker district that was featured in the movie “The Beach” and has since been featured in nearly all content produced by backpackers, travel vloggers/bloggers/influencers and guidebooks. Khaosan Road is famous for its plethora of budget friendly hostels, street vendors, massage parlors, seedy bars, backpackers, and shady characters.
The massages and spa services are really cheap (about $3 USD for a half hour massage) and some hostels have laundry service where you can drop off your clothes and pick them up at a later date (we paid the equivalent of about $7USD for a small carry-on bag full of clothes at City Hostel). There are travel agents everywhere who can arrange for transportation all over the country or who can arrange for various excursions.
To be honest, we did not find much excitement out of exploring Khaosan Road since we are not the bar hopping type nor were we appetized by the prospect of eating grilled insects and arthropods. We were also turned off by some of the shady characters who were constantly trying to sell us fake suits, Buddha head trinkets (which are actually considered disrespectful in Thai culture, but the ignorant tourists continue to fuel the supply for such trinkets) and tickets to “ping pong shows”. Other travelers may enjoy such vices and find them charming, but for us, the enchantment quickly wore off.
Shopping Malls: The shopping malls in Bangkok are completely different from any mall that we’ve encountered back home in the USA. They are massive complexes that resemble luxury apartment buildings and they are all interconnected via pedestrian bridges/skywalks. Seriously, some of these malls can be as tall as 10 stories and have enough products, entertainment, and meal options to last the typical traveler an entire week. For example, on our first trip to the mall, we walked through 4 malls without realizing it since they are interconnected and the experience is so immersive, and it took us 9 hours! And we didn’t even buy anything! All we did was walk through them. Here is a list of some of our favorite malls.
· MBK Mall: This mall is eight stories tall and mostly focuses on inexpensive electronic and consumer goods. The interesting thing about this mall is that each floor focuses on a particular product or service. For example, one floor will consist of shops that exclusively sell cheap electronic goods, whereas another floor will have shops that sell inexpensive jewelry or silks. Another floor will consist of only fast food restaurants. Finally, the top floor of MBK has a movie theater, an arcade, and an escape room.
· Siam Center: This mall is four stories tall and is primarily known for its fashion retail and indeed, it has many department stores that feature trendy clothes. One of the floors is entirely dedicated to local Thai designers and the top floor features a food court and several restaurants.
· Siam Discovery: This mall is seven stories tall and each floor has its own theme, such as women’s fashion, digital appliances, or homeware. Nina described this mall as a “high tech department store.”
· Siam Paragon: This is by far the most luxurious mall of the four that we visited. This mall is 10 stories tall and primarily sells luxury goods from all of the internationally acclaimed brands such as Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Cartier, Dolce & Gabbana, Chanel, Versace, Armani, Rolex and a bunch of other name brands. One of the floors even has a car showroom that displays Aston Martin, McLaren, Bentley, Maserati, Rolls-Royce, etc. Another floor has a movie theater and the bottom floor has a grocery store, high end restaurants and even an aquarium (located in the sublevels).
This is by no means an exhaustive list of all malls in Bangkok, but these are the only ones that we were able to explore given the time that we had available for our trip to Thailand.
For a more detailed analysis of the shopping experience, check out Nina’s article on Shopping in Bangkok
Ayutthaya: Ayutthaya is a city that is located just an hour north of Bangkok and we highly encourage anyone who is visiting Bangkok to at least take a daytrip to see Ayutthaya. The city is home to Ayutthaya Historical Park, which contains the ruins of the old Siamese kingdom that ruled for 400 years (1350 CE– 1767 CE). The park has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so this is a must see in order to better understand the historical and cultural legacy of Thailand.
· Transportation: If you are coming from Bangkok, we suggest that you hire a private driver as the trip takes about one hour each way and such a long drive to and from your hotel can be quite difficult. Make sure to negotiate a price beforehand and also make sure that your driver can communicate in English (or whatever language you prefer).
Nina and I made the mistake of hiring a driver, through our hotel, who didn’t speak English. We only realized this linguistic barrier when we arrived within the city limits of Ayutthaya and our driver was like “Ok. Ayutthaya!”, not realizing that we were trying to visit the historical park. In fact, nobody had communicated to our driver where within Ayutthaya we wanted to go and now we were stuck trying to communicate via gesticulation and grunting.
· Expectations: We should have done more research on the topic of Ayutthaya before we went to Thailand. We thought that visiting Ayutthaya would be similar to visiting any other place with ruins such as Pompeii or Rome, in that once you arrive it is quite obvious where you should go to see the ruins. However, it turns out that Ayutthaya is an actual modern-day city with no information booths (those booths with the iconic letter “i” in cursive spelling that you see throughout cities in Europe). Since our driver didn’t speak English and we hadn’t done our research on where we specifically needed to go inside of Ayutthaya, we ended up wasting several hours driving aimlessly around the city, hoping that some ruins would make themselves visible so that we could then point to them and say “There! Go there!”
Our saving grace came when we asked the driver to pull over so that we could use the restroom at some random temple. At this particular temple (whose name escapes me but was rather impressive with its sheer height), we met a random Italian family who happened to be vacationing in Ayutthaya and had in their possession a map of Ayutthaya Historical Park. We borrowed the map, took it to our driver who then finally understood where we wanted to go, and we continued with our visit.
The lesson here is to know that there is an “old city”, which is where the historical park with all of the ruins are located, and a “new city” which is located a few miles away from the park. Communicate where you want to go beforehand and make sure that you can communicate with your driver in whichever language suits you best.
