Bangkok

How nice it is to be in a tropical climate! We stepped out of the airport into a hot Bangkok evening. We had a couple of days in Bangkok to explore and sightsee. We hadn’t planned long here because we’d heard a few not so positive reviews of Bangkok. We realised how much the order in which you visit places affects your impressions. While travellers around us were talking about the crowds, traffic and rubbish, we were astonished by how modern, organised, clean and relaxed the city felt compared to India.

We felt this contrast strongly when using public transport. Catching the Delhi Metro at rush hour was an intense experience. Crushed between our neighbours, we didn’t so much walk on and off the train, but were carried along in the surge of the crowd. In Bangkok, we bought a day pass to explore the city using the skytrain to get around. Using this modern metro system we were back in the world of queuing! We really noticed how, even in large crowds in Bangkok, we were never jostled or pushed.

Our guesthouse was out in a suburb of the city, so the skytrain was a great way to explore. On our day pass we managed to see Lumphini Park, an ultra-modern mall, a museum, two markets and one of the red light districts.

Lumphini Park

Jim Thompson House

Seeing how obsessed people here are about shopping, visiting Bangkok’s newest mall was an essential cultural experience. The mall, called Terminal 21, had an airport theme and had six floors, each decorated as a different city.

Next we visited Chatuchak market, apparently the world’s largest weekend market. Being Bangkok, when this market closed in the evening, there was another huge market to explore just down the road. In many places it seems that modern shopping malls have largely replaced traditional markets. It’s cool that both still flourish in Bangkok.

The infamous seedy red light district of Patpong wasn’t as interesting for people watching as we’d expected, with one exception. We walked down a particularly glammed-up street which turned out to be full of male strip clubs and bars. The street was lined with male prostitutes and go-go dancers. Hilariously, Craig got a bit of attention, with a few arm squeezes and comments (“ooh, white boy”) on the way past.

The next day we explored the historic centre of the city with Sal’s cousin Nic and her partner Josh, who were visiting from New Zealand. It was really lovely seeing familiar faces and we had a great time together. First, we checked out the impressively long Reclining Buddha, which stretches out a full 46 metres.

The Reclining Buddha is in a Buddhist temple which is beautiful and peaceful despite being overrun by tourists. We were careful to watch out for the “Non-Thai” pickpockets!

There’s an excellent boat service on the Chao Phraya River, which got us around some different parts of the old city. We ended up in Chinatown, where you can see an incredible range of food (some of which we even recognised!) The street food in Bangkok is delicious and cheap, and the dishes we tried in Chinatown were no exception.

We thought we’d be cautious for the first time we had street food in Thailand so chose something that looked like it was vegetarian. Turns out it was deep fried scallops and squid! So much for caution, but thankfully the street vendors here seem to take a lot of care with hygiene. This is especially important given that most of the dishes here contain pork, chicken or seafood.

We ended up enjoying Bangkok much more than we thought we would. We’ve had a great first impression of Thailand, so it’s an exciting thought that we will have the next couple of months here.

Written by Craig Drayton and Sally Robertson