Bangkok Nights (and Days)

Our next destination after Thailand is Cambodia but in order to get there we had to transit through Bangkok. Rather than just fly straight through we decided to take a couple of days to see the sights but we didn’t allow too long as Bangkok has a reputation as smelly, busy and not that interesting.

I had been to Bangkok in the nineties at the start of a round the world trip and it was my first time travelling out of Europe. I had found it meltingly hot, overwhelming and had a pretty miserable time of it. Fortunately the trip picked up when I reached my next destination of New Zealand.

Being a lot older and a little wiser I wanted to give Bangkok another try and it was a massive surprise – in a good way. We stayed in the Khao San road area, where I had stayed last time. Gone are the all night full volume electro beats, the harassing tuk tuk drivers and the massive culture shock.  I think 30 years of travel experience has probably helped but the area itself has also changed a lot, having been cleaned up and gentrified.

The time of year also probably helped, although it is hot the crippling humidity of my last summer visit just isn’t present.

Day 1 of our plan was to visit the Grand Palace and Wat Pho, which are close to each other and only a 10 minute Tuk Tuk ride from where we were staying.

The Grand Palace is stunning but it was absolutely swarming with people making any serenity hard to find. The Grand Palace has been the official residence of the Kings of Siam (latterly Thailand) since 1782. The Kings, his court and the royal government were sited here until 1925 but it is still used for official functions.

The Grand Palace consists of a number of separate buildings spread over a large area, 218,000 sq meters and is enclosed by a wall. However there is an inner court area which is open to the public that contains most of the important buildings.

This includes the temple of the Emerald Buddha or to give it its proper name Wat Phra Sri Rattanasasadaram. This is the royal chapel and at its centre is a figurine of the Buddha made from green jade, and clothed in raiment’s of gold and diamonds.

Surrounding the inner courtyard is a covered walkway which is painted with a classic Thai story of Good and Evil, The Ramakien. In all, there are over 2km of murals depicted. The first paintings were started in 1783 but they have been constantly touched up and indeed when we visited there were several painters working on restoring the murals.

Part of the ticket to the Grand Palace included a free traditional dance show, so on leaving the Palace we jumped into n a small shuttle bus to take us to the theatre for the show.

The show was very good, culminating in a dance story of how Hanuman conquered a Sea Nymph to allow a bridge to be build which was well-told with plenty of audience interaction.

Our next stop in Bangkok was Wat Pho or to give it is proper name,  Wat Phra Chetuphon Wimon Mangkhalaram Rajwaramahawihan.

This is the home of the massive Reclining Buddha which is 15m high and 46m long.

Wat Pho is one of the largest, oldest and most sacred temples in Thailand. It consists of many buildings in the large compound and some really large Chedis (tower structures) know as the Giants.

While in Bangkok we also wanted to visit a floating market. The best floating markets are outside the city so we signed up for a tour.

We were picked up at 7am in a small minibus and driven for around 90 minutes, through terrible traffic, to the first stop.

This was the train market or the Maeklong Railway market. This is a relatively small market but a fairly unusual one in that the market stalls are setup either side of a train track. The market very much encroaches on the tracks meaning that when a train comes along (4 times a day) the stall holders have to pack up their stalls to make room for the train to pass through.

Once the train has gone past the market comes back to life and in a couple of minutes the stalls are open as if the train had never existed.

This was a pretty quick stop on the tour as we arrived 30 minutes before a train was due to arrive and left 15 minutes after the train passed through but is was definitely an interesting and enjoyable detour.

Back on the minibus for another 20 minutes or so and we had reached a small dock by a canal where we were transferred by longtail boat to the floating market. We flew through the canals and rivers, the engine of the longtail screaming until we arrived at the dock for the Damnoen Saduak Floating Market.

The market is split between areas that can be accessed from the banks of the canals and areas that can only be accessed from the water. The canals themselves were chaotic with lots of boats, some longtails with noisy engines but mostly row boats.

We decided to jump in a small row boat to get a tour around the market. After we had set off into the chaos of the main channel we very quickly passed a boat with a lady selling drinks. A quick beer for the journey was procured !

We slowly moved past all sorts of stalls and small boats where the stall/boat holders were managing to produce full meals from tiny woks in their floating kitchens.

Some of the stall holders would deploy long hooks to pull the boats in, enabling them to hawk their wares more easily. 

After our boat trip was finished we walked around the on-land portion of the market and bought some lunch from one of the tiny boats. I had ‘Boat Noodles’ which is a traditional dish from Bangkok’s canals. It was really rich tasting being seasoned with pig blood and it was pretty fiery !

Unfortunately our time at the market came to a close too soon and we had a 2 hour, very bouncy and uncomfortable minibus ride back to the centre of Bangkok.

On the morning of our last day, we had a couple of hours to kill before heading to the airport for our flight to Cambodia so we decided to take a boat ride down the Chao Praya river. This is a major thoroughway with lots of commuter boats heading up and down the river.

We jumped on one boat and enjoyed a trip of a few kilometers up the river to Chinatown. A quick explore of Chinatown and then we were back on a boat to take us back to our hotel.

Unfortunately our quick trip to Bangkok was over. We actually wished we had more time there to continue exploring. I am so glad I decided to give Bangkok another chance and we are pretty sure we will be back but for now, it is on to the next destination, Siem Reap in Cambodia.

I have set up a FromAtoB instagram account for 2024 (fromatob2024) and have been doing a picture a day from our travels. If you are interested head on over to Instagram and do a search for “fromatob2024”.