Bangkok
2/23/21
Krung Thep better known as Bangkok, which basic means ‘the place with lots of olive trees. This capital city of Thailand boasting a strong population of 10.5 million people and growing has yet another name.
The official name is insanely long, ready? Ok try pronouncing this:
“Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahinthara Yutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udom Ratchaniwet Mahasathan Amonphiman Awatansathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukamprasit” no joke.
This roughly translates to something along the lines of:
The city of angels, the great city, the residence of the Emerald Buddha, the impregnable city (of Ayutthaya) of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarn.
Now that we got that out of the way.
I’ve been to Bangkok twice. Both times as a stopping point on my way home from work. The reason I went back was because I found this awesome bike ride I wanted to do – 50 miles. Thank god it wasn’t available during my 2 day stop over; so I took the shorter I think 20 mile bike ride and nearly died because it was soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo hot. Like heat stroke hot.
Here’s a little bit about my first time there. What to do / see, where to go, etc… you know – the usual.
You really only need 2 – 3 days in Bangkok. 1 for any tours you want to do and 1 for shopping. Nights always have something going on – even if you just want to people watch.
HOTELS
You can find plenty of hotels and hostels all over the city and with ease of access to the BTS Skytrain. The first time I stayed at Sacha’s Hotel Uno right off of the Asok skytrain stop, on the main thorough way, Sukhumvit. There was construction on the road and it was a sewer line getting to / from it was nasty.
The second time, I stayed at Arize Hotel which is on the other side but also on Sukhumvit.
Pictures always look better than the hotels actually are but overall, not too bad. I paid about $50/night for each spot, both were clean, decent but super easy access to public transport.
TRANSPORT
You have plenty of options from SkyTrain and Subway to buses, taxis and Grab (Uber sold their South Asian market to Grab). Although you might read articles that say you can get an Uber; you can’t. I tried at the airport and realized not an option.
I couldn’t get a signal to download Grab at the airport so took a cab instead. You proceed through the taxi queue, get a # and walk to the vehicle where the driver awaits. I asked the lady if she takes credit card – no problem. I get in the car, confirm the price – she says it’s more money because she has a van not a car; I said fuck it fine. I confirm credit card, she says no, only cash. I argue with her a bit telling her she told me credit was ok. She started making her way to the shoulder of the highway to drop me off right there. I told her to continue and I would get her cash from the hotel.
CURRENCY
$1 is roughly 30TBH. I suggest downloading a currency converter on your phone to make it easier, I use XE. To make it easier, just think of 100 Thai Baht = $3 USD. Cash is king in Thailand although many places do accept credit card; but street vendors typically don’t and that’s where you’ll probably do most of your shopping, especially at Chatuchak.
SHOPPING
I thought the shopping culture in Seoul was insane – Bangkok is a whole different ball game, different sport and league! This is insanity. With massive high end shopping malls to shopping malls where you don’t see any foreigners to weekend markets and shopping malls leading to other shopping malls and warehouses. There was a warehouse I walked into, where every stall on that floor only carried, Denim — denim jeans and demin shorts, nothing else. These stalls weren’t for the public, just plain dirty white walls with cardboard boxes used as a fort, filled with denim. Different cuts of jeans / shorts were laid on the floor as a sample piece for the retailer looking to buy.
Then you go to another floor, it was nothing but costume wear. Costume wear meaning shit you find at a party city but these are clothes that have rhinestones or that glitter and sparkle. Nobody speaks the slightest English in this warehouse. You get weird looks when you’re going through this warehouse, because of course you shouldn’t be in here. The shop keepers children are running around and playin in the aisles. Some riding their bikes in circles, kinda like I was watching the kid from the Shining.
Here are some spots if you want to go shopping:
***MBK Center**
This mall is mainly locals, with a few foreigners that heard from locals this is where to go. They had a huge sale on adidas, puma, nike gear with some items cheaper than you would find at an outlet in the states. They just setup tables outside in the mall area with a cashier and tables full of shoes, racks of clothes. BMW Motorsport and Ferrari items were cheaper than the US (sale prices). The shoes were limited sizes of course.
You can find counterfeit watches / bags / clothes here as well. However, the watches will not be advertised. A shop keeper might have a random high end watch on display, maybe a rolex but usually something less well known. You ask them and they’ll show you what they have. Prices here start at around 4,000 THB but you can easily negotiate. I asked about Panerai and I didn’t start negotiating, I didn’t have $ with me but he knocked it down to 3500 off the bat. I think I could’ve gotten it for around 2000. It was a nice well made heavy Panerai.
***Platinum Mall***
Similar to MBK Center. However within the 3 buildings and 5 floors in each, I couldn’t find a watch seller. Mainly clothes. I asked a few vendors who told me to go to a place but they had Casios and Seikos. I wasn’t interested in that.
Outside Platinum mall has a bunch of vendors as well, again no watches. Mainly hand bags. Around 200 THB, fixed price, which is super cheap at just under $7, quality is questionable of course. These are generic Thai made bags, all without any branding. The market in the alleyway just outside this mall has bags, real hair pieces and souveniers – no watches!
***Chatuchak***
Weekend market – it’s pretty overwhelming as it has 15,000 stalls in 27 sections. You can find anything from antiques and watches (limited) to statues, clothes, housewears, etc… And again, there are more stalls outside this market. Map is attached – make sure you either download the Chatuchak guide or print out the map. Something I wish I would’ve had well ahead of time. I couldn’t find a map or guide in the market.
***Oustide Nana SkyTrain***
More shopping. I happened to be walking around one night and saw a lady selling fake watches. She had a Panerai and wanted 1000 THB for it. It wasn’t as heavy as the one at MBK so definitely a cheaper quality. I didn’t negotiate since it wasn’t the one I liked anyway. You walk a little more and you enter this building that houses more stalls – the muslim quarter. Watches, Bags and clothes are big. When you walk the alleyways in this quarter – you may notice some guys with on the street with a brown stachet? bag, with watches they want to sell. Rolex, Breitling, Panerai (limited), Tag, etc… you name it – one of their friends has it. Starts off at around 2500. I got one guy down to 650, but didn’t buy it. It wasn’t the right Panerai. Mont Blanc ended up costing 1600 ($50), I liked the way it looked so took it.
Shopping here can make a guy crazy. I don’t like shopping to start with but felt I needed to not only experience this but was just looking for something I can buy as gifts. I experienced more than I wanted to.
FOOD
One thing, everyone is always fucking eating, always slurping some weird looking shit. Even the shop keepers; they’ll have their bowl of soup or something on the side while they help customers. How much $ do these people make, each shop sells the same shit as the next, mass produced inventory.
Street food – didn’t eat any of it for obvious reasons. If you pass a stall that sells insects, you’ll see a sign that says no pictures hahah. This is because they know tourists just want a picture to show people back home the stalls of fried insects, cockroaches, worms, shit I didn’t even know. 99.9999% of streetfood is meat based, either satays (meat on a stick) or seafood in soup broth with noodles.
I went to May Veggie Home twice, it was walking distance and pretty good quality food. Plus I knew they weren’t using utensils between meat and veggie dishes. They don’t serve any meat.
Durian – either you love it or hate it. I was scared to try it so only had it in dried form w/ coconut and it was enough. Depending on how adventurous you are, you can either get fresh durian, durian juice, dried, chips, candy, frozen etc… Not for everyone and definitely not for me. What I heard from a contact was regardless if you love it or hate it, the taste stays on your tongue for hours. And you’re not allowed to fly with Durian because the stench is so bad.
TEMPLES
I know this city is known for temples and they’re everywhere – even small ones. I decided to just visit one temple – Wot Pho – The Sleeping Buddha temple. The temple grounds are pretty nice, where you might just catch a Buddhist prayer or chanting session. Sleeping Buddha is a sight to see but once you walk through it you’re set and it’s checked off the box. There are signs to hold on tightly to your items as there are pick pockets in the area – which is a strange sign to see inside a Buddist temple and after you walked through security. Not really re-assuring.
Outside the temple is the Presidential Palace and Governmental buildings. The palace lights up at dusk, shines beautifuly.
Wot Arun (first image)— I didn’t care to go to this but definitely wanted to see it from the opposite side of the river and from a rooftop if I could. I did and it was a pretty amazing view.
TOURS
Trazy tour sucked dirty goat balls. It was basically a taxi service, they drop you off somewhere, tell you options and then tell you when they’re going to pick you up. No real explanation about the history of the area or anything. I wouldn’t use them again. I did the Maeklong Train Market and Floating Market tour w/ them.
Maeklong Train Market / Floating Market Tour
–> The tour is pretty unimpressive as I mentioned above. The Maeklong Train Market was the first stop. It was interesting, I wanted to see this since I saw videos of this on some travel show. Stalls are setup alongside railroad tracks and when the train approaches, the vendors close up their shops, push items off the tracks until the train passes and back open for business. It was pretty cool, but it was definitely packed with a bunch of tourists. The train passes really slow for obvious reasons; even when you’re standing just on the green (safe) line, the train is sooo close that you can literally give the passengers high-fives. The train approaches twice a day.
From there we hit up the Floating Market and was given nearly 3 hours to explore – of course the ‘tour guide’ just pointed out the pickup location, where the shops are and that we can take an optional boat tour on the river for an additional amount – we pay at the counter. That’s it and she left. 5 of us opted to jump on a boat and ride around the floating market. It’s a legit full functioning market, from boats and stall that are on the edge of the river selling everything from souveniers to food being booked on these rafts for you to buy. The river was packed with a ton of boats like ours going around different stalls. The annoying part was when every stall owner would take their long hooked stick, grab on to the boat and pull you over and ask you to buy something from the shop. Got really annoying really fast.
After you meet at the pickup location you take another boat through the fields down river for about 10 minutes, get off – get in your van and back to your hotel. In the van, the guides do not talk or explain anything. Again, glad to see it – not worth the amount of time spent at this location but good to check the box.
Jungle Bike Tour
I came to Bangkok again just for one of the bike tours. The one I wanted to do wasn’t availble so I picked the Jungle Bike Tour which was fun and a great way to get out of the city and go explore. I try to find a unique bike tours in every city I visit. I think it was about $50 USD, includes lunch and is about 4 hours long. Be careful during summer months, the bottle water gets hot and depleted quick (found out the hard way).
Bangkok is your typical chaotic Asian city. Busy roads at all times of the morning and night, packed with mainly 2 wheelers but enough cars and trucks to cause traffic jams. People are everywhere, literally. I think I spent way too much time in Bangkok and I think it was more intentional as I was thinking I had enough time to take tours to other areas but realized it wasn’t worth it – too far for a day trip, no access (except taxi) and the taxi would cost about $150 – $200 USD one way. I think I’d go back, but definitely it would be for a shorter period, wouldn’t stay for 3/4 nights, more like 1-2 nights max.
