Day 8
We had an early morning cab transfer from Hoi An to Da Nang airport, ready for our 0930 flight to Bangkok with AirAsia. The flight was quick and smooth and before we knew it we were getting our bags in Bangkok. We were excited as we’d never been to Thailand before.
We grabbed a ‘Grab’ from the airport to our hotel for the next 5 nights, Century Park Hotel and on arrival we did something we never get chance to do normally – unpacked our bags!
Our first job was to find a local laundry- we’d travelled light on this trip to ease our journeys and as such we were needing to utilise laundry services which were proving costly in the hotels. Luckily thanks to Google, we found a local place just 10 mins walk away. They charged by weight, ours totally 7 kgs and we got charge 700 baht – around £15 with a 24 hour turnaround. Perfect.
Next we decided to head into the city to find a drink or two and get our bearings. This proved to be a challenge! Like in Dubai, we had completely underestimated the size of Bangkok. And the main tourists areas were spread out in areas miles apart from each other. It took us two separate cabs to find a bar! We found them down Khaosan Road, a short tourist street where many hostels are located. There were some sports bars and ladies walking around with trays of cockroaches. There were loads of cannabis shops and a market selling elephant patterned trousers and shirts. It wasn’t quite what we were expecting but we enjoyed a cold beer in one of the sports bars and Keith had a nice Tom Yung soup too.
From here we walked around 20 mins to a Michelin recommended street food restaurant famous for its Pad Thai- Thipsamai. There was a short wait for a table, but we were soon seated and enjoyed watching the team of chefs working in harmony. The chicken pad Thai was absolutely gorgeous. The chicken literally melted in our mouths and the spices were just delicious. It really was a stand out meal and at around £5 was a bargain.
After dinner we decided to take an early night- my belly was a bit grumbly and the heat along with an early morning had completely wiped us both out.
Day 9
After a good 12 hours sleep we woke feeling much more human.
Sunday arrived and we had made a last minute booking onto a a guided tour of the temples and Grand Palace in Bangkok. Before we arrived in Bangkok, I had spent hours and hours reading up on how to attack Bangkok DIYing it, and had felt confident that we could do. Our first afternoon in Bangkok hadn’t been smooth. We couldn’t get our head around the orientation, struggled to find any public transport and were completely overwhelmed with the scale and also the traffic. In 40 degree heat it just wasn’t fun, so we booked onto a last minute city tour through Get my Guide. I am so glad we did. It’s all well and good being independent but when you’re short on time, we just wasted so much time on Saturday trying to be in the right area, and the heat was brutal. We were both happy to take easy and more costly route.
Our guide was terrific and she took us on a local bus to get to the grand palace which was fun and gave us the confidence of knowing what to do should we choose to use a bus independently in the following days.
The grand palace was staggering. Absolutely beautiful- lined with bright colours, and the flash of gold here and there. I was obsessed once more with the Chinese pottery influence and we throughly enjoyed our visit. It is no longer used for royal residence, but is used for ceremonies and celebrations. We loved seeing the emerald Buddha which had been discovered in plaster in Chiang Mai in the 1600s. I loved learning about its different outfits depending on the season.
We went on to see the huge reclining Buddha which was also impressive and the crossed the river via ferry to Wat Arun, which was the impressive pagoda temple.
We had a great morning with our guide, Mindy, despite the heat being beyond intense, it was a fantastic excursion.
From Wat Arun, we made our way back across the river and via tuk tuk 5 mins to another Michelin recommended street food vendor, K. Panich- which specialised in Mango sticky rice.
We placed our order for two portions, which were £2.65 each, and crossed the road to a waiting area/eating area. Here we ordered a couple of mango smoothies which were delicious and before too long our lunch was served. Again, it was exceptional. The sauce on the mango was just sublime- it really was delicious.
Feeling a bit more settled and oriented into the Bangkok system, we decided to be brave and use public transport to get back to our hotel.
It involved a short ferry hop across the river to Wat Arun, then we took a river taxi down to Sithorn Pier, where we transferred onto a sky train which took us to within 15 mins walk of our hotel. We felt super proud that we’d achieved what 24 hours ago seemed unachievable. The trouble was it was super time consuming. Despite the unbelievable traffic jams, grabbing a cab seemed to get you to your desired location in less than half the time of trying to navigate the public transport options. It had taken us 2 hours to travel from Wat Arun to the hotel!
Sunday evening we decided to stay local to the hotel, so we enjoyed happy hour at the hotel and then found a local restaurant close by with great Google reviews.
Day 10
Monday dawned early for us. We had at 0545 pick up for our excursion to the Bridge over the River Kwai. It involved a long transfer on a rather uncomfortable minibus, but we were both excited about seeing some of the area outside of Bangkok and of course learning more about the Bridge over the Kwai and the POW camps. We love a railway. Whether it’s riding on them, walking on or alongside them or just looking at them. This one, aside from being in a beautiful part of Thailand, the story behind it was rather sobering. Built by allied POWs in 1942-43, its entitled the Death railway because over 13000 lives were lost during construction. The POWs worked in horrendous conditions- having only two small bowls of rice per day and working in blistering temperatures in malaria ridden jungle areas.
Our first stop was to the war cemetery at Kanchanaburi to see 6982 graves of British, Australian and Dutch prisoners of war who were victims of Japanese imprisonment whilst building the Burma railway. As always when visiting sites such as this, it’s a sombre experience.
From here we made our way to a former POW camp, now turned into museum. We saw pictures and photos and took a tour of a replica sleeping quarters.
We then made a transfer from the museum down the river Kwai via dragon speed boat, to the bridge itself. Although a section of the bridge was bombed by Americans, some of its original form still stands, the bridge was repaired by Thai government after the war. Once upon a time the railway, which begins in Bangkok, ran all the way into Burma, but now you can only get a few miles north of the bridge.
We were lucky enough to travel a few miles on the route The scenery was mainly agricultural farm land but it became spectacular around the river with steep canyons, and it was a pleasant journey.
We’d have liked the journey to have been a return – but for some reason our tour included only one way, the return was via minibus. We did however have a stop at the bridge which included us seeing the return train cross the bridge which was great to see.
Our arrival back to the hotel was 1845- it had been a great day but very long. The traffic in Bangkok is no joke! We decided to have a chilled evening in the hotel to relax. Sadly the food wasn’t great but we enjoyed the hotel happy hour.
Day 11
Tuesday arrived and it was time to attack Bangkok. We decided to book a 2 hour canal and river tour which was great- a very relaxing way to observe the locals going about day to day life behind the chaos of the city streets. Our guide, Luke was brilliant and barely paused for breath during his 2 hours commentary.
From here we had a quick drink in one of the posh bars on the riverside at a River City, before attempting and aborting our attempt at public transport to the skywalk- wasting 30 mins waiting for the river taxi before going for a grab cab instead.
The Mahanakhon Skywalk is the highest observation deck in Thailand, so we were keen to tick it off. It features a glass skywalk which I hadn’t quite thought about until we arrived at it on the 78th floor. The views of the city were amazing, and you could really get a sense of the scale of the city. It’s honestly huge! Before I knew what was happening, we were putting shoe covers on and then suddenly the reality of walking out onto a glass platform 314 metres above Bangkok kicked in. In the form of absolute TERROR. We both managed it- Keefy handled his nerves better than me, but we can both say that we did it. I can say that I much preferred the glass of fizz that marked not dying when both our feet were back on non see through flooring. The skywalk and tower however is a really cool place to visit and we throughly enjoyed it.
On route back to the hotel we nipped to pick up our train tickets up for our trip out of Bangkok, and then had a very very quick shower and change before heading straight back out and into Chinatown. Our evening activity was a ‘backstreets of Chinatown street food tour’, with “ A Chef’s Tour”. It was epic. Excellent. Superb. There aren’t enough praise words for our experience. We LOVED it.
The tour took 4 hours and consisted on non stop eating. We had a guide, Kwan, and her assistant, Ben who was a superstar in always going ahead to order and grab tables for us. We tried 20 different items, savoury, sweet and drinks too. We had two Michelin recommended stops – shrimp and pork dumplings from Jay One table and donuts from Pa Tong Go, along with Thai green curry from the star of a Netflix show called Street food. Lydia even ate a cricket. All of the food was from the best stalls in the district – no funny smells, or gross looking items. The food was cooked in front of us and you could tell it was clean and safe. There is not a chance that we would have found 80% of the stalls as they were down tiny alleys. Our guide Kwan was passionate about food not to mention so very knowledgeable.
Enjoy our highlights video below.
Complete list of tastings…
◦ Chinese chive dumplings
◦ Pork – khamooteesam
◦ BBQ pork with peanut sauce
◦ Chicken soup with Femented tofu and chilli sauce (sukie)
◦ Pennyworth juice
◦ Shrimp and pork dumpling – Michelin guide- Joe one table
◦ Chicken green curry(Jek Pui curry) as seen on Netflix street food
◦ Jackfruit
◦ Cockroach
◦ Thai whiskey
◦ Kuay Jab- pork belly noodles
◦ Soy sauce ice cream
◦ BBQ Shrimp with soured mango and chilli
◦ Water spinach, morning glory and fish sauce
◦ Curried clams
◦ Seafood broth, poh taek
◦ Longham
◦ Donut with pandang leaves
◦ Mango juice
◦ Mango sticky rice with butterfly pea rice
After our tour had finished, we had a quick beer in the Shanghai mansion hotel terrace bar, where there was a great band on including a fabulous saxophonist before heading back. It had been a totally awesome day in Bangkok- probably up there as one of our favourite city days in the world.
Day 12
Wednesday arrived and it was our final day in Bangkok. We were taking a trip out to the former capital of Siam (now known as Thailand). The UNESCO city of Ayuttaya dates from the 14th – 17th centuries and has 4 main temple sites which we explored with a guide. The varying temple designs were interesting to see, and despite the heat and humidity, we enjoyed our visit hugely.
We managed a siesta at the hotel and took the opportunity to rest for a couple of hours, before packing our bags, as we were checking out and moving north tomorrow.
Our evening was spent enjoying some live music at the nearby to our hotel ‘Saxophone bar’, a cool jazz and blues bar, before going back to the local restaurant that we’d enjoyed on Sunday. It was nice to explore the area of our hotel and not have to deal with the Bangkok traffic!
We’d really enjoyed our time in Bangkok, even if it had taken some time to adjust. I disagree with anyone who says it’s easy though. We consider ourselves well travelled and we struggled with the orientation and size of Bangkok. I wouldn’t recommend the location of our hotel really- although it was a quarter of the price of those situated better so I suppose it’s swings and roundabouts.
We are excited to move on though and experience some new areas.
Until next time
Lx
