Arrival in Bangkok. Time: 9:25pm
We’ve arrived in Bangkok and needless to say we’re exhausted. The flight from Milano was smooth and easy around 3.5 hours I believe. First thing first—get through immigration. Super easy, super smooth. A couple forms signed and filled out and done. We converted some USD to Baht and set out to find transportation to our hotel.
A quick internet search showed that the taxi fair was not much less than Uber, and so Uber won for this ride. We called our Uber, and then walked out the front door to be greeted by a wall of humidity thick enough to cut into cubes and eat. It wasn’t particularly unpleasant, but after having been in overly air-conditioned airplanes and airports, it was definitely unexpected.
The ride from the airport to the hotel took about 35 minutes, which gave us enough time to take a look at the glowing buildings of Bangkok in the nighttime darkness. One thing I noticed almost immediately, most of the sky-scrapers were mostly dark. A few lights on here and there, but for the most party they were pretty unlit. This is such a stark contrast to NYC and other US cities that seem to never shut off their lights, ever. Was very strange to behold at first.
Our Uber driver was friendly. Quiet except for when telling us about the tourist hot-spots, “You enjoy Floating Market, Big Buddha, many temple.” Anything other than a hot shower, warm bed and soft pillow was simply noise at that point.
Our hotel the Narai Hotel in Silom was a nice hotel. Not crazy fancy, but fancy enough a modest 3 star if I recall. When booking accommodations in Bangkok its important to read about the various neighborhoods because each of them offers something completely different.
Sukhumvit: Party city, food, shopping, terrible traffic
Riverside: Fancy, expensive, elite, resort style accommodations.
Silom: Nightlife, compact, affordable, next to red-light district, gayborhood.
Pratunom: budget travelors, backpackers, younger
Siam: Shopping, Families, heart of the city.
Chinatown: Budget, vibrant, backpackers
Old City: Site seeing, backpackers, crazy touristy traffic.
We chose Silom. It has good night life, has the gayborhood, was affordable and could easily get to where we wanted to go. On our return trip where we have another 1 or 2 nights here, we’ll likely stay in similar area or Chinatown.
After a good nights rest we headed out into the city to explore. We didn’t have much of an agenda, were still a little lagged from the travels, but wanted to see what Bangkok had to show. After wandering around a bit we encountered a very friendly local who was all to willing to give us great advise and recommendations on what to see and do. His very understandable english quickly put us at ease, in fact he even bonded with Trav talking about being a teacher at a local private school teaching english and thai. After a couple minutes of chatting with him, he so kindly recommended we visit a TAT (Tourism Authority of Thailand). There we would find really helpful information, maps, etc. He even offered to get us a Tuk Tuk ride all the way across town for only 20 baht. Sounds great, right? Not so much! We were taken to a ramshackled building where we were rushed inside, sat down on seats and greeted by a young attractive Thai girl trying to sell us tour packages. Refusing to accept no for an answer they continued to press us to take a boat tour, walking market tour, temple tour, this tour, that tour, every tour for everyone.
Not being able to sleep much on the plane, I had downloaded a number of books to read including travel guides, tourist books, etc. Everyone of them talks about this very situation. This “scam”. I knew as soon as the guy offered to walk us to a tuk tuk, I knew what we were getting into. Unfortunately, most of the time they will take you to a place that is close to where you wanted to be, but just shy of it enough that most people wouldn’t be ok to tell the driver to stop and let them out. Unfortunately, we were over a mile and a half from where we wanted to be so… ugh.
So after 10 minutes of repeatedly saying no, not interested, no thank you, I finally just grabbed my back and stood up motioned for Travis to head toward the door and we exited. We paid the Tuk Tuk driver the 20baht promised. and walked away. Fortunately a block later we found a really lovely coffee shop to sit down, have a thai tea and laugh at our first tourist experience in Bangkok.
Baan Samyan was such a quaint little place. Run by two young women it had a very cute private kitchen garden feeling to it. Rustic furniture and decorations 1/2 enclosed in glass and 1/2 brick. It felt very much like having tea in someones kitchen greenhouse. We had some short broken english and thai conversations w/ the ladies who explained it was way to far to walk to the Grand Palace and we should take a taxi (tuk tuk’s were hard to find in this part of town.) We finished our drinks, flagged a metered taxi and set out for the Grand Palace.
Grand Palace
This place was[is] spectacular. The entire place glistens in the sunlight, decorated with millions of small square mirrors arranged into intricate shapes, patterns and images adorn palatial buildings and temples. Upon walking through the front gate (surrounded by a giant white wall) you are immediately taken by the grandeur of the place.
Thailand has some very specific rules about dress. Thai people are a mostly modest culture, their clothing is representation of this. Women often do not wear anything that doesn’t at least touch the edge of the shoulder, men often wear polo shirts and everyone wears long pants, or something that goes past their knees at least. Because the Grand Palace also has active temples, modest clothing is a must to enter. For ‘Farang’ (foreigners) like us, appropriate attire is provided for a small holding fee of 200baht. Your feet must be covered, your knees must be covered, and your shoulders, bust, chest must be covered. We were given light weight pants to pull over our shorts, and both had closed-toes shoes so we were fine. Women will be given a wrap to wear either around their waist or their chest and/or a button up shirt as well. Men wearing tanktops will be provided the same as nipples should not be exposed either.
Side note: if you would rather, there are DOZENS, HUNDREDS maybe of venders all around the palace entrance offering fancy elephant patterned Thai pants & wraps for 150-200baht. They too will be appropriate for the palace grounds.
Clad in our modest attire we set off into the palace to explore and photograph the amazing structures and sculptures within. We spent a good 3-5 hours wandering around. There was so much to see. The temples alone were amazing, but there are also small museums, gardens, alleys, it was really something to take in.
We left the palace with the intension of heading to Wat Po next—Wat Phra Chetuphon Wimonmangkalaram (Wat Po) is the first public university of Thailand, having been ordered into existence by King Rama III on his decree to restore the temple here, and open it freely for people to read and learn. It is also home to one of the most respected and revered Thai Massage schools in the country. We never made it there, having gotten distracted by another cute little coffee spot near the Siam Museum. We enjoyed a delicious cup of Cold Brewed ‘Elefin’ coffee where we realized we hadn’t had anything to eat since nearly 8am. We wandered around looking at some of the street shops selling various trinkets, thai pants, and amulets (more on that later) until ending up near the piers and a great little food cart with some delicious food!
At this point we were quite tired again. We decided to return to the hotel, freshen up, rest a bit before heading out for a drink and dinner later that evening.