Bangkok is an amazing city of contradictions. It is modern yet old, sleazy yet culturally rich, expensive yet cheap, cold and yet hot. This is the world of sky trains, go go bars and overpriced cappuccinos in freezing air-conditioned massive shopping malls. Yet it is also a world of old temples and traditions, rustic river boat buses, and possibly the best, cheapest and widest range of tasty street food in the world. It was this intoxicating mix of modernity, rich culture, outstanding cuisine and maybe a bit of partying thrown in that made us very excited to be arriving in Bangkok. Bangkok had always been something of a stepping stone for us – a necessary hub to fly through to get to more exciting places. We quickly decided we wanted to stay for 4 nights, however, given our excitement, and planned our onward travel towards Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand from where we could turn likely east towards Laos or west to Myanmar.
And so we landed in Bangkok on 24th January. On our flight from Kathmandu, we had been lucky to fly in parallel to a big chunk of the eastern Himalayas. These mountains are so huge, we appeared to be flying at a similar altitude to their summits. George’s google maps was somehow still able to track us for long enough mid air for us to be able to pinpoint with some certainty which peak we thought was Mt. Everest – an amazing way for us to wave goodbye to Nepal where we had grown so familiar with and fond of its huge mountains.
Upon landing in Bangkok, we got ourselves a taxi to our hostel called Pa Prank, located in the old part of town, not far from the royal palace and temple complexes and the famous / infamous Khao San road. The hostel is one of the myriad of the cool “poshtels” that have sprung up all over the city, with polished concrete floors, white walls and furnishings and very clean rooms. We had what felt like the penthouse suite: a room in a glass box on the roof with our own sofa and pretty cool views. The whole place, of course, was deeply air conditioned.
We arrived around 10pm local time so our immediate task was to find food. It being Bangkok, this proved exceptionally easy. We walked for 2 minutes and found a cheap place that did tasty noodles – a promising first taste of Thailand. On arriving, we realised we had landed right at the start of the Chinese New Year celebration days and that we were not only staying near Chinatown, but also just by a Chinese temple. This was both exciting and a little concerning given how the Coronavirus was just starting to dominate headlines! We went for a short wonder up the road past the Chinese temple where hundreds of devotees, all dressed in red, were turning up to pay their respects and a recorded message in Chinese was playing from a megaphone.
After a further 5 minutes walking north, we found ourselves on Khao San road. We had already agreed not to “go big” that night, but just walking through the street proved fascinating. It being Friday night, the whole street was transformed into the wildest and loudest street party we had ever seen. Dozens of bars and clubs lined each side of the street, each competing for the loudest, most pumping tune. At several points the crowds overflowing on the street were so big we had to queue and sift to pass. Street food stalls and vendors selling insect snacks and an assortment of random things from wooden frogs to misogynist wrist bands. We decided to do some people watching by having a beer at one of the many impromptu bars (a cool box and plastic chairs) set up in between the actual bars. We sat here for 30 minutes or so, we both bought fried scorpions as beer snacks and ended up giving some money to a magician who turned up and started giving us a private and actually quite impressive magic show. We walked home somewhat dazed and amazed and feeling like we had properly plunged ourselves into Bangkok already having only arrived at 10pm!
We woke up the next day (25th Jan) as late as we could to be in time for breakfast and started making some plans for the day. We first set off for a massage nearby – we opted for 30 minutes of Thai foot massage followed by 30 minutes of neck, shoulder and back massage. It was our first massage as a couple of the megamoon and was both fun and cute. George ended up somehow having the full Thai massage experience, with the masseuse going full physical – standing on his calves and back as if juicing grapes for wine, and then pulling on arms and legs to produce various concerning cracking sounds. It was type 2 fun for certain – painful at the time but it felt good afterwards.
Having had our joint massage experience, we got a tuk tuk ride to chinatown. We found the main street on which the celebration parade would later be happening, and walked through the crowds of Chinese / Thai people all in red. It was a real spectacle! We walked around for about an hour on something of a culinary tour, nibbling on bits of street food: some meat balls here, chinese lantern fruit there, with some pad thai and barbeque pork belly thrown in as well. We also, found ourselves some banana sticky rice. It was all great fun. Towards the end of our tour, the parade started. Four large Chinese dragons of different colours were dancing to the beat of drums. Every so often, one would have firecrackers go off all around it, as if breathing fire! Whenever they went past a select Chinese shop or place of worship, the dragons (largely carried and puppeteered by kids) would enter each in turn, to receive (or maybe give!) some sort of blessing and then exit. It was all in all a great experience and we felt very lucky to have witnessed it. With the coronavirus threat and recent surges in pollution levels in the city, we bought ourselves some basic medical face masks which we ended up wearing whenever we were in large crowds or public transport. It was certainly a weird slightly dystopian feeling and also quite hot to wear – but with so many locals (and other tourists) wearing them as well, it seemed the sensible thing to do.
We got a tuk tuk back to our hostel and walked up to the touristy area near Khao San where Katharine got herself a cheap manicure / pedicure. We then returned to the hostel, showered and and rested before sprucing up for the evening: this was Saturday night, and our designated “night out” for our time in Bangkok! We started by finding dinner at a local restaurant run by a lovely Singaporean chap who has been in Bangkok for the last 20 years or so. We both had Thai soups, George having thom yam – a red spicy soup and a Thai classic. Katharine had a pork meatball soup. We then headed off towards Khao San road…
We started with a short stop at one of the ladies on Khao San road where Katharine had her hair done in two French plaits. We met an interesting duo here, one from Columbia, apparently travelling for 2 years… and a tall Dutchman who was living in Vietnam and had managed to somehow get himself a job as a fake French chef for a Vietnamese food TV commercial, despite not being a cook and speaking no French! With Kat’s hair plaited, we moved on to the street parallel to Khao San to the north. This was still very much buzzing but had a relatively more relaxed feel with lots of bars, restaurants and massage spots. We enjoyed a cocktail here, got chatting to an older Dutch couple and also managed to Skype Katharine’s folks and sibling who were all together in Wales. The evening grew far less civilised thereon as we moved on to the madness of Khao San road itself. Suffice to say we went hard and over the course of the night, had “buckets”, beers, joined in with the dancing on the street and even, to our astonishment, met a group of people from Tenby in Pembrokeshire, the county over from Katherine’s in Wales (and also the county we got married in only 6 months before)! We managed to refrain from eating overpriced insects, but did cave when it came to the various chicken fast food options on the way home!
The next day we felt dreadful… especially Katharine. George managed to crawl downstairs for breakfast and then we both painfully packed away our bags in time for checkout. Unfortunately the hostel had not had room for our latter two days so we had booked another hostel on Sukhumvit street to the east of the city centre. Food and coffee in the air conditioned cafe of Pa Prank hostel helped, and, eventually, George mustered enough energy to go exploring to the royal palace and temple complexes. Katharine remained in the air con convalescing.
On arriving at the royal palace, it turned out shorts were not acceptable and the only option was to either buy some hideous elephant hippie pants they sold on the door for 200 baht (5 quid) or return to the hostel to get trousers. Given the the hoards of tourists (most seemingly Thai or Chinese), how hot it was, and the lingering hangover, George decided against going in. Instead, he walked a further 15 minutes south to the Wat Phu complex which was relatively calmer and they had no issue with shorts. The complex houses a series of temples, thr most impressive of which had a gigantic reclining golden Buddha within. The grounds are scattered with tiled colourful and golden stupas as well as peaceful gardens.
After soaking in the atmosphere at Wat Phu, George walked back to the hostel to find a much recovered Katharine! We together, walked for 10 minutes down the road from us to the nearby Wat Rachabophit which was devoid of tourists but just as beautiful as many of the other more popular temples. There was some kind of festival or event happening, with lots of people turning up in their finest, and a few girls (no older than 12) dressed as deities, all in gold with golden accessories and crowns. It was a real surprise to find just by were we were staying!
Feeling like we had seen something of the cultural side of central Bangkok at least, we made our way eastwards to our new hostel for the next 2 days: Suk 18. Sukhumvit feels a world away from old Bangkok: a massive road lined with shopping malls, skyscrapers and big hotels and the sky train tracks running along the middle of the road. Simply navigating the area as a pedestrian takes some getting used to and we quickly learned that the quickest way is to use the various bridges and overhead walkways around the skytrain and shopping malls. Suk 18 hostel itself was a little odd. Its reception area was closed when we arrived (presumably because it was Sunday), but even when it was manned the place lacked a central hub feel where you can meet people – really the key thing you want from a hostel vs a hotel. The place was once again polished concrete and white paint with an industrial iron staircase, but for all the hypothetical “coolness” lacked any sense of character.
That night we went for dinner at an incredible garden restaurant called Cabbages and Condoms – just 10 minutes walk from our hostel. Highlights included a delicious whole fish poached with lemongrass, chilli and a lot of garlic, and some interesting purple dumplings we had as an appetizer. The ambiance was also great but the unique factor with the place, as suggested by the name, is its social enterprise initiatives to promote sexual health awareness and security, particularly among sex workers in Bangkok. There are incredibly strange but impressive statues made entirely out of condoms at the entrance to the restaurants, and instead of mints, diners are given condoms!
We had decided that the perfect end to what had been something of a hangover day was a trip to the cinema to see 1917. With so many shopping malls around us, this proved exceptionally easy: there was a late showing at our local massive mall, Terminal 21. This mall is an odd homage to transport: there was a San Fransisco tram, a London bus (both fake of course) in there…! We hugely enjoyed the film with it’s incredibly immersive style of being filmed as one shot.
The 27th of Jan was far more productive. We had made plans with yet another old Essex friend (and former housemate) of Katharine’s (and the final now in our travels), Ei, for dinner in the centre of town. We had designed a bit of a sightseeing trip en route to getting there, so after a late and thoroughly average breakfast, we set off in the late morning on the skytrain to Siam square. We wanted to experience something of the modern side of Bangkok, and also planned to stop by the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre. Unfortunately, the latter was closed on Mondays… Siam square, did not really turn out to be a square at all – rather a big crossroads where several shopping malls are congregated! We walked into a couple, and had coffee and lunch in the seemingly biggest one, Siam Paragon. It was all horribly overpriced and predictably stale in terms of character.
Feeling like we had fallen victim to consumerism after our weeks in Nepal, we walked for 10 minutes and reached our next srltop: Jim Thompson’s house. Jim Thompsom was an American, who ended up in Thailand at the end of World War 2 and fell in love with the place. He became a silk-tycoon and a key reason why Thai silk has its prominence internationally today. He vanished under mysterious circumstances in in 1967 in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia. His house, that is now a museum, is truly amazing. It is a beautifully peaceful spectacle of traditional Thai architecture (red polished teak wood, airy rooms filled with buddha statues and other Thai cultural heritage items) with a European fusion feel to it (ornate dining tables and crockery, chandeliers). The gardens also were gorgeous. It was a really nice break from the mayhem of Bangkok.
We then took a river boat taxi to the Golden Mount. The ride itself was an experience: costing us virtually nothing, we packed in with hoards of locals and enjoyed the cruise along the canal, passing old rustic houses all along the way – certainly a different way to explore Bangkok! The Golden Mount is a stupa perched on top of small hill. The whole place has very spiritual feel to it: surrounded by gardens and Budda statues, a path snails up the hill with bells and gongs all the way up and recordings of monk chanting playing. The views from the summit are great and provide the clearest view of the new and the old of this city, with ornate temples dotted around the river and old part of town and towering skyscrapers looming in the distance.
We wondered on towards the Democracy Monument and a restaurant called Methavalai Sorndaeng to meet Ei – mirroring where George had also met up with Ei on his trip here some five years ago! The restaurant itself was in an ornate neoclassical European style and furnishing and there was a live jazz band playing. The food was excellent – we sensibly went with all of Ei’s suggestions. It was a lovely reunion and great to catch up with Ei once again who, to our surprise, we found is living largely in Edinhurgh where she is training as a psychotherapist! It happened she was back home conducting field research.
Ei very kindly dropped us off with her car at another iconic spot in Bangkok – a great bar called The Deck, on the river just opposite Wat Arrun with its many tiled golden stupas illuminated. We enjoyed a was quick drink here, soaking up the river breeze and views, and made our way back to Sukhimbit – there were more aspects of Bangkok nightlife we wanted to sample!
From the metro, we made the short walk over to the infamous Soi Cowboy (cowboy street), so named after a former American GI from the Vietnam war settled there and set up the first of many bars on the street. The street is now very much a strip of bars, some of which are normal nice spots for a drink or live music, but most of which are “go go bars” – strange, incredibly sleazy bars that all have mostly naked Thai women (and / or lady boys) touting people in / dancing inside. We had a quick drink at one of the regular bars, people watching at what was certainly the seedier side of Bangkok. We finished our bar hopping with a rooftop bar about 10 minutes walk south from our hostel. The views were outstanding and the place was a total contrast to Soi Cowboy: fancy cocktails in pleasant ambiance with the lighting from Bangkok’s skyscrapers all around.
We left the next morning (28th Jan) for the airport, this time by the far more affordable metro / skytrain which proved pretty straight forward. It had been an incredible four days, seeing old friends once again, exploring the various contradictions that make the Bangko such a fascinating place. We both felt a little broken from the manicness of the city (not to mention Khao San road) and George had picked up a stomach buv. We felt ready for the relative tranquility of Chiang Mai!
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