5 days in sticky Bangkok

David –

Its actually happened! A mad week of packing away all of our things culminated in three days of moving, cleaning and farewells. A bus to Sydney, a flight to Singapore, 5 hours of layover (made better by 3 am free massage chairs at Changi) and a quick hop we arrived in mostly Sunny Bangkok!

Jumping on the BTS from the airport and a few easy transfers left us with a 10 minute walk to our hotel in the bustling suburb of Silom (suddenly Canberra spring felt already distant as the sweat already started falling). After changing some money it was Pad Thai time and it was sooo good and only $2.00, made fresh from one of many many food hall vendors.

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Another great dinner was at Than Ying – a royal affiliate restaurant to the King has amazing curries (and actually pretty affordable too!), in fact we went there went there twice!

MBK is a huge shopping centre – on the top floor has the biggest continuous food hall I’ve ever seen. Loads of options starting at $1-$2! Lauren enjoyed a questionable Tom Yum soup.

We also re-discovered The Gram…this amazing eatery which makes huge stacks of fluffy pancakes, so soft that they wobble! We first had these pancakes in Japan – never expecting to see them again!

Sightseeing around the hottest city (on average) on earth was sweaty work. Daily rain made for a sticky morning as I got us lost on the way to the ferry which run up and down Chao Phraya River. An older local man approached us and got chatting, “Oh, you shouldn’t go on the ferry, its full of gangsters who’ll rob you, take a private long tail boat around – don’t let them charge you anymore than 1500 bhat” ($75 aud). He was rather persistent and we got the feeling it was a tourist trap when he hung around to see if we got on board with his recommended operator…

We felt pretty smug from the 15 bhat public ferry every time we saw two or three tourists zooming by in overprice long tails.

Another expensive mistake we managed to avoid was down the road in the hotel skybar where the Hangover 2 was filmed..

Although highly reviewed the Sky Bar it turns out the cheapest drink was a 1000 bhat ($50) for an Italian beer or a mocktail for $60! Needless to say we quickly made our way back down and found somewhere a little more in our price range.

Wat Arun was stunning – but equally impressive was an ice cold coconut. The 17th Century temple had incredible symmetry making for some great photography (see the feature image at the top!)

Further upriver we discovered the single greatest ice cream in existence – the extreme chocolate!! We have been looking in every 7/11 for these $1 delights.

A memorable experience, sightly off the beaten path, was the Bangkok Medical Museum – pretty confronting specimens from murders, suicides, accidents and unborn babies in glass jars, lucky we had a light lunch, we weren’t feeling particularly hungry afterwards and we needed a stiff drink to settle our stomachs. My cousin recommended Jacks Bar, a local spot overlooking the river, watching the world (and tourists in $75 long tail boats ) go by was perfect.

Checking out Lumphini park after a heavy downpour was special in that there were no vendors, tourists or locals around – the Komodo dragons swam silently through the still water.  

We also used our time in Bangkok to top up our vaccines – we found the Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute which is affiliated with the red cross. We paid a fraction of the price you would find in Australia for our Yellow Fever, Typhoid, Hepatitis A and Japanese Encephalitis vaccines!

More to come…