Thailand - Bangkok Travel, Vacation and Touring Guide.

Bangkok holiday guide relates to a holiday in the city during April 2010 and gives ideas for various places to tour as well as information about hotels, general costs and getting around.

"Generally" Bangkok - the City is huge and sprawls for quite a few kilometres - it has a population of around 6.5 million plus another 12 million residents live in Bangkok's outer areas. Bangkok's transportation systems cannot even remotely be described as efficient apart from perhaps the local and public ferries which do seem to work fairly well along the winding Chao Phraya River. The roads in the City are more or less grid-locked during daylight hours and well into the evening particularly around Sukhumvit - there are several mass transport rails lines but these are not co-ordinated and do not particularly link locations which tourists probably are interested in getting too such as The Grand Palace and Wat Arun.
Bangkok is a quite expensive City to stay in - both for restaurants, getting around and for getting a reasonable standard of hotel - way more expensive than Vietnam and also even Cambodia.

Travelling to Bangkok By Air. Don Mueang Airport is located fairly close to Bangkok but only handles a few internal flights with Bangkok's primary airport for both international and internal flights located at Suvarnabhumi Airport (which is around 25kms from central Bangkok). Well served with a multi laned trunk road it is nevertheless important to allow over an hour to get to Suvarnabhumi Airport from central Bangkok because of generally severe congestion within the city.
One of the best ways to get into Bangkok from Suvarnabhumi is by meter-taxi especially after a long tiring international flight - typically these public metered taxis will cost around 350 Baht to get you right into Bangkok. Once through passport etc. the first thing you find are lots of taxi and limousine desks and so on plus plenty of touts approaching you for your business. These services are usually far more expensive - instead go out of the Arrivals gates and on the left there is a desk dealing with meter taxis - they note where you want to go too and allocate the next available taxi from a pool. You should have around 125 Baht available since there are two tolls on the trunk road into Bangkok which you are expected to pay when reached (on top of the eventual meter cost).
Travelling out of Bangkok By Air. As above metered taxis are by far the best way to get to the airport although you might get a better agreed rate from one of the taxis which hover outside your hotel - remember to factor in the toll costs though. The system of getting through Suvarnabhumi Airport is: check in baggage, fill in your departure form, go to passport control where they will take your photo, then on to security for scanning etc. (metal belt, mobiles, watch, purse, wallet, laptop etc. all have to go into the tray for scanning) and that's it. The airport has a huge concourse lined with what are actually very expensive and therefore quite empty of customers famous-name shops, there are also a few duty free shops but they do not sell an extensive range of cigarettes or tobacco, also various cafes etc. It's worth noting that once you leave this area and go on down to the Departure Gates there are no shops/cafes available - there is a small stinky smoking room and wifi is available free of charge.

Thailand's Currency - ATMs etc. ATMs can be found at the airport as well as all round Bangkok itself - as far as we could determine the only currency the ATMs issue is Thai Bahts - the ATMs are mostly linked with many of the world's credit and debit card systems like Visa and so on - typically a charge seemed to be around 150 Baht for a transaction. Money exchange is also widely available with both USD and Euro quite happily exchanged - if you want to shift a few UK Pounds though you will probably have to do it in an actual bank.

Bangkok Hotels - where to stay. Look on the web and there are seemingly thousands of hotels to chose from in Bangkok - with prices often quoted at maybe 25 to 30 USD a night. These priced rooms may well exist but you can bet that even having a window for such a price let alone any reasonable standard in room size and basic facility is not too likely. Also low priced accommodation is likely to be in a really poor area and/or miles away from where a tourist will want to visit (remember Bangkok's severe congestion). In central Bangkok by the river it is very easy to pay well over 150 USD a night for nothing too special - move away a little to say one of the Sukhumvit area hotels then prices for a reasonable room are around 55 to 70 USD a night. Note also that there can be various taxes added onto the room rates so check out if these plus perhaps breakfast are included in the quote.
Paying for hotel accommodation. Bangkok seems to have a somewhat weird system as far as payments are concerned - the hotels (particularly apartment-hotels) may well take the full amount (plus may add a few 100 Baht a day on to the agreed room rate for breakage etc.) - the amount concerned is not actually removed from your account but is frozen until checkout. This can be quite annoying if you do not realise this has occurred since you can easily think you have a better available balance on your card than actually exists. The hotels can also take at least 4 days to credit back any difference once you checked out (for instance if you were leaving Thailand and had a few 1000 Baht left which could be used as partial payment in cash).

Getting Around Bangkok - taxis, tuk-tuk, ferries etc. There are a variety of taxis operating around the city - the best value are the metered variety - even though the journey may take some time the meters do not tick up hardly at all unless the taxi is actually moving. If you use an agreed price for a taxi journey you really need to specify number of passengers, any luggage and who pays any tolls if applicable - before you get in the taxi. Short journeys can be good fun and quite fast by using the tuk-tuks but again you need to be absolutely certain that you have agreed the price and number of passengers. Tuk-tuk drivers are inclined to decide on their on volition to make stops at certain shops or outlets rather than take you directly to your destination - you need to be quite clear and firm about whether you wish this or not. They may despite everything just pull in on the way and try and talk you into some trip or other - just threaten and if necessary get out the tuk-tuk and find another unless they complete the agreed trip.
BTS Skytrain - these can be used to get across or around parts of Bangkok - there are two lines with one running from On Nut via Nana and Sukhumvit (Sukhumvit area) - Siam (Metro interchange) and on to Mo Chi. The other Skytrain line runs between National Stadium - Siam (interchange) and Wongwian Yai. Metro interchange is near to Mo Chit, Asok and Siam. The trains themselves are totally covered in adverts on the outside but you can see out of them whilst travelling inside. If you wish to go to the Grand Palace one way which is interesting is to take the Skytrain to Saphin Taksin (which is right by the river), then take an orange flag public ferry up to Tha Chang Pier 9 (costs about 15 Baht) and then it's just a short walk on up to the Grand Palace.
The Metro. The 21 kilometre long underground system in Bangkok is known as the Blue line and connects 18 stations between Bang Sue and Hua Lamphong with interchange near to the Skytrain stations as mentioned above - ticket prices are on average 35 Baht.
Ferries - more about them. The orange flag public ferries run up and down the river around 2 to 3 times an hour - they do get heavily crowded at times - you buy your ticket on the boat - most of the Tha's have an orange flag pier. There are other boats available with perhaps the most frequent of which are the blue flag boats which are designed for tourist use. There are a variety of tickets available from one stop only trips to multi stops - any blue flag pier will have a ticket desk where you can get information/help and work out what you want and where you want to visit (tickets are pre-paid for at the desks). In addition at most Piers you will find local ferries which simply criss-cross the river - these are pretty simple boats and cost just a few Baht per trip which you pay for when you get off.
Other boats. At several of the main "tourist" stops you can hire a long tail or similar boat just for yourselves and have a trip for an hour or two - with options of stopping off at canal side Wats and Temples on the way. Depending on what and where you want to go and stop at the prices are very negotiable - with perhaps the best prices available during the tourist quiet times around early afternoon. As a guide we took an hour and a half trip along parts of the Chao Phraya and via several canals for which we payed 1000 Baht.

Restaurants - eating etc. There are lots of stalls and carts selling varieties of Thai food all round the city - also there are carts selling melon, pineapple, apples and so on - often the large slices are kept on ice which makes eating them really refreshing on a hot humid day - just pick which you want and it is sliced up and bagged in seconds - just 10 Baht a bag.
The restaurants we used were around Nana in the Sukhumvit area - lots of Indian and Thai restaurants with prices varying considerably on location - as were the amounts of food served up. Typically expect to pay around 170 to 250 Baht for a typical Thai dish. Tiger beer is available pretty much everywhere - either draft or bottled - a pint of draught Tiger cost around 99 Baht.

Shopping in Bangkok. There are market stalls selling everything from fake designer clothes to watches to leather goods to jewellery to you name it everywhere in the City. There are also some huge department stores dotted around especially near Silom but could not say they were anything special - actually they seemed quite empty of actual shoppers. People seem to rave about the shopping possibilities in Bangkok but from what we could see much of the stuff for sale, at least along the roadsides, was either fake and perhaps "iffy" or very expensive compared to prices we are aware of in England.

Ideas on Places for Sightseeing in the City. The three big tourist attractions are the Marble Temple - Wat Benchamabophit, The Grand Palace and Wat Arun Temple - there are also a variety of other Temples etc. dotted around the City. Please see our Bangkok Tours topic for photos and information about these - where there is also information about a day trip out to the sites at Ayutthaya. A boat ride along the Chao Phraya River and some of Bangkok's canals is also a great way to spend a few hours - either negotiate your boat price directly or perhaps join a tour - several lesser known but very beautiful temples especially along the canals are very easy to visit by using these small boats.
Bangkok is extremely busy and all this sightseeing gets quite wearing after a few hours - also of course the weather is usually hot and very humid. A perfect solution (in addition to perhaps having a cooling boat ride on the river) is to wander off the really lovely Lumphini Park Gardens - see our Bangkok Tours topic mentioned above.

 

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