Rooftop pools, the river, a park full of monitor lizards, and where to eat at midnight.
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I went to Bangkok for ten days and stayed four months. This is what I would tell a friend arriving tomorrow.
Most Bangkok guides are a list of temples. The temples are wonderful and you will see them in two days. This is about the rest of it.
The Chao Phraya express boat runs up and down the river for the price of a bottle of water and it is faster than a taxi at almost every hour of the day. It is also the only way to see the city from the outside.
The orange-flag boat is the commuter one and the one you want. The tourist boat costs several times more for the same route and a commentary you will not listen to.
The heat breaks, the whole city comes out to run, there are outdoor aerobics classes that anyone can join, and there are enormous monitor lizards in the lake that nobody warns you about.
It is the single most Bangkok hour I know and it is free.
Riverside if it is your first trip — the Four Seasons at Chao Phraya sets you back from the traffic and the walk through the garden to the room is worth it on its own.
Sukhumvit if you are staying longer and want to live rather than visit. I rented an apartment there with a pool on the roof for less than a week in a hotel.
Street-side noodles on any corner where there is a queue of people in work clothes. That queue is the entire review system and it has never once been wrong.
Mango sticky rice from a cart, not a restaurant, and only in season — roughly March to June, when the mangoes are absurd.
Four is enough to see it. Ten is enough to like it. I would not go for two.
No, and it is one of the few cities where the cheap version of a thing is often better than the expensive version. The exception is hotels, where paying more genuinely buys you quiet.
November to February — dry and merely hot rather than unbearable. April is the hottest month and I would avoid it.
The river boat and the BTS Skytrain for anything they reach, and a Grab for everything else. Taxis at rush hour are a trap.
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