Being in Thailand, we needed to visit the metropolis of Bangkok, which is a huge city combining traditional temples with modern skyscrapers. It has people from all around the world, many opportunities to eat nice food and explore the Thai culture.
Highlights of a week in Bangkok
1. Visit the Grand Palace!
This is the most known place of Bangkok, where you can enjoy the beautiful architecture of the King's residence and the nice temple Wat Phra Kaew, also known as the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. This is supposed to be the most important Buddha statue in Thailand. We must say that photos of the Buddha are not allowed and the statue is really small in comparison to other Buddha statues in Thailand. The king himself does the honor of changing the Buddha statue's outfit 3 times a year.
Some other highlights of the grand palace are the mural paintings, which are often restored by professional painters. We had the chance to see this and it was pretty cool.
Important: One thing that we didn't like at all about the Grand Palace is that the clothes policy is extremely strict. Trixi was wearing long leggings on purpose to enter to all these temples but even that is not enough. They want you to wear loose clothes, and even a Sarong is not allowed. This basically means that you will probably need to buy their clothes and they just have a shop at the entrance of the Palace... It feels like they just want money making because in other temples in Thailand (probably more than 40, we never had any problems with our clothes). Moreover, the entrance costs 500 per person, which is very pricy for Thailand standards.
2. Visit the Wat Arun
Wat Arun, also called the Temple of Dawn, is at the opposite side of the river and you can just cross the river for 10 Bhat (0.25€) every 10 minutes.
This temple is definetely worth it. The architecture is beautiful and seeing it from the boat is also a highlight itself.
3. Visit Wat Phra Chetuphon and the reclining Buddha
This temple is also iconic in Bangkok, especially for the huge reclining Buddha inside the temple. It's always quite full of tourists baking under the Bangkok's heat. The day we were there it was 33 degrees and quite hot haha
4. Explore the shopping extravaganza of Bangkok
We knew it was a place of shopping but I didn't imagine that you would have 3 huge shopping malls together, which have more than 8 floors each of them and are separated by 30 minutes walking with an aerial bridge to avoid the polution of the streets of bangkok.
It's very modern and full of posh shops, normal shops and also handcrafted shops where you can make your own wood pieces, your own suits or dresses or pieces of gold. You can find anything without having to search online! We wanted to buy several things, so we were at these shopping malls almost every day. Moreover, there was a beautiful exhibition of Studio Ghibli that is still running until January 2024 due to popular demand and I would recommend it!
5. Try famous Bangkok street food at Khaosan road or Chinatown
Don't miss the chance to experience Bangkok's famous street food, with must-try dishes like Pad Thai, Tom Yum, and Mango Sticky Rice. If you're in Chinatown, you can also take the chance to try the famous Pekin duck as we did.
6. Explore a floating market at Bangkok
I think to enjoy the authentic experience of a floating market you need to visit them on the weekends and very early (around 7 AM) to see how they exchange food and other goods. However, this floating market (Khlong Bang Luang Floating Market), which is quite close to the city center and reachable by metro and a 15 minutes walk, is quite nice. It's been adapted to be full of beautiful shops and plants directly by the river. Some of these shops are artistic and you can create your own handmade souvenirs.
7. Enjoy the views from some of the rooftops of Bangkok
We stayed one night in the Royal Bangkok hotel of Chinatown and the views from there were very nice! Moreover, we took the chance to have a nice swim at this beautiful rooftop. The price for one night was 35€, which is quite good for the nice location, spacious rooms and beautiful views.
8. Visit the biggest Buddha statue of Bangkok
The biggest statue of Bangkok is a Buddha of 64m that was recently built and is the second biggest after the famous big Buddha in Wat Muang.
We hope you enjoyed this post :D Let us know what you think about it ^^
The next posts are going to be about excursions we did from Bangkok to national parks and Ayutthaya, the old capital of Thailand.
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