Bangkok, Thailand Travel Guide

Bangkok is Thailand’s capital, its main international gateway and the place most first trips begin or end. It is also the city visitors most often plan badly, and almost always in the same way: by treating it as one centre with a ring of sights around it. It is not. The royal temples sit on the river in the west, the modern city sits on two rail lines to the east, and the two barely touch.

Plan around that and Bangkok becomes straightforward. Group the Grand Palace, Wat Pho and Wat Arun into one river morning. Use the BTS and MRT for Siam, Silom and Sukhumvit. Keep Chinatown for an evening. Three days covers the headline sights without turning the trip into a series of taxi rides.

Bangkok at a glance

How Bangkok fits together

Five parts of the city account for almost everything a first visit does, and the distances between them are the reason itineraries fall apart. The Old City is seven kilometres from Sukhumvit; Chatuchak is eight kilometres north of the Old City. Those are short distances on a map and long ones on a Bangkok afternoon.

Old City, or Rattanakosin

The royal quarter on the river, and where the Grand Palace, Wat Pho and, across the water, Wat Arun all sit within a walk or a short ferry of each other. It is the one part of the city the BTS does not reach at all. The MRT Blue Line clips its southern edge at Sanam Chai, ten to fifteen minutes’ walk from the palace gates, and the Chao Phraya boats are often the quicker way in.

Chinatown, or Yaowarat

Gold shops and herbal halls by day, and one of the best street-food streets in Asia after dark. The MRT extension put a station at Wat Mangkon directly on Yaowarat Road, which is what turned Chinatown from a taxi trip into a train stop. Go in the evening.

Siam and Silom

The commercial middle. Siam is where the two BTS lines cross and where the big malls are; Silom is the business district south of it, busy on a weekday and quieter at the weekend. Neither is a sightseeing destination so much as the part of the city that makes crossing it possible.

Sukhumvit

The long eastern corridor along the BTS: most of the hotels, most of the international restaurants, and most of what happens after ten at night. Its numbered sois run off one road, and the useful ones are the ones near a station.

Riverside

The stretch of the Chao Phraya south of the Old City, around Saphan Taksin, where the river hotels are and where the BTS meets the boat piers. A scenic base, and the one that makes the river work as transport rather than as a view.

Where to stay in Bangkok

Three areas, and the choice is a trade rather than a ranking.

Which one suits you depends on what your days are made of, not on which is better. Our guide to where to stay in Bangkok compares all three on price, noise, walkability and what is actually within reach of each.

What to see on a first trip to Bangkok

Start with the Old City and the river temples, then add one district or market rather than crossing the city repeatedly in a day. The Grand Palace, Wat Pho and Wat Arun belong together geographically and can be done as one morning. Chinatown works after dark. Chatuchak is a weekend market eight kilometres north and is its own outing, not something to squeeze onto the end of a temple day.

Best time to visit Bangkok

Bangkok has three seasons rather than a wet one and a dry one, and the useful thing to know is which of them your dates fall in.

November to February: cooler and driest

The comfortable window and the busy one. December takes 11mm of rain across two days and January 16mm across three, measured from thirty years of reanalysis at the city’s own coordinates. Prices and crowds are at their highest, and hotels in the good areas sell out weeks ahead.

March to May: hot

The heat builds through March and peaks in April, which is also when Songkran falls. Sightseeing works if you plan around it: temples early, museums and malls in the middle of the day, markets in the evening. May is the month the rains start.

June to October: wetter

September is the wettest month of the Bangkok year at 263mm across 26 days with rain, and October is not far behind. Showers are typically short and heavy rather than all-day, and Bangkok absorbs rain better than a beach destination does because so much of what you came for is indoors or under cover. Prices and crowds are at their lowest.

The best time to visit Thailand sets Bangkok against the two coasts, which keep different calendars again.

How many days do you need in Bangkok?

One or two days

A stopover, and enough for the river temples plus one evening in Chinatown. Stay near the river or near a BTS station and do not attempt both ends of the city.

Three days

The first-trip baseline. One day on the river and in the Old City, one for the central city and Chinatown, and a third for Chatuchak if it is a weekend or a day trip if it is not.

Four or five days

What three days lacks is slack. A fourth day buys a full day trip to Ayutthaya or Kanchanaburi without spending Bangkok itself on it, and a fifth lets the city be somewhere you are rather than somewhere you are working through.

Getting around Bangkok

Bangkok runs on two networks that barely overlap. The BTS and MRT cover the modern commercial city quickly and predictably; the Chao Phraya and its canals cover the historic riverside city, which the rail network mostly does not reach. Knowing which one serves where you are going is the difference between an efficient day and an afternoon in traffic.

The full Bangkok transport guide has the fares, the cards and how each system is actually used.

Bangkok’s airports: BKK or DMK?

Bangkok has two international airports on opposite sides of the city, and they are not interchangeable.

Bangkok map

Where the districts on this page actually are, and which rail line reaches them. The Old City sits away from both BTS lines, with the MRT Blue Line touching its southern edge at Sanam Chai; Siam, Silom and Sukhumvit sit along the BTS; Chatuchak is a long way north of all of it.

What to eat in Bangkok

Bangkok’s street food is not one thing. Most stalls do one dish and have done it for years, which is why the good ones are specific rather than general and why a stall with a queue is usually worth the queue.

• Yaowarat after dark is the densest eating in the city and the easiest place to start, now that the MRT reaches it.
• Food courts in the malls are the low-stress entry point: air-conditioned, card or coupon payment, and the same dishes.
• The dishes to know are pad krapow, the noodle soups, the curries over rice, and pad thai, which is better here than its reputation abroad suggests.

The Bangkok food guide covers the dishes, the districts and how to eat well without a reservation.

Best day trips from Bangkok

Where to go after Bangkok

Bangkok is the hub, so the question is usually not whether to come but what to attach to it. The times below come from our route pages, which carry the fares and the operators.

• Chiang Mai, for northern temples, food and the hills. An hour by air or an overnight train. Both compared.
• Phuket, for the largest Andaman beach base and the widest choice of hotels. About an hour and a half by air.
• Krabi, for limestone scenery and island days. About an hour and twenty-five minutes by air.
• Koh Samui, for the Gulf islands, which keep a different calendar from the Andaman. Just over an hour by air.
• Ayutthaya, as a day trip or as the first stop on the way north. An hour and a half by train.

The routes index has the rest, and multi-centre trips covers how these pair up over a fortnight.