Bangkok is an enormous city. Suppose you are unfamiliar with the city’s geography. In that case, I highly encourage using a local guide to help you plan your day to avoid long waits, heavy traffic, and complicated logistics. I also encourage you to be open-minded about taking public transportation or even a tuk-tuk when recommended; sometimes, that can save you a lot of time and headaches! If you have any Bangkok restaurants on your wish list for dinner, you must consider them when choosing your hotel. If you want to get to a restaurant on the other side of the city, you may need to spend 2 hours in a taxi to get there! I recommend planning to eat dinners near your hotel and venturing further away for lunch; this may also help you take advantage of some excellent lunchtime special menus, but I will cover that in another blog. For more on the value of a tour guide, read David’s blog.
On my recent trip, I did some bucket-list tours, like seeing the Grand Palace, and I got a little adventurous and ventured out to see Bangkok after-hours. But my top favorite tour was seeing the floating markets of Damnoen Saduak, a little over an hour outside the city. This old-style marketplace is in a small klong (canal) network where floating vendors sell their wares from canoe-style boats. Our tour began with a long boat with a makeshift motor that looked like it belonged in a monster truck, and we sped through the larger canals, looking at the local homes and getting a behind-the-scenes view of life on the canals. Then, we transferred to a smaller boat that was almost like a gondola, and we navigated the crowded market where floating fruit sellers and souvenir shops were mixed with little old ladies cooking noodle soups right in their boats.
Our guide, Sue, from Abercrombie & Kent, has been introducing travelers to this market and others like it, and she said she could count on one hand the number of times her guests have tried the food. We each got a spicy noodle soup and some fried bananas and sat down along the canal’s edge for one of my most enjoyable meals on the trip.
David also recently toured the floating markets on a separate trip to Bangkok and, as always, had a different opinion on the experience! You can read his report on the Travel Horizons blog.
