The Grantourismo Travel Guide To
Bangkok
Thailand
Bangkok Travel Guide
Thailand’s cosmopolitan capital Bangkok can be a chaotic, complex and confounding city – until you cruise the Chao Phraya River, discover the Old City and its glittering pagodas and gleaming spires, and explore the quiet canals. For many visitors Bangkok is little more than a shopping stop punctuating a beach holiday. Yes, there’s cheap accommodation and dirt-cheap street food, but there are also beautiful boutique hotels, heady cafés and buzzy bars, and brilliant restaurants serving inventive Thai food – not to mention new art and design destinations, a rejuvenated riverside, and a rapidly gentrifying Chinatown. Go now.
Bangkok Itineraries
ONE DAY
Itinerary
TWO DAY
Itinerary
Stay in Bangkok
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Best Bangkok Old City Heritage Boutique Hotels and Bed and Breakfasts
The best Bangkok Old City heritage boutique hotels and bed and breakfasts offer an intimate, personal experience, a quaint taste of the past, and a step back in time, as…
Best Bangkok Hotel Swimming Pools from Rooftop Infinity Pools to River Views
Best Bangkok hotel swimming pools range from luxury towers with rooftop infinity pools boasting dazzling panoramic vistas of the Bangkok city skyline to charming Chao Phraya riverside boutique hotels offering water…
Accomodation
Insurance
Eat in Bangkok
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Delightful Thai Grilled Eggplant Salad Recipe with Red Shallots, Fragrant Mint and Soft-Boiled Eggs
This Thai grilled eggplant salad recipe makes a delightful dish of smoky pieces of creamy eggplant with sweet red shallots, aromatic mint, the umami of fish sauce, a sublime soft-boiled…
Thai Tea Ice Cream Recipe and an Easy No Churn Ice Cream Recipe for Any Flavour
This Thai tea ice cream recipe makes the easiest no churn ice cream that you’ll ever make using just four ingredients: Thai tea mix, whipping cream, condensed milk, and salt.…
Drink in Bangkok
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Silom Sathorn District of Bangkok – A Guide to Bangkok’s Buzziest Area
Silom Sathorn district of Bangkok is one of the Thai capital’s buzziest areas right now. Home to a spate of new cocktail bars, sunny cafés, seductive speakeasies and two of…
Sipping Singha Beer in Bangkok
We love eating street food on the footpaths of Bangkok. But if there is a downside, it’s the sweltering heat and often stifling humidity that nearly constantly hangs over the…
Explore Bangkok
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Koh Kret Escape – Exploring Bangkok’s Secret Mon Island on the Chao Phraya River
Koh Kret – or Koh Kred – a tranquil Mon island on the Chao Phraya River that remains something of a secret to most Bangkok visitors, and even to some…
Bangkok Riverside Renaissance – From the Village of Wild Plums to Venice of the East
A Bangkok riverside renaissance in the last six years has seen an abundance of new boutique hotels, restaurants, cafés, and bars sprouting along the banks of Bangkok’s Chao Phraya River,…
Experience Bangkok
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Cooking with Poo — A Walking Tour of Klong Toey Markets
“Isaan people eat everything!” Poo tells our small group as we negotiate the muddy paths of frenetic Klong Toey market on a walking tour to purchase ingredients for our Cooking…
Thai Cooking Class at the Mandarin Oriental Cooking School
We like to think that if discovering the food of a destination is a way into the heart of a place, then learning to cook the cuisine is the route…
Book Bangkok Tours
Absorb Bangkok
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Things to Do on Chao Phraya River Bangkok – Where to Stay, Cruise, Explore and Eat
Things to do on Chao Phraya River Bangkok include hopping on and hopping off the public ferries to see the Thai capital’s essential sights and explore off-the-beaten-track neighbourhoods, taking a…
Cooking with Poo at the Helping Hands Thai Cooking School
From Klong Toey markets in Bangkok it’s a quick drive and a short stroll through Klong Toey slum to Saiyuud Diwong’s modest kitchen where we’re going to try our hand at, um, Cooking with Poo at…
Shop Bangkok
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Shopping Mall Sugar Rush: Bangkok’s Sweet Spots
I will always choose savoury over sweet, spice over sugar. My ideal dessert is something like this traditional chocolate Catalan treat, because it includes salt and olive oil. I’ll eat — and…
Bangkok Shopping Malls: Monsoon Havens & Modern Town Squares
The much-maligned shopping mall makes sense in steamy Bangkok, especially during monsoon season* — just as it does in the oppressive heat of Dubai. Whereas the gritty streets of both cities…
Festivals & Events in Bangkok
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Celebrating Songkran in Thailand – A Big Water Fight and Buddhist Festival
Celebrating Songkran in Thailand means getting absolutely soaked. The traditional Theravāda Buddhist festival to mark Thai New Year has turned into one big water fight over the years. While you…
Monks in Bangkok, Visakha Bucha Day, Thailand
When there are 12,600 Buddhist monks from southern Thailand in one street of Bangkok at once, where, as a photographer, do you start trying to document the mass alms-giving that…
Bangkok Local Knowledge
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Where David Thompson Eats in Bangkok – A Local Guide to Eating Out in the Thai Capital
Where David Thompson eats in Bangkok is a local guide to eating out in the Thai capital for food lovers. With hundreds of chefs, restaurateurs, gourmands, and food media converging…
Chef Jess Barnes Guide to Trashy Chinese Food in Bangkok
We believe great food should be celebrated in its many forms, whether genuinely old and authentic or the good old-fashioned bastardised cuisines of the kind we grew up on in…
Bangkok Resources
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How To Eat Like Locals When You Travel
How to eat like locals when you travel? There’s an abundance of advice out there: slurp soup from a street food stall, sample home-cooked food at a local home, savour…
Asian Food Etiquette — Eating, Drinking and Dining Etiquette
Asian food etiquette isn’t rocket science. So why do so many travellers in Asia get it so wrong? So you don’t become one of them, here’s our guide to Asian…
Bangkok Essentials
WHEN TO GO
Nov–Feb The temeratures in Bangkok don’t vary much, it’s the humidity and change of rain that varies, this is the best time to travel and it’s crowded.
Mar–Jun Weather This shoulder season is less crowded but the chance of rain is higher.
Jul–Oct Wet season commences and while it’s a little less crowded, the storms
can be ferocious.
HEALTH
Bangkok has excellent healthcare facilities, in fact it’s where most people in Southeast Asia head for medical treatment if they can afford it and is a medical tourism destination. It’s still of great importance that you get full medical insurance for your visit. Recommended Vaccinations
VISAS
Nationals of most countries can get a free tourist visa on arrrival in Thailand, it’s the length of the visa that varies and can range from 15 days to 90 days. Overstaying visas incurrs daily fines and rules can change overnight so be aware. Some visas can be extended, check the Thai Immigration website.
CURRENCY
CURRENT EXCHANGE RATES
$1.00 USD = 37.52 THB
$1.00 AUD = 24.57 THB
€1.00 EUR = 36.36 THB
£1.00 GBP = 40.74 THB
The Thai currency (THB) is called the ‘Baht’, and it’s the only currency used in the country. In touristy areas they may acccept USD but and give change in THB but you’ll suffer an unfavourable exchange rate. It is, however, easy to change most major currencies into THB.
LANGUAGE
THAI IS THE OFFICIAL LANGUAGE OF THAILAND.
ELECTRICITY
ELECTRICITY IN THAILAND IS 220 VOLTS. 50 CYCLES/SEC.
LOCAL TIME
Time in Bangkok:Bangkok’s Time Zone is (GMT+7) Bangkok has never utilised daylight saving.
WEATHER
CURRENT THAILAND WEATHER
TRANSPORTATION
AIR/LAND/SEA
There are direct international flights to Bangkok from major international destinations. Domestic flights cover major tourist destinations. Less expensive is bus travel covering all of Thailand, but for major routes minivans are becoming more popular – not great for tall or large foreigners. Within towns and sections of cities, besides taxis and motor-taxis are pick-up trucks with benches in the back that run specific routes.
Bangkok Daily Costs
BUDGET
Daily Budget Up To:
US$30
- Guesthouse dorm room: US$3–10
- Cheap restaurants, street food: US$0.5–3
- BTS Daily Ticket: US$3:60
MID RANGE
Daily Budget From:
US$31–200
- Air-con hotel room: US$20–45
- Good local restaurant meal: US$5–15
- Medium distance taxi ride: US$4:50
LUXURY
Daily Budget From:
US$201+
- Boutique hotel or resort: US$80–500
- Degustation meal without drinks: US$50+
- Private airport transfer: US$80+
