Thailand - Advice for Travelers

Bangkok (BKK)

Shopping: Thailand is quite affordable. Great places to see and also lots of shopping of all kinds (clothes, gifts, electronics etc.). Bangkok (BKK) is great, great place for shopping, no need to go anywhere else. Chatuchak is a mystery. What were the hours? What shops open during what time? I thought it was a weekend market, but that is when we were there, but it did not look anything like in the photos. Bargaining was better only when we were buying more of the same thing. Malls were amazing! We did not see a lot of the shops in the mall, but there were also so many open shops in the walkway in the mall. And then there was Indira Mall - designed especially for Indian type jewelry and clothes. Quality seems to be quite good too. Everything was quite affordable. It seems that people from India come to buy in bulk from here and sell in India. There was also the roadside shopping at night (at least on Monday) outside Baiyoke tower. It was really good for clothes. 

For shopping I found BKK better than Phuket for pricing and choices. Although I will say I did not buy any “good” jewelry, I bought only the artificial kind. 

Staying at BKK: I think staying near Paya Thai BTS station is better. It has both the BTS and airport link. We had to keep going to Paya Thai and change stations all the time. We could have come to Ratchprarop for shopping (at Indira mall) and see the Baiyoke tower. There were also many Indian restaurants near Indira mall.

Ashiatique: We did not have the energy or time to explore all the market here. This needs about 4 hrs. Best to come in the evening and stay late so as to enjoy the lights.

Sightseeing in BKK: Except for the one marble temple, I enjoyed everything we saw. We had ample time to see the temples. There was a lot of walking involved but it was totally worth it. All the temples, buildings, flower market, Lebua tower etc…all good. Again, I missed seeing all of the Siam mall. There was some stuff in there to see as well.

Ayutthaya was a good day trip. I would go earlier in the day so one can come back by lunch time and enjoy the rest of the day shopping in BKK! 

It would have been much better if I had one more day (total 4 days) in BKK.

Phuket

Phuket was great! I enjoyed the touristy town. I would have rather skipped Similan island and seen more of Phuket. Or better situation would have been to spend one more day here so I could do Similan and Phuket. Similan was tiring only because the drive from Phuket takes about 2 hrs one way, so little waste of time.  Phi Phi island tour was fantastic. Highly recommend it. We did on the speed boat so I think we saw more that we would have if it was a simple cruise. 

Fantasea is a must. No one should miss this. It would be nice to get there 30 mins earlier so as to enjoy the fair inside. We did not have much choice as we got picked up at a particular time. 

Jocelyn mall was good too. We walked only a bit because we wanted to see the Bangla street (on the way to Pantong beach) festival of Songkran. There were really good shops in the mall and affordable prices. There were some unique shops here.

All in all – one more day would have been great in Phuket. 3 full days or 4 days if getting the flights in the middle of the day.

Overall – My dear friend/daughter/protégé Prachi was a great guide and companion. We are very lucky to get along and have the same tastes in so many things. I would not have enjoyed Thailand so much if it had not been for Prachi.

Thailand - Day 7 Ayuthaya

Today was an excursion to Ayuthaya. So again, went to our breakfast buffet as usual. Today I think it was vegetarian noodles. All tasty stuff.

Went to the local bus/van station to take the van to Ayuthaya. It turns out that it goes to the main bus station, where we will have to change vans. It was little confusing but we made it.  The drive was about 40 mins. The roads were all great and Ayuthaya was also a very pretty city. There were many tourists in the city. Once we reached the city stop, we would have to take a tuk tuk and see how many temples we could see.  There are many ancient temples here.  I let Prachi decide which temples to visit as she had a better idea. We negotiated with the tuk tuk to take us to all these temples below and the driver and guide decided the order according to the locations. It would take about 4-5 hours to see all these. Which was great, we would get back to Bangkok in time to enjoy our last night in the city.

Our ancient temple tour was as below, with some stops here and there….

1 – wat yai chaimonkhon (sleeping buddha) – beautiful old temple. It had these steep stairs to go up and then we could walk around and see the whole compound around. Very pretty. We walked to the very large Buddha statue at the back. Then as we were walking to the exit, we came to the sleeping Buddha.

 

After this first temple, all other temples started looking the same. They had similar architecture, huge compounds and very systematic layout. There was usually a line of sitting Buddhas around the compound, some so old that they were broken.  It was a very hot and humid day. There was a lot of walking. We did get some fruit in the middle but otherwise, no lunch. There was not many tourist shops either – which is good. It was nice just to walk in these old compounds and wonder how it would have looked back in its glory days.

The only temple that was a little unique was Wat Mahatat where there was a Buddha head trapped in a tree. Reminded me of one of the temples of Cambodia.

For some of the temples it was interesting to see how the buildings were tilting or curving into the ground from years of change in the earth’s surface. It was interesting. I think next time, I would do maybe four temples.

2 - Wat chai watthana ram: The next temple was actually a complex of temples and a world UNESCO world heritage site. There were many temples in this complex, of course all were destroyed. It must have been a beautiful campus when it was at its peak. All we could do this time was to just walk around and enjoy. We did not have a guide so could not tell which building was which one.

3 - wat lokayasutharan: This was very much an open temple. There was a huge sleeping Buddha statue to see. It was very serene here. 

4 – wat phrasisanphet: I think by the time we came here all temples were alike. There was nothing unique about this one.

5 – wat phra ram: By the time we came to the last temple, we were exhausted! It had been so hot and humid all day and this temple was not much different. What I found unique here was that some towers were starting to tilt in the ground (like leaning tower of Pisa). The rain must cause the ground to change in hardness. 

6 – wat mahatat: This temple was also the same as all. The only unique thing was that a there was a Buddha statue in a tree – the tree had grown around the statue (reminded me of Cambodia). 

The tuk tuk dropped us off near the van and we came back to Bangkok.  We were very near the Chatuchak market, so we walked there to see if more shops were open, and they were not. So then we decided to come back to our hotel and go up the Baiyoke tower. 

Baiyoke Tower

And today was the day for the massage! Finally we got in time to spare one hour for massage. We both got one hour massages, mine was just the foot massage and it was good! Highly recommend.

As we came into our street, we saw the Indira market mall!! We had not seen it before because we never came at time it was open. We went in and wow! What a market!! We were totally engrossed in it. So many shop owners knew Hindi and there were so many Indians around. It turns out that Delhi shopkeepers come here to shop for bulk goods. It was really good, watches, belts, t-shirts, jewelry, suitcases, phones….whatever one wanted, it was there! We left at around 8 pm otherwise we would be late for our tower trip….and we still had to eat dinner.

Right across were all Indian restaurants, so we decided to have dosa for dinner. Awesome! Went back to our rooms, go cleaned up to go to the Baiyoke tower. We were thinking since it is part of our hotel, we would get up there for free, but no, we had to pay a 600 bhat (a discount for us because we were at the sister hotel). The ticket includes the ride up and a free drink at the bar. The Baiyoke tower is indeed beautiful inside. We were first at the 83^th level and then took the stairs up to the 84^th, which is the rotating rooftop deck. It was glorious to be so high up. And the view was just something else! Stayed out in the open for a nice long time. It was of course windy, but not cold. The rotating deck was a little noisy, but it did not matter. We made 2-3 rounds and then came down for our drink.

 

The bar was very nice. There were different kinds of chairs and places to sit. There was enough room for a lot of people.  There was live music. All the seats were by the wall to wall glass windows. Very nice! Came back around 11 pm. Was totally exhausted.