Bangkok, Thailand · Asia

8 ideal things to do in Bangkok

The short list, pulled out of the long essay. No opening hours, because they change and I would only get them wrong — just what is worth your morning, roughly when to turn up, and where I have wasted time so you don’t have to.

By Ščenza

Last checked September 3, 2026

1. 01

   Wat Pho and the massage school in its back cloister

   Rattanakosin, a few minutes' walk south of the Grand Palace·First hour of the morning, before the palace crowd spills over

   Forty-six metres long and fifteen high, the reclining Buddha cannot be seen whole. You shuffle down one flank collecting a shoulder, then an elbow, then the mother-of-pearl soles of the feet, and assemble the thing in your head on the way out. Behind the cloisters is the traditional medicine and massage school that has taught the lineage here for generations. I bought an hour of it and produced a noise I had not made since tearing a hamstring on a pitch in Solin. The woman working on my back did not look up. She has presumably been hearing that noise from men my age for years.

2. 02

   The morning walk through Talat Noi and Song Wat

   River lanes immediately south of Yaowarat·Before ten, while the workshops still have their shutters up

   Engine parts. That is the honest first impression of Talat Noi: alley after alley of men rebuilding gearboxes on the pavement, a Chinese shrine wedged between two of them, and the Holy Rosary Church a few hundred metres on, Portuguese by descent and stubbornly Catholic in the middle of all this. I got lost in there for forty minutes and was eventually pointed back towards the river by a man who did not stop dismantling a crankshaft while pointing. Song Wat next door has the tall old trading shophouses and the better light. Go early; by noon everything is flat and half the street is asleep.

3. 03

   Yaowarat Road after dark

   Chinatown·From about six in the evening; Mondays are noticeably thinner

   Charcoal smoke, Chinese neon two storeys high, chestnut roasters turning pans of hot gravel, and a wall of woks that does not let up until well past midnight. The Riva in Split on an August evening has perhaps one grill going and a queue in front of it. Yaowarat has hundreds of stalls and a queue in front of almost none of them, which took me an embarrassing number of visits to read as abundance rather than as a warning. Eat standing up. Order whatever the person ahead of you ordered. The oyster-omelette pans and the seafood shophouses towards the Charoen Krung end are the obvious anchors.

4. 04

   The Chao Phraya express boats

   Piers from Nonthaburi in the north down to Wat Rajsingkorn·Flag colours shift through the day; the fast commuter runs are morning and late afternoon

   Boats here are sorted by the coloured flag on the stern and nobody explains the system to you. Orange used to be the workhorse; these days yellow covers most of the middle of the day and the weekends. I once boarded the wrong flag with enormous confidence and received a free tour of the northern suburbs, standing up, holding a bag of mangosteens. Take the commuter boats rather than the blue tourist one — same river, same temples sliding past, except you are on it with people going to work instead of people being told what they are looking at.

5. 05

   Jim Thompson House

   Soi Kasemsan 2, off Rama I, on a small canal·Late afternoon, when the teak has gone the colour of dark honey

   Six old teak houses, several of them shipped down from Ayutthaya and reassembled here in 1959 by the American who revived the Thai silk trade, walked into the Cameron Highlands in 1967, and was never found. The compound is small, deeply shaded, and feels about ten degrees cooler than the road outside it. The guides handle the disappearance with careful professional neutrality. I did not, and spent the rest of that afternoon constructing theories at a friend who had not asked for any of them.

6. 06

   Wat Saket, the Golden Mount

   Pom Prap Sattru Phai, at the edge of the old canal ring·Late afternoon; the week-long temple fair falls around Loy Krathong in November

   Three hundred and forty-four steps spiral around an artificial hill to a gold chedi and the only proper view over the whole old city. The climb is gentle and shaded and lined with bells that every single visitor rings, so you ascend inside a continuous polite racket. I had told myself in advance that a man from a city built on a hillside does not find stairs difficult. Split, however, is not thirty-four degrees at ninety per cent humidity. Come in November and the entire mount is wrapped in red cloth and the stairs fill with candles.

7. 07

   Cycling Bang Krachao

   The river loop at Phra Pradaeng; cross by longtail ferry from the Bangkok bank·Early morning, before the heat settles in

   A teardrop of swamp and coconut palm inside a bend of the Chao Phraya, largely undeveloped, threaded with raised concrete paths about a metre wide and a metre above the water. You hire a bicycle at the ferry landing and ride those. I came off one into a banana plant inside the first ten minutes, which I am told is roughly the local average, and rode much slower and enjoyed it far more afterwards. Si Nakhon Khuean Khan Park in the middle is where you stop and listen to a city of eleven million people doing absolutely nothing.

8. 08

   The train to Ayutthaya

   80 km north; most northbound services now leave from Krung Thep Aphiwat·Out on an early train, back before dark

   Ayutthaya was the Siamese capital for four centuries until the Burmese sacked it in 1767, and what remains is an archaeological park of brick prangs, headless Buddhas, and one famous stone head held in the roots of a fig tree at Wat Mahathat. The train is slow, cheap, and full of people simply going somewhere. I hired a bicycle at the station with one functioning brake and consequently approached every temple in the park with unusual reverence and an extremely wide turning circle.