We have visited Bangkok a couple of times. Our first trip back in 2004 we stayed at the Baiyoke Sky Hotel in the Pratunam area. The bustling Pratunam markets were directly under our hotel and we got caught up in the hype of market shopping. Baiyoke isn’t the most spectacular hotel and we upgraded to the Sofitel Silom and Pathumwan Prince hotel on our next stays. Both these hotels are nice and well situated. Sofitel Silom is located right next to the Patpong night markets where there is a busy night life, and Pathumwan Prince is right above the MBK shopping centre.
No trip to Bangkok would be complete without a visit to the Grand Palace. Its a good idea to get there early as it gets really busy. We went on an organised tour so that we didn’t have to fuss around with tickets and finding our way around. Tour East is an amazing tour company and have always provided us excellent service and value for money.
For those looking to snap up a bargain the Chatuchak market is about 40 minutes out of Bangkok, but well worth the trip on the MRT. These markets are huge and have everything you could ever imagine.
One of our fondest, but also most disappointing memories of Bangkok was our tour to the Tiger Temple and Bridge of the river Kwai. This trip was amazing at the time but since then we found out that the Tiger Temple was a money making racket and not the wild life conservation program it was sold as. We spent the day on board a bus and got to stop in at the bridge of the river Kwai and see the graves of the prisoners of war who built the railway. It was quite a sad part of the trip with many Australian solider graves. We then moved on to the Tiger Temple where we were so excited to hold a huge tiger in our lap. Something told us at the time that it didn’t feel quite right that a huge tiger was happy to lay in our lap, but we were assured that they were trained by the Buddhist Monks. We later found out that we, like so many others, were participating in little more than a money making activity and that the tigers were not well cared for. It was such an amazing experience and we are so sad that the experience was tainted by such disregard for the tigers.