Thailand: Bangkok

This is the first recap of my southeast Asia backpacking trip (#JLAsia2018) with my friend, Julianna.

Our first stop was Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand. We were only there for 1.5 days and unfortunately, we did not have time to wake up early to go the Grand Palace so our experience in Bangkok is not what I would recommend if it’s your first time in Thailand.

Arrival

Sim cards

We purchased sim cards at the airport and bought 8 days of data for $8 CAD. You can probably find cheaper ones in convenience stores such as 711 but if you are travelling alone, you will need data and Google maps in order to get to a convenience store.

Transportation: Grab

Grab is Thailand’s Uber and Vancouver’s nothing because we only have car-sharing. This app was recommended to us by many friends as a safe transportation method. Our ride from the airport to our hostel costed less than $5 CAD in total.

You can link credit or debit cards to the app in order to redeem coupons (you’ll receive discount codes the second you arrive at the airport), or you can pay in cash.

Accommodations

Bed station

For 1 night in Bangkok, we decided to stay in a hostel. A quick Google search will tell you that accommodations are cheap in Thailand (everything is cheap, really) so a nice 3-4 star hotel is still reasonable on a backpacking budget. We chose to stay in a hostel because we wanted to make some friends and explore the city together.

The hostel we chose was Bed Station, located in the Siam district. We paid $14 CAD per person for a bed in the mixed dorms (6 beds per room).

In general, Bed Station had a very hipster vibe to it. From the photo above, it may look dreary with the concrete walls and floor, but the shared spaces were open and spacious with wooden benches and long tables, bean bag chairs and electronics for you to use at your disposal.

Location was great. After arriving at Bed Station from the Suvarnabhumi Airport, we dropped our backpacks off to explore around the area until the 2:00 pm check-in time.

The closest skytrain stop is Ratchathewi Station, which is a 3 minute walk from Bed Station. If you continue walking for 10-15 minutes, you will arrive at the closest mall – MBK Center.

Things to do

MBK Center

MBK Center is a large shopping center with 8 floors that seem to all sell the same items if you walk around long enough. It’s not as low-key as street markets, but it gives off a similar vibe – this is still a haggle zone. The only difference is that it’s indoors and the things they sell do feel more commercialized (cuter, more modern styles).

We went to MBK to grab a bite to eat. Their food court was our first exposure to Thai food and it was cheap cheap cheap.

To purchase food at MBK’s food court, you need to go to the “card service” booth. That is where you will pay for food credits. How much baht you give them will be the amount of credit inserted into your card, which looks like a debit or credit card.

After you receive your food court card, you can then browse around the different food options and order what you want to eat. When it is time to pay, the food court worker will ask you to hand over your card. They beep the card and you’ll have whatever amount left that you didn’t spend. Once you spend all your credits, you can dispose of the card or keep it for next time.

I only inserted 100 baht into my card because I had no idea what was going on. And after that happened I realized I needed to spend exactly 100 baht because we would likely not be returning to this food court.

Our first meal was pad thai – a Thai stir fry noodle dish with prawn and peanuts – for 50 baht a plate, which converts to about $2 CAD. Let me repeat that: $2 CAD.

It was delicious.

The COMMONS

We went to the Commons to meet my friend, Toby. He told us that the Commons is a new urban area in Bangkok where the young and wealthy hang out. We are young and apparently in Thailand we are wealthy so we took a Grab to the Commons.

The Commons is like a smaller mall but only for food retailers, who have little booths inside selling all sorts of cuisine – wagyu burgers, noodle dishes, egg dishes, etc. They had a really nice patio area decorated with fairy lights and trees for people to hang out.

Neon Night Bazaar

Since we did not come to Bangkok on a weekend, we were unable to visit the well-known Chatuchak Weekend Market. We settled for a random night market we saw on the way to the Commons – the Neon Night Bazaar.

Neon was a nice night market of a smaller size. Again if you walk all of it you will notice many of the stalls are selling the same things – passport holders where you get to choose your own decorations, footwear, clothing, and souvenirs. Comparing it to MBK, it had less stylish items at around the same price anyways. The back strip of the market had little bars with music entertainment.

An incident at this market actually ruined our experience. Julianna bought a Thai iced tea from a vendor but forgot to ask her to remove the ice. As some of you may know, tap water (and therefore, tap ice) is unsafe to drink. There were even some incidents of people dying, but mostly you’ll get food poisoning and explosive diarrhea. This is why I was freaking out at the hostel earlier because I filled up my water bottle with their “safe” tap filter, only to notice that everyone – even the staff – were drinking purchased water bottles.

The vendor refused to remove the ice as it was already poured in a cup and also refused to give us a spoon to take out the ice ourselves. At this time, we were not aware that ice with holes on them are manufactured by a company and are safe to consume. We also did not check if the ice they used had holes in them. Basically, we no longer wanted the drink.

The vendor got angry and started yelling at us as we left and then threw the drink at Julianna. We were surprised that happened and I was actually pretty pissed off but we continued walking away. This would still be better than the possibility of getting explosive diarrhea one day into our trip.

Siam Discovery

The next day we took the skytrain to Siam Station, which cost 15 baht per stop ($0.65 CAD). We arrived at Siam Square, which is a square in-between 2-3 different shopping centers that all start with “Siam”.

Siam Discovery is high-end and sold luxury brands for handbags and fashion. They had a high-end grocery store that had better service and more people than the malls of West End Vancouver. Their food court was like a foodie heaven – everything from steaks and pastas to jiggly Japanese pancakes, all in the cutest little stores inside the mall.

They also had an aquarium on the bottom level of the mall. On the day we went, there were lots of school trips and children touring.

Siam Center was still a high-end mall but seemed more gear towards teens with slightly lower prices and lots of makeup stores. Julianna and I enjoyed seeing the mall displays of different stores and took pictures as we explored.

We met up with my friend Daniel, who used to live in Vancouver but moved to Bangkok because he just loved it so much, for lunch. He took us to a white flower cafe where we ordered our favourite Thai iced tea and other Thai food.

Final thoughts

I knew I didn’t have too much time to really explore Bangkok. It’s weird to say I’ve been to Bangkok but not write about Khao San Road or the Grand Palace or even Soi Cowboy. These are places I have been to in my previous trips to Thailand, but the purpose of this trip is to explore the other parts of Thailand – mainly Phuket and Chiang Mai, which I will write about in my next travel post.

My final thoughts on Bangkok is that it’s a must-go for your first time in Thailand, but it’s definitely not the best city for me as a traveler. Bangkok is more developed and modern with fancy malls and expensive (Thailand standard) food, but I am here for an authentic backpacking experience to see forests and beaches, not malls. If I didn’t have friends living in Bangkok and if it wasn’t Julianna’s first time in Thailand, I’m not sure if we would’ve even stopped in Bangkok to begin with.

Sincerely, Loewe