Bangkok recs

We will be spending 8 days mid February. Any recs on restauraunts, wine shops or cool things to do?

Traffic in Bangkok can be very bad, so plan accordingly. It’s usually not so bad in the morning-midday but terrible in the evening. Try to take the skytrain, subway, etc…

Take the commuter boat along the Chao Phraya river to get to several places along the river.

Of course go to the Grand Palace and all the well known wats.

The JJ Weekend Market is quite large and has a lot of interesting stuff in it. And you can get there by the skytrain.

Tiger Temple is definitely a memorable experience, but it’s a long ways to go and will consume a whole day. Many tours combine it with the bridge over the river Kwai, which isn’t very scenic, but you can say you’ve been there.

The Sky bar at the Legua Tower is very much worth a stop for a $15 martini. There’s also a fancy restaurant up there, but one rip-off martini to admire the great view and walk around is enough for me.

A 1 day tour of Ayutthaya is worthwhile, and I would book a tour that has a NICE boat ride back to Bangkok. I mean, spend a little extra money for the nicer boat. The one I was on actually had good food on the boat!

I suggest you forget about wine for those 8 days. Thailand has a 330% tax on imported wine.

The best restaurants I’ve been to in Thailand have been authentic local places that aren’t reviewed or documented much in English.

You’re allowed to bring in 1L of alcohol per person, and I suggest you do so. Towards that end, I’ve been to Thailand many 8 times in the last 3 years, and there has never been anyone in the customs area that even glanced up at me as I walked through. YMMV.

Thanks Jay! Were staying at the Siam near the grand palace and had planned a day at Tiger Temple. Ill look into Ayutthaya too. Bummer about the wine… same thing happened when we went to Taiwan last year.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been to Thailand for study, work, or vacation. I’ve studied the language and was fluent at one point but… haven’t been there since 2010. In my experience, hotels and restaurants are very much moving targets so get suggestions based on very recent experience.

My general food advice:

Go to a good Northeastern Thai restaurant. Thailand has regional cuisines like any other country. Even good Thai restaurants in the U.S. don’t do Northeastern food well for some reason. Bangkok has some that do Northeastern cuisine well. Ask the concierge at your hotel for a recommendation. Tell them you are looking for ahaan eesaan (rising tone over those double a’s if you can manage it so they know you’re serious. ) Not fancy food but delicious. One of my favorite meals is green papaya salad (som tam, and you want those tiny dried shrimp), chopped chicken or pork salad (lahp), sticky rice (kaw niu), grilled chicken (gai yang), and sticky rice with mango and coconut cream (kaw niu ma-muang) for dessert.

Get some good kaw soy somewhere. It is a Northern Thai/Burmese chicken/coconut/noodle soup you don’t see often in the U.S. either.

That’s a long time in Bangkok.

I’d split the time between Bangkok and Chang Mai

Thanks Patrick will be sure to check those dishes out. We may wander Brig, we like to just wing it so to speak. Life is so scheduled normally that when we vaca we don’t force things with scheduling, if we get bored in Bangkok we’ll go to another area for a few days. Good to have an additional area to look in to ahead of time though. Our hotel booking gives us a free night at the Dhara Dhevi in chang mei so its in the back of my mind, looked a like a pretty far travel though for one night, may need to stay 2 or 3 if we do that.

Check my thread in Epicurean Exploits for the higher end places I hit up in Nov.

Ayutthaya was awesome.