Solo in Bangkok
- Rebecca Grattage
- May 16, 2024
- 6 min read
The first thing I had to do when I landed in Bangkok was break some of my money into smaller denominations. I had to walk with all my bags downstairs to the 7 eleven to get some smaller notes. I bought myself some water and asked for some small change back. Part of me wondered if she knew exactly what I needed the cash for because she gave me exactly what I needed in small notes and the rest larger. What I needed it for was the bus, that was 60 Thai Baht from the airport to near Khao San Road, where my hotel was. The bus was a public bus and looked quite old and it was quite hot. Nevertheless, it made it and took me to where I needed to be safe and sound.
I checked into my hotel and was very excited to have my own room with an en suite and some rest before my tour started. I had 4 days until my tour started so I had to decide what to do with my time until then. I didn’t do too much because I didn’t want to do anything that we’d be doing on the tour and there were some things I didn’t want to do on my own. So, what do I always tend to do when I have free time? I walked. I walked around a lot. On the first day, I totalled 13,700 steps, the second 14,000 and the third 16,700, so I definitely walked around a lot and it was very warm in the day but I didn’t want to be out on my own too long after dark so the daytime was my time to walk around.
There was quite a few times during my wandering that I wondered where on earth I was but I often picked up on a sign towards something that sounded more in the direction I wanted to go or something that sounded interesting and followed it until I found a street I didn’t want to go down and went a different way. I had to get my map out a few times to make sure I was heading in the roughly right direction on my way back to the hotel in the afternoons to make sure I could make it but, overall, it was mostly just wandering and heading in a general direction.
On the 6th, my first day on my own, I didn’t do too much and didn’t venture too far away. I mostly scouted out areas with lots of restaurants near to the hotel and stuck to main roads. I ate in the restaurant downstairs near the hotel and went to bed early to recover from my travels so far.
On the 7th, I booked myself onto a two hour river cruise by long tail boat through Get Your Guide and had to take a taxi over to the docks. On this day, unfortunately it did rain while we were cruising across the river and the covers on the sides were solid blue rather than clear so I couldn’t see through them and had to lift them to see what the guide was talking about. It didn’t rain during the whole tour though so I was able to see a lot more when the blinds went up. The tour guide explained a lot of stuff but I unfortunately couldn’t hear him very well over the sounds of the rain and the engine, and the speakers to his mic were terrible.
It was definitely worthwhile for me to go on this little tour, though, and see some of the parts of Bangkok you can’t see by foot, like the stilt houses and the boats that collected rubbish and the clean water pipe systems that the guide kept talking about. There was also a large Buddha statue that was pointed out to us that the guide said was built in the last 6 or 7 years, so after the last time I was in Bangkok. It was very clear how much the city had changed in the last 9 years between my visits as I did more and more explorations by foot.
While I was on the other side of the city, I also decided to go into the shopping mall on the docks. It was a place called River City and, at the time I was there, they were having an art festival that I walked around a couple of times to look at some of the artwork on display, which was quite interesting. I took myself back to the hotel later in the afternoon and ate my dinner closer to there.
The 8th was my last day on my own. I decided to walk across the river over a very nice bridge and explore the other side of the river. The day was very hot and I felt very exposed to the sun on the bridge but I was luckily wearing my trousers to protect me from the sun and just put my hat on for the day. Luckily, when I was back down to city level, there was less direct sunlight.
The other side of the river was quite different from the side I was staying on and I walked a lot more along some main roads with lots of overpasses. It also had a lot more smaller roads that looked maybe a bit too much like alleyways, which I ended up walking down. On this day, I started to get very hot in the late morning and wanted to find somewhere that was out of the sun to cool down and rest a bit but cafes were not very readily available where I was at that time. I did eventually find a sign that pointed towards the National Royal Barge Museum and decided to follow it. I was very skeptical for quite a long time on the walk because it was talking me through what seemed like a very residential area with very narrow pathways, that at one point a guy came down on his motorbike and I had to step up onto a step out of the way. Eventually, I did find the museum but it annoyingly wasn’t inside with air conditioning, it was out of the sun though which felt like a good start.
The barge museum actually ended up being quite interesting and it had several barges that were used for show events for the royal family to parade down the river. The museum was part of storing and restoring these barges as well as explaining the meaning and history behind them and displaying parts of some older barges that had been destroyed in the war. I was also very encouraged to take photos because when I paid for my ticket for entry it had been 100 baht for entry and photo permission but was an extra 200 or something baht to be able to video. I did wonder how they would know if I was taking videos but I decided not to question it and said I wouldn’t take any videos.
When I left, there was a local man that tried to sell me a boat trip from the museum to the floating markets but I didn’t want to spend my money doing that and told him no thanks and that I would walk back. He tried to insist that it was too hot for that and I can’t say I didn’t agree but I preferred that to a boat trip with him. So, off I went back through the residential streets to leave. I was surprised that there was no other way to get to and from the museum by foot but it also made me feel better that I hadn’t walked through all those streets if I hadn’t needed to.
On my way back, I stopped at a 7 eleven for a toastie for a late lunch and a big bottle of water, which was the most important thing in that moment with the heat. Then I went back to my hotel to rest and pack my bag ready for check out.
At this point I was looking forward to being with other people again so I wasn’t exploring on my own. I also realised that I definitely wouldn’t like to travel alone for too long and a few days was probably enough for me, surprisingly. But everything is more fun with company so I was really looking forward to joining on to my group tour at this point and was ready for the next lot of adventures, starting with meeting some new people.
