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Thailand
If you take a 15 minute Skytrain journey from BTS Siam to BTS Thong Lo you can join the lifestyle, living and shopping experience in Bangkok's designer shopping district, Thonglor.
The crowd is more residential, international, professional thirtysomething than the teens and tourists around Siam and MBK.
Couples can easily spend a whole day in Thonglor. For the morning get a coffee and up to date with emails at True Life. Relax into a half-day "Ecstasy Time" spa package in a double room at Leyana Spa. Then have an illuminated evening meal outside at To Die For restaurant in H1 - Thonglor's design HQ. And finally, discover some Bangkok trends inside the Playground mall and rub shoulders with Thai celebrities unwinding at Starbucks. If one of you is starting to tire, take an aircon taxi back to BTS Thong Lo for 35 Baht and on to your hotel in air-conditioned, speedy Skytrain comfort.
Alternatively, if you feel yourselves becoming part Thonglor, you may stay late and never want to go back ...
Map: tinyurl.com/ypoorl
Fish & chips, bangers & mash, pasties, pies, ... in Banglamphu!
A clean, airy place. Away from the sewer smells, noise and pollution. Oh My Cod! has seating in cubicles, each with flat-screen TV (you've been warned), outside where you can watch the koi carp, or you can sit at a normal 'cafe' table inside.
Pies and pasties are homemade. Warning: the pasty is big. Don't eat if you plan to walk around the palaces.
Oh yeah they have wifi too.
Located down Soi Rambuttri, turn down the alley near 7-Eleven.
Thai food is very unlikely to give you food poisoning but can contain more chillies than you ever thought possible. Street food is usually safe (and delicious!), check for numbers of customers and general looks of the stall. Western (“farang”) food is much more likely to give you food poisoning – fridges are not part of Thai cooking lore yet…beware of western fast food outlets and hotel buffets - food that has been out for over an hour or so. Drink bottled water - not tap water. Even consider not brushing your teeth with tap water. Ice is usually safe in drinks and for anything else.
This cooking school offers half-day, full day and week-long cooking courses. They were absolutley great, combining practical cooking demos with theory - and you get to eat what you have cooked afterwards with your fellow students.
They will pick you up from your hotel and take you back again afterwards.
Wonderful restaurant on the west of the river. Not cheap, but worth every penny for the great food, cocktails, service, view and private river boat. Has traditional dance displays at the weekend.
Opposite the Grand Palace next to Wat Rakhang in Thonburi.
Just the maddest restaurant in Thailand. It's an enormous German beer hall that brews its own (very good) beer and seats about 1,500.
They serve German and Thai food and have cabaret every night - a mixture of traditional Thai and pop music. It's mostly Thais who go, and they all seem to be there to celebrate something and the whole place ends up dancing - at least in part because the staff insist on making you dance. Good if you're in a crowd, it's a truly Thai, if unexpected, experience. You'd need to book - it keeps going until about 2am.
Rama III- you'll probably need a cab. See www.tawandang1999.com/en/eng/detail.asp
Sawadee cap, must visit place is the 360 bar on the top floor of the Millennium Hilton. Great view and see the sunset. Make sure you be there around 17.30 hr, have a cocktail and enjoy the view of Bangkok and Chaopraya river.
After this have dinner at Spasso in the Grand Hyatt in Erawan. At 10 pm the live band starts, so if you are already in, you do not have to pay the cover charge of Baht 650.
Also try the lunch buffet at the Four Seasons Hotel and dinner Buffet at Novotel at Siam Square. The food and desserts are out of this world. Buffet at the Four Seasons is about 600 baht and at Novotel 650. But it's worth it. If you are looking for good DJ music than QBAR is your place.
Anyway Bangkok is a very polluted city but you can enjoy yourself very much. Watch out for the Tuk tuk seafood and jewelry scam and beware that if everybody is trying to making a living and tourists are part of it.
Four Seasons: Poenchit Road
Grand Hyatt: Poenchit Road
Novotel: Siam Square
Qbar: Sukhumvit
Looking for some cheap clothes, and can't be bothered to haggle in the markets? Or perhaps you need to stock up on toiletries for your trip, or you need baby supplies - for all of these reasons you might want to join the locals and head for the nearest hypermarket. Tesco have a major presence in Bangkok, but for most tourists the best located hypermarket is the Big C store on Ratchadamri Road, right opposite the Central World Plaza mall. As well as the main store, there is an excellent food court and a multiplex cinema in the building. Open 9am until 11pm daily.
Walk up from Chit Lom Skytrain station;
www.bigc.co.th/en/index.asp
For excellent food at the airport, follow the example of the airline staff. If you make your way out towards the train station on the other side of the main road, you should see some street stalls tucked in by the road. Here you can find excellent food and drink at a fraction of airport prices.
And if you ever have a day to kill before an evening flight why not take a short day trip to Ayuthaya from Don Muang by train.
This inviting restaurant/art gallery is certainly a touch of class. Walking through the courtyard you are met with modern art, clean architectural lines and a warm welcome.
Prior to polishing off exquisite oysters with chilli dip, stylish leather sofas on the second floor terrace beckoned; aperitif bliss. The grilled fish main and chocolate mousse desert went down well to boot.
Friendly service and an impressive wine list sold this backstreet gem. Not a place to rush or be rushed.
Three courses with wine for two: approx £30-50.
1/6 Soi Pipat 2, off Convent Road
Silom
Bangkok
10500
Skytrain Stn: Sala Daeng
+66 02 238 0931
If you want to get away from tourist zones, take a longtail boat up the canal to Ramkhamhaeng.
It's a major university and the streets around it are thronged with market stalls for great food and 'alternative' goodies.
There are a few cafe/bars with live music and the students will be keen to practise their English on you!
The Thais like to say that the best food in Thailand is on the street. Many visitors to Bangkok stick to hotels and guesthouses for their meals and neglect the most delicious, not to mention cheapest, food around - street food.
If you pass a street stall and see lots of Thai people tucking in, it probably means there's something delicious getting served up, so get involved.
Don't be worried that you can't speak Thai - just point at what looks good and your friendly Thai server will be more than happy to oblige.
I can particularly recommend laap (north-eastern spicy minced meat salad), khao man gai (boiled chicken served with spicy sauce and rice) and large roasted salt fish.
On the street, anywhere in Bangkok
A lot of people spend their time on Khao San road but it is not a true representation of Bangkok. Pick up a local free listings magazine and try some of the bars the Thais go to. There are plenty of nice restaurants and bars around Silom and Sukhumvit roads.
BTS Saladeng for Silom or BTS Nana, Asok or Phrom Phong for Sukhumvit.
When you are in Bangkok and happen to be walking in Chinatown in the evening, do have a cheap and sumptuous seafood dinner at either of the cheap Chinese-Thai seafood restaurants on this side street (see directions below) off Yaowarat Road.
Walk down Yaowarat Road away from Hualamphong train station. The seafood restaurants are found on the entrance to a side street on the right.
An oasis of calm just off the Sukhumvit Road and minutes from a monorail station where you can hop onto the Skytrain and glide effortlessly above ground level chaos towards the mighty Chao Phraya River
before boarding one of the many river ferries to take you to the sights.
From the hotel's pool and breezy restaurant/bar on the seventh floor you get a sense of what Bangkok is about.
It is set in a garden of peace and tranquillity, shadowed by cloud-touching skyscrapers, lavish Buddhist
temples and gleaming shopping malls. It seems to float above the traffic jams, the crush of people and foodstalls below, but is high enough not to be veiled in fumes.
Arriving straight off an overnight flight the delightful reception staff, face cloths and fruit punch are a refreshing welcome to the country.
The supermarket food bar directly opposite the hotel can be thoroughly recommended and watching your steaming
sweet and sour dish being prepared makes it all the more tasty.
For dessert take a walk around the fruit section and gawp in wonderment at the shapes and colours of the tropical produce. Then select a “pick and mix™” bag of the most exotic and outrageous stuff you see - cheap and healthy.
2 Soi 5 Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok 10110; www.amari.com/boulevard; Tel: 66 (0) 2255-2930
A club and restaurant known to many passing through the Thai capital and which has spawned a number of offspring trying to replicate its style.
Bed offers horizontal dining described by one of its DJs, Heron White, as "Kubrick's Korova Milk Bar meets a triclinium banquet with a sprinkling of Edinburgh Fringe theatre staffed by hostesses from 2001's Space Station V."
What was most significant to me was the detail put into the performance art and video projections, including a reworking of the soundtrack to Henri-Georges Clouzot's film on Picasso. Perfect accompaniment for the palette.
26 Sukhumvit 11 Wattana, Bangkok; www.bedsupperclub.com; Tel: 0066 (0)2 6513537; Nearest Skytrain: Nana station
Step off Soi 11 and onto the set of a Bond movie; a huge white room where the most gorgeous women you've ever seen descend staircases to furnish you with cocktails. Except they're not women at all, they're ladyboys.
This space-age building also contains a less sedate, but more conventional, club area. The usual smattering of sleazy westerners remind you you're in Bangkok, but it's all about a thousand light years from the Khao San Road. A world-class bar.
26 Soi Sukhumvit 11; www.bedsupperclub.com
Just a few blocks from the Blackpool-esque atmosphere of the Khao San Road, is the Phra Arthit Road. It has a variety of eateries where locals still go and a park with a sala at the end, by the little fort, which is a fantastic vantage point at night to watch the brightly lit riverboats and the smooching lovers. You'll even see aerobics at 6pm, but don't forget to stand for the national anthem. A haven.
Phra Arthit Road, Bangalamphu
There's a great selection of restaurants here; Vietnamese, Japanese, Isaan (north-eastern Thai food), Western at Tee Sud Isaan (if you don't get insulted by Doug the drunken American co-owner) and a good quality (if a touch pricey) Thai restaurant called Baan Ajarn's at the lower end of the street. You can also find some reasonably priced hotels/apartments down the street.
Get off the Skytrain at Victory Monument and walk away from the monument, it's the first left.
The newest of Bangkok’s night markets, Suan Lum not only offers the usual fare of fake designer goods, Thai silk scarves and incense sets, but also small shops selling arts and crafts from local designers and artists. The pottery and paintings are particularly worth a look.There is also a large food court and beer garden featuring live music (the Thai equivalent of Busted when we were there) and – more bizarrely – reruns of Premiership football matches from 2002 on a big screen. In the beer garden either go to the bars or look for the waiters selling Chang or Tiger beer, which are at fairly reasonable prices (50 to 100 Baht, £0.70 to £1.40 per bottle). Otherwise you may be offered western imported beer at an exorbitant price (Erdinger and Heineken for the equivalent of about £5.00 per litre).
On the corner of Thanon Rama IV and Thanon WitthayuNearest Metro stop - Lumphini Nearest Skytrain - Silom, then walkOpen 3.00pm-midnight
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