ROUGH GUIDES THE ROUGH GUIDE to Bangkok BANGKOK N I H T O DUSIT AY EXP Y THANON L RE O SSWA H PHR 5 A H A PINKL P Y N A PRESSW O O N A EX H T Thonburi Democracy Station Monument 2 THAN BANGLAMPHU ON PHE 1 TC BAMRUNG MU HABURI C ANG h AI H 4 a T o HANO CHAROEN KRUNG N RA (N Hualamphong MA I EW RAYAT P R YA OAD) Station T h PAHURAT OW HANON A PL r RA OENCHI THA a T T SU 3 SIAM NON NON PH KH y a SQUARE U CHINATOWN C M HA H VIT R T i v A E e R r X O P E N R 6 K E R U S N S G THAN DOWNTOWN W A ( ON RAMABANGKOK IV N Y E W M R LO O N SI A ANO D TH ) 0 1 km TAKSIN BRI DGE 1 Ratanakosin 3 Chinatown and Pahurat 5 Dusit 2 Banglamphu and the 4 Thonburi 6 Downtown Bangkok Democracy Monument area About this book Rough Guides are designed to be good to read and easy to use. The book is divided into the following sections and you should be able to find whatever you need in one of them. The colour section is designed to give you a feel for Bangkok, suggesting when to go and what not to miss, and includes a full list of contents. Then comes basics, for pre-departure information and other practicalities. The city chapters cover each area of Bangkok in depth, giving comprehensive accounts of all the attractions plus excursions further afield, while the listings section gives you the lowdown on accommodation, eating, shopping and more. Contexts fills you in on history, religion, art and architecture, and books, while individual colour sections introduce Bangkok’s waterways and Thai cuisine, and language gives you an extensive menu reader and enough Thai to get by. Next comes the small print, including details of how to send in updates and corrections, and a comprehensive index. Colour maps covering the city can be found at the back of the book. This fifth edition published March 2010. The publishers and authors have done their best to ensure the accuracy and currency of all the information in The Rough Guide to Bangkok, however, they can accept no responsibility for any loss, injury, or inconvenience sustained by any traveller as a result of information or advice contained in the guide. The Rough Guide to Bangkok written and researched by Paul Gray and Lucy Ridout www.roughguides.com | Contents CONTENTS H | Colour section 1 Nightlife............................. 186 I Gay and lesbian Bangkok Introduction ............................... 4 .........................................192 What to see................................ 5 J Entertainment.................... 195 When to go ................................8 K Mind and body ..................200 Things not to miss ................... 10 L Shopping ..........................203 M Kids’ Bangkok ...................213 Basics 17 Contexts 215 Getting there ............................19 Visas ........................................ 24 History ................................... 217 Arrival ...................................... 26 Religion: Thai Buddhism ........227 Orientation ............................... 29 Art and architecture ............... 233 City transport ...........................30 Books .................................... 240 Information and maps ..............36 Health ...................................... 37 Language 245 The media ................................39 Pronunciation .........................247 Festivals................................... 40 General words and phrases ...248 Crime, safety and the law ........ 42 Food and drink ...................... 252 Culture and etiquette ............... 45 Travel essentials ...................... 48 Travel store 257 The City 55 1 Ratanakosin ........................57 Small print & Index 261 2 Banglamphu and the Democracy Monument area ...........................................74 Bangkok by Boat colour section 3 Chinatown and Pahurat....... 85 following p.80 4 Thonburi .............................. 92 5 Dusit ................................. 100 6 Downtown Bangkok ..........105 7 Chatuchak and the Thai Cuisine colour outskirts ............................122 section following p.176 8 Excursions from Bangkok ...129 Jim Listings 157 Thompson’s House S TH Colour maps following ANON PLOEN 9 National CHIT Accommodation ................159 Stadium p.272 G Eating ................................ 173 3 Tuk-tuk driver Statues at the Grand Palace | INTRODUCTION Introduction to | WHAT TO SEE | WHEN TO GO SEE | WHEN TO TO | WHAT Bangkok The headlong pace and flawed modernity of Bangkok match few people’s visions of the capital of exotic Siam. Spiked with scores of high-rise buildings of concrete and glass, it’s a vast flatness which holds a population of at least nine million, and feels even bigger. But under the shadow of the skyscrapers you’ll find a heady mix of chaos and refinement, of frenetic markets and hushed golden temples, of early-morning alms-giving ceremonies and ultra-hip designer boutiques. Bangkok is a relatively young capital, estab- lished in 1782 after the Burmese sacked Ayutthaya, the former capital. A temporary base was set up on the western bank of the Chao Phraya River, in what is now Thonburi, before work started on the more defensible east bank, where the first king of the new dynasty, Rama I, built his fabulously ornate www.roughguides.com palace within a protective ring of canals. Around the temples and palaces of this “royal island”, there spread an amphibious city of shops and houses built on bamboo rafts moored on the river and canals. Ever since its foundation, but with breakneck acceleration in recent years, Bangkok has attracted internal migration from all over Thailand, pushing the city’s boundaries ever outwards in an explosion of modernization that has seen the canals on the east side of the river concreted over and left the city without an obvious centre. The capital now sprawls over 330 square kilometres and, with a population forty times that of the second city, 4 Chiang Mai, and four-fifths of the nation’s automobiles, it’s far and away the country’s dominant city. In the make-up of its population, however, ̆ Thanon Sukhumvit at sunset | INTRODUCTION | WHAT TO SEE TO WHAT | WHEN TO GO | WHEN TO Bangkok bucks world trends, with over half of its inhabitants under thirty, so helping to consolidate its position as one of Asia’s liveliest and most fashionable cities. What to see ama I named his royal island Ratanakosin, and it remains the city’s spiritual heart, not to mention its culturally most rewarding quarter. No visit to the capital would be complete without seeing the star Rattractions here – if necessary, the dazzling ostentation of Wat Phra Kaeo and the Grand Palace, lively and grandiose Wat Pho and the National Museum’s hoard of exquisite works of art can all be crammed into a single action-packed day. www.roughguides.com One of the other great pleasures of the city is a ride on its remaining water- ways; the majestic Chao Phraya River is served by frequent ferries and longtail boats, and is the backbone of a network of canals, floating markets and waterside temples – including the striking five-toweredWat Arun – that remains funda- mentally intact in the west-bank Thonburi district. Inevitably the waterways have earned Bangkok the title of “Venice of the East”, a tag that seems all too apt when you’re wading through flooded streets in the rainy season. Bangkok began to assume its modern guise at the end of the nineteenth 5 century, when the forward-looking Rama V relocated the royal family to a neighbourhood north of Ratanakosin called Dusit. Here he commissioned grand European-style boulevards, built the new Chitrlada Palace (still | INTRODUCTION used by the royal family today), had his charming, teakwood Vimanmek Palace reconstructed nearby, and capped it all with the erection of a sumptuous new temple, Wat Benjamabophit, built from Italian marble. When political modernization followed in 1932, Dusit was the obvious choice of home for Thailand’s new parliament, which now sits in Parlia- ment House. | WHAT TO SEE TO WHAT Bangkok’s commercial heart lies to the southeast of Dusit, where sleek glass towers and cool marble malls lend an air of energy and big-city drama to the districts of Silom, Siam Square and Sukhumvit. These areas shelter a few noteworthy tourist sights, too, best of which is Jim Thompson’s House, a small, personal museum of Thai design. | WHEN TO GO | WHEN TO Shopping downtown varies from touristic outlets selling silks and handicrafts to international fashion emporia and boutiques showcasing Thailand’s increasingly desirable home-grown contemporary designs. For livelier scenes, explore the dark alleys of the bazaars in Chinatown or the Indian district, Pahurat, or head out to the enormous, open-air Chatuchak Weekend Market. Similarly, the city offers wildly varied entertainment, ranging from traditional dancing and the orchestrated bedlam of Thai boxing, through hip bars and clubs both downtown and in the backpackers’ enclave of Banglamphu, to the farang-only sex bars of the notorious Patpong district. North and west of the city, the unwieldy urban mass of Greater Bangkok peters out into the vast, well-watered central plains, a region that for ̄ Wat Phra Kaeo Wat www.roughguides.com 6 ̆ Chinatown stall, Wat Mangkon Kamalawat Chinatown stall, Wat | INTRODUCTION | WHAT TO SEE TO WHAT | WHEN TO GO | WHEN TO centuries has grown the bulk of the nation’s food. The atmospheric Rat or raja? ruins of Thailand’s fourteenth- There’s no standard system century capital Ayutthaya lie of transliterating Thai script here, ninety minutes’ train ride into Roman, so you’re sure to find that the Thai words in this from Bangkok and, together with book don’t always match the the ornate palace at nearby Bang versions you’ll see elsewhere. Pa-In, make a rewarding excur- Maps and street signs are the sion from the modern metropolis. biggest sources of confusion, Further west, the massive stupa at so we’ve generally gone for Nakhon Pathom and the floating the transliteration that’s most common on the spot; where markets of Damnoen Saduak are it’s a toss-up between two also easily manageable as a day-trip, equally popular versions, we’ve and combine well with a visit to used the one that helps best the historic town of Phetchaburi, with pronunciation.