Overlooked fun in/near Bangkok? Please don't say khao san road!

February 6, 2008 10:48 AM

Does anyone have any funtime suggestions for hanging out in Bangkok? I will be visiting family in Bangkok for a few weeks this spring. This will be my third trip to bkk. I don't really like going to bars and I think I've done most of the straight-up sightseeing/shopping that I care to do. I have a nagging feeling that I'm forgetting/missing out on something!

I'll be there for two weeks. In the past, I've taken cooking classes, shopped a lot, swam, gotten massages and spa treatments. As well as the grand palace, wat pho, ayuttaya, the malls/night markets, snake farm, panthip plaza.

I've looked at the previous questions tagged with Bangkok, but they seem to be mostly the stuff I've already done. Someone mentioned that most people aren't going to hunt down the more obscure restaurants, but will probably go to the most convenient place. I know that's true, and if anyone has had an awesome experience that happens to be somewhat out of the way, I'd love to hear it!

I'd like to explore chinatown and the indian neighborhood, but I kind of don't know where to begin. Also, has anyone ever taken a bicycle tour? It sounds harrowing, but fun. Is $US30 a normal price for this sort of thing?

If it helps, I'll be staying close to the rachadamri bts station.

Thanks everybody!
I'm asking for a friend, but writing in the first person is so much easier...

posted by clockwork to travel & transportation (12 comments total)

Lumphini Park at 7 am to see the Tai Chi, the most peaceful experience ever?
posted by Wilder at 11:15 AM on February 6, 2008

Blue Elephant Cooking School
posted by kdern at 11:46 AM on February 6, 2008

You can spend days in the chinese market, walking through covered alleys. Also, if your friend wants to leave town, Ko Samet is only a couple hours away. You can't beat staying at Naga a couple of days and get to know every part of the island!
posted by ddaavviidd at 12:11 PM on February 6, 2008

Walk around all day and then get a foot massages on Sumkumvit Road. Oh and Sirocco at State Tower. That place is dope.
posted by kaizen at 12:21 PM on February 6, 2008

Breakfast / Brunch at the Intercontinental is about $30 but has the most ridiculous variety of quality food you could ask for.

Go to a strip bar. The show is not sexy at all but more about what strange things a vagina can shoot out or hold inside. Pretty standard to get ripped off with strange items padding your bill.

Pretty standard tourist thing but you didn't mention if you did a boat tour or not. The boats leave from near the palace.

Go shoot guns at a firing range. Not that special to BKK but will "kill" some time.

The real adventure lies outside Bangkok. Big cities have only so much stuff that caters to the show up, pay something and experience it. Like everywhere, the people are the real treat of travelling. Try and be a friend to a regular Thai (non-sex trade worker) and take them out for dinner. That would be nice.
posted by FastGorilla at 12:49 PM on February 6, 2008

IF you have the dinero catch a flight out of the Bangkok Airport and spend a couple of days in Chang Mai.
posted by konolia at 1:53 PM on February 6, 2008

seconding Chiang Mai, though the train is a fine way to get there. Very different to BKK, which I really didn't like much at all.
posted by 5MeoCMP at 5:15 PM on February 6, 2008

There's some place I found online that offers segway tours around Bangkok. Probably can just google those two words.

If you're not completely intent on staying in Bangkokg the whole time, get out and see some villages, or go SCUBA diving. Koh Tao is an overnight bus ride away and has some superb diving.
posted by Jhoosier at 8:40 PM on February 6, 2008

2nding the tai chi in the park...its on saturday mornings & pretty surreal
(maybe especially due to lack of sleep on overnight bus).

one of my favorite restaurants is Le Lys...yummy food in an old-fashioned house with great yard in the middle of big, modern buildings. run by a sweet woman, so its kind of like being at your thai gramma's house.
posted by hazel at 10:55 PM on February 6, 2008

Second on the overnight train ride to Chiang Mai. And plan on spending a couple of days in the other Thailand.
posted by ptm at 12:27 AM on February 7, 2008

more obscure restaurants: I wouldn't say it's obscure anymore now that I can find it on the web (though I never saw another foreigner in it, in 4 visits) but Soi Polo basically serves two things: whole fried chicken, and half fried chicken. Deep fried, covered in deep fried garlic and the nicest salty seasoning. Far side of Lumphini park from the Skytrain. A whole chicken should run you $4-6.

Between the Skytrain and Soi Polo is a little chain bakery that sells basically cinnamon coffee rolls (only). I can't think of the name but you'll know it by the block-long line outside of it.

And did you go to the medical and forensics museum yet?? That place is amazing. Don't eat lunch beforehand if you have sensitive stomach. The museum is on the west side of the river in the northern part of the city, but is findable by internet.
posted by whatzit at 4:13 AM on February 7, 2008

whatzit gets a best answer for being closest to the intent of the question. Thanks all!
posted by clockwork at 11:57 AM on February 12, 2008