SEA 2023 (5/17) – Bangkok: Itinerary 1

Day 1

The first leg of our EVA flight landed bright and early in Taiwan, where we enjoyed a very nice lounge and ate a full day’s worth of calories. I didn’t even like tea eggs! And ate two!

Another flight later, we arrived at Bangkok just before noon. Despite it being hours early, we checked in to our hotel and were treated like VIPs in the process. The mission for the rest of the day was to combat jetlag, so we forced ourselves to stay out of the hotel. The entire afternoon was spent in centralwOrld, a mall with nearly infinite food and coffee options.

First snack in Bangkok included a watermelon smoothie

Then we took a BTS train to Petchaburi soi 10, a local market with street food stalls.

The first stall we came across had halal fried chicken. It seemed popular so we got a piece to share. It turned out so irresistible that we rushed to eat it while still burning hot. It burned my fingers, but was totally worth it.

The evening was a real struggle, but we powered through and didn’t sleep until the local bed time. We even made a stop at the hotel lounge’s happy hour and took a dip into the pool.

Approximately our 6th meal of the day, courtesy of lounge access

Day 2

The family unlocked a new expert traveler badge by all sleeping soundly past 6am, formally having zero jetlag while traveling to Asia. To celebrate, we ate our body weight at the impressive hotel breakfast, before continuing on to retracing Hong and I’s footsteps from our prior trip.

In the morning, we visited the Grand Palace and shared our first coconut.

Afterwards, we crossed the river to Wang Lang and ate lunch at two separate places. The first was super nostalgic: the noodle shop that we randomly stumbled upon and had our first taste of boat noodles. The interior furniture had been rearranged since our last visit, but the food remained incredible. The kids fell in love at the first bite, too.

Then we went a couple doors down and ordered a bunch of Thai staples… iced tea, pad kra pao, boat noodles, and som tam.

The papaya salad was so incredibly spicy but I couldn’t stop eating it.

With full stomachs, we sailed back down Chao Phraya River and spent a killer time at ICONSIAM, the excessively glamorous mall. We ate more, drank more coffee, and made our first major souvenir purchase.

To make room for dinner, we stopped by the hotel and killed some time at the pool.

Then we took an awesome tuk tuk ride to Yaowarat, where Hong had a plate of the crab curry that she had been craving five years for.

Of course, the day wouldn’t be complete without some yummy fruit before bed.

Day 3

After a full breakfast buffet at the hotel, we took a walk to Pratunam and immediately had a second meal at a famous chicken rice restaurant.

From there, we took a speed boat down the canal to Wat Saket. The Golden Mount was just how we remembered it – without shade and extremely hot. Taking a selfie in the blinding sun was a bit challenging.

Revisiting Wat Saket made it to our itinerary mainly because it was en route to meet a more important objective – the Jedi Cafe. Squeezed between a bunch of carpentry shops, this made-for-Instagram coffee shop seemed surreal. I thought it might be weird to take a long trip just for a cafe, so I saved it as a surprise for the family after that scorching temple visit.

After properly cooling down, we took a long walk to the nearest MRT station. The path was intentional: we checked out Raan Jay Fai and Thip Samai and swung by the Giant Swing. We did not expect to eat at either of those legendary restaurants, given their notorious wait time. Then we found both of them closed for the day, and some tourists there were super bummed out.

The neighborhood between the two famous temples was full of Buddhist supply stores. It was neat to walk by them and see all the statues and gigantic candles for sale.

Once reaching the MRT station, we hopped on a train toward the restaurant that I wanted more than the Michelin-starred Raan Jay Fai. Ung Jia Huad, the king of wok, was found beyond a bunch of adult entertainment establishments and weed dispensaries of Soi Cowboy. Despite having only two walls, this little eatery was dark in the middle of the day and filled with tear-inducing pepper smoke. When this uncle served us the most incredible pad kra pao and pad see ew, though, everyone agreed that it was worth the trek.

After lunch, we had more fun than expected at the nearby Terminal 21, a travel-themed mall. We brought a super cute fox cake back to the hotel, though it tasted as good as one would expect of a super cute cake.

Dinner was supposed to be at The One Ratchada, a large night market, but our Grab driver took a wrong turn into Jodd Fairs. We went with the flow and enjoyed the successor to the formerly famed train night market. Among other things, the kids and I got a chance to try the volcanic ribs.