Bangkok: Chaos, Temples, and the World's Cheapest Pad Thai

Bangkok guide 2026: Grand Palace, Wat Pho, Chatuchak, Songkran, Loy Krathong. Best tours, hotels and where to eat pad thai for €1.50.

I went to Bangkok with a list of twenty-two restaurants. I reviewed it on the plane. I reviewed it again in the taxi from Suvarnabhumi, with the heat and the motorway traffic forming the perfect backdrop for reading pad thai reviews. By the time I reached the hotel the list was organised by neighbourhood, with opening times and a personal priority system I won't share because it is probably alarming.

The list survived until the second day, when a tuk-tuk driver dropped me in front of a mango sticky rice stall at the Or Tor Kor market that appeared in no app, no review site, and was — without exaggeration — the finest thing I'd eaten in Asia. At that moment I abandoned the list, the strategy and any pretension of organised gastronomic control, and let Bangkok take over.

The Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew are the spiritual heart of Thailand. The Emerald Buddha, carved from a single block of green jade, is the country's most venerated religious figure. — and wear long trousers or a skirt covering your knees. Bangkok is hot in every month of the year, but the dress code is part of respecting the place. If you arrive with bare shoulders, there's a counter that will lend you something. This is part of the protocol.

Wat Pho, a hundred metres from the Grand Palace, houses the Reclining Buddha: a 46-metre golden figure that occupies an entire temple and fits in no photograph regardless of how hard you try. It's also the historical origin of Thai massage, and the complex has a massage school where you can end your visit with a two-hour massage at a price that would be unbelievable in Europe.

Chatuchak is the world's largest weekend market: 15,000 stalls across 27 hectares selling everything from Burmese antiques to street food from across Thailand. will save you from ending up in the reptile section without understanding how you got there. The food at Chatuchak is an excursion in itself: freshly fried pad thai, spiced pork skewers, freshly opened coconut water that in Bangkok in August is essentially medicine.

The Chao Phraya River is the city's historic highway. By boat you reach Wat Arun, whose ceramic and porcelain façade shines in the afternoon light in a way that justifies the river journey. with dinner included is the most memorable evening plan in the city, especially if you get a table on deck and the sky turns orange.

But what I remember most about Bangkok appears in none of the original twenty-two entries on my list. It's at the nameless stall in Yaowarat where the pad see ew cost eighty baht and the cook had been there longer than most restaurants in my city have been open. Bangkok teaches you that the world's best food needs no menu, no star and very often no chair.

Two things before you arrive: Bangkok's hotel wifi is surprisingly good in most places, but on public networks it pays to travel with — Thailand has restrictions on certain online services. And travelling to Thailand without insurance is unnecessarily optimistic: covers everything from medical assistance to cancellations and costs less than a night in a hostel.