A Holiday in Bangkok – Where to Stay, What to Do

After an extremely pleasant experience I had on holiday in Bangkok, I feel obliged to let the world know of this wonderful place. What you will find here is a guide through the places we visited, accommodation we used, partying locations and food.

Accommodation

First of all, we stayed in the Ambassador Hotel, Soi 11, Bangkok and we made reservations via Booking.com. Our choice was bed and breakfast and this was perfect for us. The hotel itself is pretty good. Nothing fancy, but you get all you need: it is reasonably clean, the staff is pleasant and the people at the desk speak English well enough for trouble-free communication. The facilities also include a swimming pool and a gym and they were just perfect. Again, nothing lavish, but definitely more than enough for most people.

Streets in Bangkok

Food

As I have already said, we opted for bed and breakfast. The breakfast is a buffet table so there is not much to say – you get enough food, it is well prepared and everything seems clean. Outside the hotel, the food choices become wider and questionable. Eating in restaurants is a safe bet, but it is the streets where you can surprise your palate with the best tastes. Loads of street sellers offer fantastic dishes for significantly lower prices, compared to the ones in the restaurants. However, standards of hygiene tend to vary so be careful. The best idea would be to see which sellers are considered favourites among the natives. So, wherever you see a bunch of Thai people feasting, this is the place where you should be.

Tom Yum Soup and Seafood Plate

As for the food itself, it is simply amazing. I can’t really choose what to recommend from all of the dishes we loved there, so I’ll just name the first two, since they were my introduction to the cuisine and they made me much more open to all the other dishes: the Tom Yum soup and the Pad Thai, the latter being named the fifth best food in the world in a CNN poll. We tried it several times and reached the general consensus that it is actually tastier from the street stalls than in restaurants.

Oh, and one more thing. If you are not into spicy food, make sure you let the cooks know that, since the food can be incredibly spicy.

Partying

Well, it’s a holiday, right. If you have seen the Hangover 2, you should know that a part of it was filmed in Bangkok in the Soi Cowboy street. And, knowing that the guys in the film were there for unleashed partying, it was the perfect place. Any kind of fun you are after, you can find there. We’ll leave it at that. When you are having a break from the Soi Cowboy, you should have a drink in the Sky Bar, since this is the best place for a beautiful panorama view of the city, having in mind that it is actually at the 64th floor of a skyscraper. Mind you, there is a dress code, so you should dress smart or rent the suitable clothes at the entrance. Most people there have cocktails but the prices are less than friendly, much unlike mister Dang, an incredibly friendly taxi driver often found in front of this place. His English is great and his advice was invaluable for us. A very helpful and pleasant guy. After a lot of fun, a relaxing massage was a real refreshment for us. I only wish I’d had one every day, which I didn’t because we only tried it the day before we were supposed to head back home.

View from SkyBar

Of course there are numerous cultural sights you might want to visit. We have heard a lot about them from other tourists and mister Dang, but this trip was about partying for us. I definitely plan to visit Bangkok again and have a culture-oriented holiday.

Still, it’ll have to wait, because I have already booked a holiday package on Tahiti for my next trip.