"drxym's new Bangkok page" a Bangkok Travel Page by drxym

I have been to Bangkok twice now, once in 1999 and again 2002. What a difference!

When I first travelled the roads were clogged, the place stunk, your shirt stuck to your back due to the awful heat and humidity, and as a pedestrian you were treated like dirt with dreadful pavements and few crossings most of which were overhead walkways requiring lots of climbing to get up and over. Getting from A to B meant walking in unbearable heat or sitting in a traffic jam in a cab for an hour. At the end of my 3 days I had a very bad impression of the place to say the least.

In 2002 I visited again. Nothing had changed except for one thing - the skytrain! We wisely chose a hotel close to a station and it completely transformed our stay. Travelling is extremely cheap, convenient and comfortable (air conditioning!). If you visit you absolutely must consider being close to a station. Places such as Siam are surrounded by shopping malls and there are interesting things to see and do practically at every station. Traffic on the roads is still as bad as before, but hopefully you won't need to worry about that if you use the skytrain.

Good places to visit are the World Trade Center, Pantip Plaza (for computer stuff and software), MBK centre for phone equipment and shopping and Tesco Lotus supermarket. Patpong has a night market but it charges "tourist prices" and you'll probably find better value in other markets and Tesco Lotus where comparable items are often a third what you'll be told in a market. There is a massive (and I mean MASSIVE) market in Chatchuchak park on a weekend, right next to Mo Chit station.

A good place for night life, food and some markets is Sukhumvhit Road where you'll find a little of everything without the oppresive intensity of Patpong.

The moral of shopping in markets is to do your homework and assume something is only worth half or less of the initial quoted price.

Bangkok will soon have a subway system as well which will make travelling even easier yet. For some reason there is little integration between the different forms of transport. For example, the Mo chit bus station is at least a mile away from the Skytrain and the subway stations are not exactly close to their skytrain counterparts either. It's pretty stupid if you ask me.

An excellent site on Bangkok is here - www.bangkokbob.net