Aaah, Thailand!… Whenever we spoke with fellow travelers, their eyes glowed when recalling their visit of the Land of Smiles. It felt like everybody spent at least some time in Thailand. I was quite right: Thailand features among the 10 most visited countries in the world, with 39 million tourists per year on average (France is still #1 though, cocorico – ranking here). I was a bit wary about the country falling victim to mass tourism; luckily, we are travelling off season, so we have been benefitting from Thailand expertise in tourism without the crowds.

Yes, travelling in the monsoon involves a lot of rainy evenings, but is that such a bad thing? Slip on your faithful flip-flops and your sexy raincoat, and hop in the train with us for…

…Thailand Part 1 – Along the Northern line:

• Bangkok, the metropolis
• Phitsanulok and our love at first sight (in the next article)
• Chiang Mai and the jungle (in the next article)

Note: as we stayed in Bangkok and in Phitsanulok twice, in our inbound and outbound journey, i compiled both stays together for ease of reading.

Before we start… Brief introduction on Thailand

One thing first: Thailand stands short for the Kingdom of Thailand, the country official name since 1939 (formerly known as Siam). The kingdom spreads on ~515,000 square kilometers, hosting ~70 million inhabitants. So the French population on a slightly smaller territory.

Officially speaking, Thailand is a “unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy”, which loosely translates into the alliance between the monarchy and whatever government is ruling at the time, “[ranging] from military dictatorship to electoral democracy”. Thai politics make for an interesting show: lovingly nicknamed the swing government, “Thailand has had 13 successful and nine unsuccessful coups in just over a century” (quoting the article Why Thailand has so many coups from CNBC).

The monarchy does stand still among this mayhem, the current Chakri dynasty being active since 1782 (Wikipedia, as always). Even for the ignorant foreigners that we are, you can hardly miss how important the King and Queen are: their pictures are displayed in every public place. When the loudspeakers at the train station blasted a traditional song at 8am and that everybody stand up for a minute, even us understood that they were paying respect to their King. On another occasion, we were waiting in our cinema seats for the movie to start (Inside Out 2 – a gem!), when a 3-min film praising the King was aired.

Thais are mostly Buddhists (90% according to Wikipedia), with their unique take on it. Buddhism is all about getting past the feelings and sensations; the Thai preferred to combine it with their previous animist beliefs, and blended it into their everyday life, with their love of food and superstitions. Most of houses are guarded by the same spirit houses that we saw in Cambodia (our article here!), and that I love. Beside the concept, I am fond of the offerings: alongside the usual flowers, spirits can find potato chips and sodas, already open and with a straw for their convenience. All the best to have a chill time, to hang around with your other spirited buddies.

Reaching Thailand by land has been so simple that it is not even worth going into details: we boarded a bus from Siem Reap (Cambodia), we arrived at the border, we showed our French passport and tada! Immediate exemption of visa for 30 days. Courtesy of a strong passport. Just thanks to the pure luck of being born French citizens, we can travel without visa at least a month in Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and many more countries. When we do need a visa, we can get it at the border or online. Unfair, you say?

Bangkok, the metropolis

After India, Nepal, Vietnam and Cambodia, entering into Bangkok feels like entering into a new era. Bangkok – or Krung Thep, a truncated version of its official name Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Parasit (I had to copy-paste it from Your Thai Guide) – does look impressive. With its skyscrapers, intricate road network, buzzing life, Bangkok never sleeps.

The capital city hosts 13% of the country population, up to 25% if you include as well the Metropolitan region (figures from Wikipedia). We had stayed until now in countries where tuktuks and motorbikes ruled towns – in Bangkok, the cars have taken over, resulting in massive traffic jams. When we compare it with Hanoi and its swarms of motorbikes, shifting cars with motorbikes appears as an efficient way to decongest a major city. There is public transportation in Bangkok, though; unfortunately, our first accommodation turned out to be way out of the center, so we have experienced first hand being stuck in traffic. Taxi drivers are so much used to it, that many watch series on their phones while they wait to turn on their engines.

Dimi and I have always favored public transportation when we could, so we had to try the beloved Bangkok subway lines. At this point of our travel, I consider visiting subways as a part of the city visit, like we did in New Delhi (article here!).

• Every station features one of Thailand’s national treasures: food. One thing is for certain, you will never die of hunger in the Thai country: at the subway station or in the streets, you will find restaurants or snacks every 20 meters. One of the main reasons why we love Thailand, Vietnam and India.
• Chips are provided instead of one-use cards. This sounds silly, but they must be more long-lasting than paper cards, and do not require cutting trees. A great improvement, before the mobile tickets!
• The stations are spotless (note: my reference will always be the Parisian metro and its delightful urine smell, so I take it that my standards might be low). I understand why: a guard forced my raincoat into a plastic bag, to avoid it from dripping all over the floor.
• People are orderly waiting for their turns to board in, even queueing in line in rush hours. Blogs warned us against rush hours, but it is so much more relax than boarding a full-to-the-brim RER A in Paris in the middle of summer.

Our experience with buses is a little less fortunate. We are the ones to blame, though: as the morons we were, we waited for 30min for a bus… Which drove right past us, because we no longer paid attention to the road after 20min. Oopsie. We set the record straight during our second stay, though, because we could not dwell on a failure. You should have seen our proud grims when we finally boarded the bus!

Capital of culture

Despite our love for its subway, Bangkok is far more famous for the Wat Pho and the biggest collection of Buddhas in Thailand, featuring the gigantic Reclining Buddha. The massive temple complex is attributed to King Rama I, who built it on the site of a previous temple, and King Rama III, who continued enhancing it. The buildings are not that ancient, as they date back to the XIXth-XXth centuries; their bright colors and the concentration of monuments on a relatively restricted space make for an incredible sight, nonetheless.

Wat Pho hosts as well one of the oldest schools of Thai massages. Much more than wellbeing, Thai massage is an art, which dates back to the doctor who accompanied Buddha (which Buddha, you might ask? No idea), and is now part of the UNESCO intangible heritage. We likely have all heard about people walking on you – yes, but not only, as they can use hammers, hot rocks or just their hands, elbows and legs to help you relieve your body from its torments. Dimdim and I had to experience it.

We are softies at heart, and we chose the “medium” strength. Well, it was plenty enough for us! As advertised, our masseuses used their entire bodies to twist us, roll us, stretch us, crack us. You clench your teeth at times, but no one can say that it is a superficial treatment! My two-cents advice: don’t go for the cheap massage places, where you will have no intimacy. We paid 20 euros for a 1-hour massage at the luxurious Loft Thai Spa. Can you imagine those rates in Europe?…

Another top monument in Bangkok: the flamboyant Grand Palace. Our organization now looser than ever, we were close to miss visiting it, as it closed pretty early. Dimitri, who got a little bit too relaxed with the outfit rules since he was told that “shorts were OK for men [not for women]”, was stopped at the entrance and was forced to buy the very well-known elephant pants. We finally understood why all the tourists seemed to wear the same pair of pants across Bangkok – quite a profitable income for the Grand Palace. These pants would have made a nice souvenir from Thailand, too bad that Dimdim ripped them within 20min because he was “squatting” (why? We will never know).

Now properly dressed, we set off to explore the Grand Palace, the residence of the Kings of Siam / Thailand since 1782. This place is incredible: it seems like the architects goal was to centralize as many monuments as possible at one place. So much that we felt like in a theme park at times. When we saw that there was a free guided tour offered by the Palace, we were thrilled to learn more. After 5min of failing to understand the elderly guide, who spoke with her eyes closed, a soft voice and a thick accent, we escaped and settled on our own. Between several temples, including one hosting the revered Emerald Buddha (no picture allowed), the palace itself, a miniature copy of Angkor, there is plenty to see.

At the very end of the visit, in the exhibition dedicated to the Queen Mother’s fashion style, our French selves glowed with pride when we noticed that the Queen was dressed by Pierre Balmain. At least, until the French Couture started to drift too streetwear for her taste, leading Her Majesty to leave them in the 90s for local artists.

Other random thoughts

Thailand is indeed known for its silk, among other local arts. One of those might be quite unexpected for Westerners: counterfeiting. Along with their Chinese and Vietnamese neighbors, Thailand craftspersons have perfected the art of copying patterns and designs from reknown luxury brands. For a change, Dimdim and I went for a date in one of Bangkok’s massive malls, MBK Center. Malls in Asia are an institution: you can find everything from clothing stores to passport renewal offices, hair dressers, cinemas, restaurants, arcades and plenty more. One thing we surely did not expect to find indoors was floors of stalls selling Gucci, Chanel, Hugo Boss and all their friends for 5 euros and less. Counterfeiting has become so normal that true locals master differentiating good copies apart from the bad ones.

You might notice that I have not mentioned the party life in Bangkok: strolling through Khao San two times was enough for us. The street, which became famous in the 80s with its cheap accommodations for backpackers, is now a mass of go-go dancers bars, blasting commercial music. An army of touts tried to charm us into trying their cocktails, even stroking our arms lasciviously as we passed by. I won’t dwelve into too much details, but the sex trade (including sex tourism but not only) is still very present in modern Thailand, accounting for 10 percent of the GDP according to some estimates (retrieved from Wikipedia, in line with data that I found in other sources). I am all for owning your own body, but I can’t believe that such a significant part of the population would still go for it if they really had a choice. By the way, prostitution is still illegal in Thailand, even if some bills were in the making in recent years to adapt the law so that it fits reality.

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Overall, we stayed something like 7 days in Bangkok, before and after taking the train to the North of Thailand. With all its temples, the flower market, Chinatown and its genuine Chinese food, the malls and the enthusiast customers wearing cosplays, the oh so many food options, we could have stayed a week more, easy.

The North and its jungles were calling for us, nonetheless – they did not disappoint, as you will read in our next article!