Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand (Thai: ราชอาณาจักรไทย, RTGS: Ratcha Anachak Thai; [râːt.tɕʰā ʔāːnāːtɕàk tʰāj), formerly known as Siam (Thai: สยาม; RTGS: Sayam), is a country at the centre of the Indochina peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the west by the Andaman Sea and the southern extremity of Burma. Its maritime boundaries include Vietnam in the Gulf of Thailand to the southeast, and Indonesia and India on the Andaman Sea to the southwest.
My trip to Thailand was actually just a 36 hour layover in Bangkok en route to Nepal. It could have been a much shorter layover but I wanted the opportunity to explore the city.
We arrived in the very early in the morning after a long flight but wanted to get out and explore. The hotel gave us the typical tourist map along with what they considered the top spots to visit during our short visit. We hopped in their little shuttle boat to take us to the river bus stop and off we went to the Grand Palace.
Traveller Tip: A little but of caution is needed by tourists in Bangkok, there are plenty of people trying to redirect you to someplace else. We had a number of people that appeared to want to help us with direction but when they find out where you are going they would often say that is closed today and that we should go to [some other attraction], they even offer to get a tuk-tuk for us. The scam is that your original destination is open and the tuk-tuk they get you will take you to a pearl shop first. I am glad we didn’t fall for this trick. None of these people were pushy and once you said “no thanks” a couple of times then they would move on to the next target.
Logistics
This short trip was self organized, well, not really organized at all. The only thing done in advance was the hotel reservation at the Millennium Hilton Bangkok. This was an absolutely beautiful hotel and it didn’t hurt that I was a top tier member of their loyalty program.
I will caution people about getting a taxi from the Bangkok airport. There are many, many people in the airport that are willing to get a taxi for you but there are scams galore so try to get a rough idea of how much the taxi fee will be before you even land at the airport as that might save you some money. I think I paid about 5 times the price going from the airport to the hotel, than I did returning to the airport the next day. Now, it was still not that expensive but nobody likes to be taken, so I learned my lesson. 🙂
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