Thailand: Bangkok and Pattaya, a major tourist hub in SE Asia

Bangkok is a city of 10M inhabitants all living in a multi-layer city full of shopping malls, but plagued by a heavy and humid atmosphere, floods and pollution.

Indeed, in the city center, we could clearly see the multiple layers of cement dividing traffic, walkways, and train rails, a well laid out Jenga, like how we imagine cities of the future would look like, minus the flying cars.

Fun fact: Thai uses the Buddhist Era calendar year which considers Year 0 the year Buddha attained Enlightenment, 543 years before our Common Era calendar year. Thais are already in 2566 BE, which can be disconcerting when trying to buy train tickets 🤪 - they are really in the future!

In addition, Thai new year in the Buddhist Era calendar is on April 13 CE... Confused???

To escape from the heat, we went to the numerous temples of capitalism: the shopping malls! One of them is new:

Iconsiam, a new gigantic mall where we found a fancy indoor market and a magical view of the Chao Phraya river, the river that crosses Bangkok. This shopping mall can be accessed through a complimentary shuttle boat from BTS station S6.

We also went to see the traditional temples of Bangkok and experienced the most scenic way to access them: by boat on the Chao Phraya river. There are tourist boats for 30 THB per trip, but we took the public boats which can cost up to 20 THB and allow you to go further.

From the boat, we could see how much the city is contrasted: a lot of old boats spitting black smoke ran next to brand new river cruise boats, old temples or houses shared the riverbank with skyscrapers, and there was a lot of trash in the water that clashed with the pristine shopping malls.

During the boat ride, we passed one of the major sites in Bangkok, Wat Arun with its 79m high spire, that lies very close to the river itself.

A few stops after, we arrived at the Royal Palace and Wat Pho (where you can visit one of the longest reclining Buddha in the world). We arrived too late to visit them though, so we could only see them from above their high walls.

The next few days, we went to some of the other touristic places of this vast city:

We went to visit the city's biggest Buddha at Wat Paknam Phasi Charoen in the south of the city. Completed only in 2020, this golden statue of a seated Buddha is 69m tall and 40m wide. Very impressive!

We also went to see a dragon tower where we could walk inside a real size dragon (or at least what we would imagine it to be) that resembles the one in the anime Dragon Ball. The temple is Wat SamPhran, 20km west of Bangkok.

And finally, as we needed to do some shopping, we went to a weekend market, the Chatuchak market, in the north of the city, a real maze of stalls selling everything you can imagine at reasonable prices.

Since our next stop, Japan, will be significantly colder, we decided to spend the last few days enjoying the sun and warm weather in Pattaya city.

Pattaya city, 2h southeast of Bangkok, is known for its beach and its nightlife, especially the Ladyboys. We took a crowded bus to Pattaya from Ekkamai station, Bangkok's east bus station, for 131 THB.

The city is bustling and busy with people, traffic, shops and hotels. But also an excessive amount of massage parlors (including body to body massage ☺️) and several places featuring the Ladyboys.

The beach there was not a very pleasant one, as it had a lot of mini broken shells and was quite dirty. In addition to that, 75% of the bay is used for nautical sports, which means a lot of boats are very close to the shore, limiting the space to swim. Luckily, we had a pool at the hotel 😁

We continued our visit of the city by going to the Pattaya viewpoint and to see the Big Buddha, only 18m high but located on top of a hill.

Another landmark (I know "landmark" is a little bit strong but I genuinely enjoyed the place) is the Terminal 21 shopping mall.

This mall has been designed to be as close to an airport as a shopping mall can be.

There was a real size airplane that looked like it was taking off! A private jet, a real size lady with her luggage, a luggage belt and so many other airport elements.

Each floor of the mall was dedicated to a specific city/country in the world, with small or big details that make you believe you are actually in one of them, like a 4-storey Eiffel tower.

One of the most interesting shopping malls we've been to, and yes, I tried mimicking Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 😅

And we think they recycle their planes in Pattaya as we found another airplane in the middle of a field in front of a night market. We could maybe take it to fly to Japan! 🤪