We actually visited Bangkok twice, the first time stopping on our way to Australia. But this was the second time we visited in Winter 2003.
This time we were on our way to Phuket for an amazing resort style vacation. We took a 2-3 weeks off, much to the dismay of my boss, but in Russia not much at all is going on in January so it worked out fine. We flew through Seoul down to Bangkok and spent about 3 days there as a short city break before continuing on. It was a great time running around exploring, taking tuk-tuks and water-taxis up and down the klongs (canals), enjoying the sights and the food, and even managed to get in a little pool time (on the tenth floor of our hotel).
By the way we have stayed at the Amari Watergate twice and I recommend it. I think the first time through, we just picked one at random for $100 (buying a voucher when coming out of the airport), and we really liked it. So on this 2003 trip, we booked that same hotel again but this time we booked online (which was just starting to be a thing back then) on Agoda.
The food was great, we loved the restaurant on the second floor (first time I ate salad so spicy it burned my mouth) and the place was stunning, open and immaculate. You’ll see the rooms when you view the rest of the photos on Agoda, but I remember them being magazine perfect. I do have a few old grainy poorly shot photos from the pool deck way up on the tenth floor.
You can imagine, coming from the Far East of Russia in the dead of winter, how this place felt pretty damn close to paradise.
We did get out to do a big of sightseeing, as much as we could on our own. We found a river ferry to take us to see Wat Arun and then we made our way over to some of the other temples around town. We also made sure we took a water taxi that ran along the canals, even dropped us off right across the street from our hotel. Somewhere in there we found our way to Siam Center, took some tuk-tuks around in the evenings, and even managed to locate the Hard Rock Cafe in Bangkok.
Check a few of our old photos from during our city break in Bangkok.
Note that these photo dates are not accurate – they seem to be a few weeks off. This was for sure in January of 2003.
Just a side note here, remember to wear long pants when visiting the Royal Grand Palace. If you forget, not to worry, you can run across the street and pick up some of these nifty lightweight pants with cool elephant designs, like I did. Those actually turned out to be a cool souvenir.
Actually, one other tip – wear comfortable shoes. The sandals were great, getting to enjoy the tropical climate and all, but it was a lot of walking and my heels were more or less on fire by the time I got back to the hotel.
We would love to go back again one day, and there are still a number of places that we missed in our previous visits, things that we would like to experience.
See our post about the Most Fascinating Things to do In Bangkok
