I’ve been to Bangkok several times. The first time, the city simply didn’t click for me, and I decided one day clearly wasn’t enough for a place this complicated. So I made a firm decision to come back and take my time getting to know it properly.
The second time, I stayed in Bangkok for several days. I settled into a cosy hotel in the centre and set off to explore on foot. The next day, I went out walking again. And then again, and again. I simply wandered the streets, took in the sights, ducked into temples, ate at local cafés. And still, no real understanding of the city ever arrived. I do have a theory as to why.
There’s a persistent sense, with Bangkok, that it resembles something else. I’ve visited more than ten capital cities, and yes — it’s a little like Tokyo, a touch like Tel Aviv, with traces of Singapore and even, oddly, Moscow. And yet it feels as though it has nothing entirely its own. You’d expect the capital of such a vividly colourful Asian country to be bursting with character. Instead, Bangkok is rather like a dish thrown together from every ingredient imaginable — meat, fish, vegetables, grains, sauces, a dash of spice, a touch of sweetness — and rather than settling into something magnificent and distinctive, or collapsing into an outright mess, it simply comes out bland. As though someone had tried to tame tradition itself, force it into a set of rules, and stripped away everything that made it alive in the process. Here, modern high-rises stand beside orange-tiled roofs. Michelin-starred restaurants sit next to street food carts. Glossy shopping malls border on slums. And while a Lamborghini sits stuck in traffic, a swarm of $500 mopeds overtakes it without slowing down. The city is clean and modern, with its metro and sprawling motorway interchanges — and, in the very same breath, its monasteries and its traditional way of life. Perhaps all these contradictions simply short-circuited my brain a little.
Even so, Bangkok deserves its own telling.
Bangkok’s full name: a Guinness World Record
Though, strictly speaking, “Bangkok” isn’t really Bangkok at all. Its actual name is considerably longer, and considerably harder to pronounce:
Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit
That’s its full official name, and, translated, it reads roughly as: City of angels, great city of immortals, magnificent city of the nine precious gems, seat of the king, city of royal palaces, home of gods incarnate, erected by Vishvakarman at Indra’s behest.
Its short form — Krung Thep Maha Nakhon — simply means “City of Angels.”
The full name holds the Guinness World Record for the longest place name on Earth.
As for “Bangkok” — or, more precisely, Bang Makok — that name dates back to when this spot was nothing more than a small fishing village, serving the fleet of Ayutthaya, the capital of Thailand at the time — or rather, back then, the country was still called Siam. Ayutthaya sits (today, it’s a tourist hub packed with ancient ruins) roughly 80 kilometres north of modern Bangkok, and was destroyed in 1767 during a war with Burma, now Myanmar. That’s when the capital was moved to the small village of Bang Makok.
By various rankings, Bangkok counts among the most attractive capital cities for tourists. Though, in my view, the way these rankings are compiled is a little misleading — anyone counted as a “tourist” here simply needs to have spent one night in the city. Like every major hub for international travel, Bangkok has its international airports, and plenty of independent travellers fly into Bangkok, since flights here tend to be cheaper and more frequent, before scattering onward, by bus, train, car, motorbike or domestic flight, to more interesting destinations. Given the traffic and the general pace of getting around, it isn’t always possible to escape Bangkok within a single day. When I flew out of Koh Phangan once, for instance, my connecting flights simply didn’t line up, and I ended up stuck spending a full day and night in the city.
Among the more interesting things on offer here:
- the Grand Palace (worth setting aside an entire day for),
- the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, along with a great many other temples,
- animal encounter zoos (all located just outside the city),
- skyscrapers with observation decks, though, in my own admittedly subjective view, any city looks much the same from the 80th floor.
I found it far more rewarding simply to walk through central Bangkok, where the architecture is a genuine mix of authentic temples and European influence — some of it thoroughly modern, some clearly rooted in the 19th century, likely a legacy of Siam’s close ties with Imperial Russia at the time. Beyond the architecture, Bangkok has its own Chinatown, and its own Indian quarter — where, incidentally, I found one of the finest Indian restaurants I’ve ever eaten at. Bangkok is also well worth seeing from the water: river ferries run throughout the city, doubling as both everyday public transport and a genuinely enjoyable way to sightsee.
Looking for real character in Bangkok, though, is a fairly hopeless task — there isn’t any left to find; it’s simply dissolved into the sprawl of the metropolis. For genuine character, food, warmth and the real Thailand, the provinces are where you want to be instead.
