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Published: January 6th 2018
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Bangkok for Christmas sounds like a dream, but when you have been to the city a few times, it becomes more of a place to relax and get over the long flight to Asia. Still, it's always fun finding new places to explore so this time we stayed at the
Grand Sathorn Hotelin the Silom district. The area was a lot more traditional than the overly westernised Sukhumvit district. That had its advantages and disadvantages for sure, but we had a great time there. We even got our bags fixed for next to no money on the market!
A place we had wanted to visit before but never managed to get round to was
Jim Thomson House. Without Jim, there may well be no Thai silk industry. It had been a long neglected cottage industry until he revived it in the 1950s. He built his beautiful house with Thai design but western features like interconnecting rooms. Inside is an eclectic collection of satin prints, Asian art and sculptures. Just exploring the gardens is an adventure. Above the gift shop is a temporary exhibition space currently showing off a collection of modern batik art from Indonesia.
Something else we had always wanted to do
was to find the
Thai Air Force Museum (they are even on
Facebook !)That involved a train from the old Bangkok station, worthy of a visit itself and they have a small museum which was closed when we passed though! It only cost 5 Baht to get out to Dong Mueang airport, and from there it was a massive (in comparison) 120 Baht journey to the museum. Not everyone seemed to be aware of its existence though. We had to ask several taxi drivers before we found one who knew of it.Entrance was free and it was well worth the effort of finding. We spent a good few hours exploring the history of the
Thai Air Force and you can find a full list of the aircraft on display here. Getting back to central Bangkok was easy but time consuming. Over the road from the museum we flagged down a bus with "BTS" on the front. That took us on a painfully slow journey through the hideous traffic to a BTS station from where it was an easy trip to Siam station where we had a quick glance at the Christmassy-crowded shopping centre.
Another thing we have always managed to miss before is
Lumpini Park. This is a beautiful space in the city to go for a stroll,
or even a jog if you are feeling energetic! I believe they have regular park runs too. It's a great place for people watching as well as the occasional monitor lizard.
Food features highly on any trip, so here are our recommendations! We had a great steak on Christmas day at
Odds Rock Steak in Silom. It's not a fancy steak house - they were far too expansive - but we really enjoyed our meal.
Nalin Kitchen provided us with some of the best Thai food we have ever had - quite a statement from us! Drinking wine in Bangkok can be quite pricey so we were amazed to find affordable Chilean red just around the corner from the hotel at
Baan Glang Soi. Highly recommended!
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
I've never consider Bangkok as a place I wanted to spend Christmas. Sounds like you enjoyed exploring and gave all of of something to think about.