Bangkok: Thailand's beautiful capital

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Bangkok is a good place to start from when visiting South East Asia. Apart from being incredibly well connected with many different parts of the world, it is a city that can serve as a beautiful shiny beginning of a wider travel experience. Its temples and palaces, amazing shopping opportunities, great variety of cafés and restaurants and a never ending nightlife are difficult to be matched with any other in the region. But no worries, the abundance of tourist offers in the region is so great that most will not stop in Bangkok.

Urbanism

From an architectural point of view it is a strange and unique city. Unlike almost all important cities in the region it doesn't have a European urban matrix that was dominant in the nineteen century. So we are talking about a city with no real city center. There is no main square, main commercial street, or orthogonal street grid typical for other regional metropolises. As a result a neighborhood referred as center - Banglamphu, is no financial or commercial center, not especially walking friendly and even a skytrain or metro are not passing through this part (although they are building a metro line through here). Most of hotels are located in geographically peripheral parts of Sukhumvit and Silom, that are accordingly better equipped. The only area in the center where you can find some accommodation is around Khao San area, where there are plenty of budget hotels and hostels, restaurants and souvenir shops.

You may view the whole text here: http://happyfrogtravels.com/guide-bangkok-thailand-a-village-on-a-stream/

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