Bangkok 2015 - our 4-Day Itinerary

Over a month ago, the news about the bombing in one of Bangkok's famous shrines revolved. It killed over 20 people and injured many, making a great threat in the country's safety. And here we are, tourist-ing while the flames are still hot, whew! To be honest, when we booked our flight, the above threats flew out of our minds - blank. Going there was a sudden decision and urge to relax and escape our busy life in Singapore plus the holiday on a Thursday, viola - Bangkok here we go! I remember my fiance asking me to check the fares, after an hour we are booked! LOL  When the news sunk in our heads, we know there is no turning back. We wont allow our tickets to go to waste, we just have to take extra hefty of care and simplify our itinerary so we could somehow lessen the possibilities of getting caught in an unwanted situation.

Oh, by the way this is our first international travel with only me and him. Yey for another first!

So here is our 4-day Relaxed Itinerary and I hope you will enjoy this picture flooded post. (fyi, I already tried to minimize the pictures)

Day 1: Hotel Relaxation. 

We cater this day solely to chill at our hotel because we wanted to maximize our stay and feel relaxed before our full-day tours. You can try a dip in the pool, have a hot bath, go for massage, and have some shots on their rooftop bar. Plus you can take a short walk at surrounding areas, for us we go to a mall just beside our hotel and also checked out some stalls at the roadside for authentic snacks.

late night food trip

Tip: Book a good 5-star hotel even for 1-night on your first or last day. This way, you can start or end a vacation feeling relaxed and pampered without hurting your budget. For the other days that would be full of activities outside, you can transfer to a cheaper hotel good enough for sleeping and bathing purposes. I bet, after a full-day tour you'll be dead tired and a comfy bed is more than enough!

Day 2: River Tour. 

After spending a nice breakfast buffet, we transferred to another hotel (our "sleeping?bathing" kind of hotel). The hotel is quite decent, but of course a major downgrade as expected from a place 1/3 the price of our first haven. When everything is settled, we hop on to the nearest MTR to Sapan Taksin Station (nearest station to pier) for our river tour.

We bought a 1-day pass ticket - this will allow you to hop-on and off on any boat at any station for the whole day for 150THB. You can also buy a single ticket and alight at Tha Tien station where the Wat Pho temple is located and just walk to the Grand Palace not far from the area.

Decided to drop by at River City Mall station to visit a catholic church - and thank God for this trip.

Holy Rosary Church

Initially we planned to have dinner at Asiatique but we're too hungry to function so we decided to have dinner on a small but decent restaurant we saw on the way to the church. They are serving local Thai food which is awesomely good!

The boat can also take you to Asiatique - one of the newest go to place in Bangkok for night shopping. So we hop on to the last trip around 7:15pm and enjoy the rest of the night shopping and eating... again!

Shopping Time

tried the raved about Mango Tango

Wedding Prep Update: Even on vacation, we are still thinking of the wedding of course. And Bangkok has a great reputation for shopping, so we take advantage and bought souvenirs for our principal sponsors. Got them pashminas! Yey, another item off our list!

Day 3: Kanchanaburi Province. 

Booked this package tour at our hotel just a day before (most hotels are tied up with Travel and Tours company so booking is easier). Or you could try to search for tours online, there's a lot to choose from so better plan carefully so you could prioritize what you really want to see. For us, elephant ride is the non-negotiable! Our itinerary includes: Allied War Cemetery, War Museum, River Kwai Bridge, Bamboo Rafting, Elephant Ride, Waterfall, Train Ride at Death Railway - from 6:30am to 7pm this includes lunch and they will pick you up and drop you at your hotel.

Allied War Cemetery where workers/soldiers working for the railway construction were buried.

War Museum

Bridge over River Kwai

Bamboo Rafting after our lunch by the river

 Mighty at 65 years old. We wanted to ride on him but because we are the slimmest (probably the lightest) duo in the group, they gave us the baby elephant instead.

Enjoyed riding our 16 year old, still baby elephant. He's starting to grow his tusk, someday he'll be as mighty as his father.

Our first Elephant ride

Waterfalls

Train Ride... choo... chooo..

View from the train

Day 4: Floating Market and more Elephants.

 Ohh our last day already? =( For our last day, we booked a half-day tour to Damneon Saduak where the floating market is located. Our itinerary also includes going to the Elephant Village (fees will be paid by tourist), pick-up and drop-off to our hotel from 6:30am-2pm.

There you will ride a long motor boat from a certain pier/station going to the floating market. Passing thru some stilt/floating houses on the canals, After reaching the market, you can hire a paddle boat to experience the "floating market" or you can just walk around and buy stuff at the stores above water.

Coconut ice cream while enjoying our paddle boat ride

Before going back to Bangkok, we visited another Elephant Park. We didn't ride the elephants this time, we just watched and really felt bad for them. For an hour that we are there, they are circling around in a small pathway carrying tourists non-stop. This is a sad place for elephants as compared to the one we went to in Kanchanaburi, there they have huge space to move around, lush greenery and they didn't have a pathway to follow, no queue of tourists so more rest for them. We also noticed that most of the elephant's tusks are cut, don't know why but it's not right.

If you don't want to ride, there are other activities to do like feeding them with bananas and be lifted by their super trunk, there are other animals as well like snake, monkey and white lion which you can touch and take photo and few more activities like ATV driving, Shooting range, etc - all you can try for few hundred baht of course.

Before ending our Bangkok trip, we had a nice relaxing massage and few more stops at the mall. And were back to Singapore!