Fancy seeing Bangkok, land of crazy traffic, on a bike by night?

When I first heard that Grasshopper Adventures was running a Bangkok Bike Tour, I thought it was a joke. It’s hard enough to cross the road by foot, let alone roll about by pedal power. And then I discovered they also run the tour at night, and I thought for sure these guys are crazy - and I signed up right away.

All good inventions take a while to catch on, but for the brilliance behind designing this cycling tour in Bangkok was to keep the bikes off the road and in the back streets.

Tags: Bangkok,Bicycle,Holiday,Tour
Categories: Bangkok
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Every time I go for a beauty treatment here in Thailand, I get spanked.

The other day I went for a pedicure and the woman bent my toes back in a most unnatural fashion, then punched and spanked the bottoms of my feet. Okay, okay, I’ll give you a tip!

It was the same going in for a wash, spank and blow-dry. These ladies at the beauty parlour are from the shampoo-rinse-repeat school of hair massage. Just when you think you’ve made it through the rinse cycle and are starting to enjoy the fluff dry, brace yourself Effie. Spank, spank.

Tags: Bangkok,Massage,Spanking,Thailand
Categories: Bangkok
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One thing first-time visitors to Thailand find intriguing is the spirit house, ubiquitously found in the yard of almost every Thai home or building. In Bangkok, the biggest and most popular spirit house is that located in front of the Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel at the corner of Rajadamri and Ploenchit Roads. Built in 1956, long before the current hotel came to be, this spirit house has over the years emerged into a major Bangkok shrine, drawing busloads of devotees not only from Thailand but also from people across Asia - Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Singapore, even Malaysia.

Tags: Bangkok,Erawan Shrine,Thailand
Categories: Bangkok
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Day tour for less than 100 Baht.

Why would anyone go through the trouble of traveling kilometres away for a piece of pottery? It doesn’t make sense, especially if you take a forty Baht skytrain ride to Sapan Taksin for a boat trip to Nonthaburi. That almost half of the sixty or so passengers of the boat you took were all headed for Nonthaburi - and ultimately to Koh Kret, the pottery island - made it all the more mind-boggeling.

Tags: Bangkok,Food,Koh Kret,Pottery,Thailand
Categories: Bangkok
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Silom - Surawong - Sathon
From end to end, these parallel streets are full of big blocks of multi-story buildings, housing many banks, finance firms, insurance companies, export-import houses, hotels, airlines offices, restaurants, shopping arcades, department stores, and entertainment establishments. This area is busy not only in the daytime, but also in the evening, when people come to eat, to meet buisness friends or to seek enjoyment.

There is a small area in this district which, for about 30 years, has been very well known to foreign visitors for its bars and nightclubs. Known as Patpong, this famous place offers various kinds of entertainment - wine, beer, music, dancing, etc. In this area, there are both skytrain and subway stations.

Tags: Bangkok,Bangna,Downtown,Rama,Siam,Silom,Sukhumvit
Categories: Bangkok
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A golden brownish leaf floats in the early morning breeze from a teak tree towering high above the road that climbs through Khao Yai National Park. I watched it drift; its graceful descent to the tarmac caught by sunlight filtering through the trees. Its descent became my marker. Could I speed up just a mite to catch the leaf before it touched the tarmac? I didn’t, but in those few seconds I knew why cycling, of all sports, fascinates me the most. You concentrate on small matters, like finding the strength to round the next bend or climb a mountain road. As you travel in slow mode a destination shares its secrets.

Tags: Bangkok,Bicycle,Khao Yai,Thailand
Categories: Bangkok
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On the left side of the main highway towards Samut Prakarn is an awe-striking image of a three-headed elephant almost the size of a football field. The new structure, said to be as tall as a 14-story building, is creating a stir among people in the province and in nearby Bangkok. But the stir has nothing to do with the distinct honor of having the world’s biggest elephant relief sculpture. Or with the fact that it is home to a vast collection of priceless arts and antiques built over the years by one of the country’s most avid antique collectors, Mr. Lek Viriyaphant, otherwise known as founder of Ancient City, another awe-inspiring cultural shrine located further down the road.

Tags: Elephantine,Museum,Samu Prakarn,Sukhumvit,Thailand
Categories: Bangkok
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The cosmopolitan capital of Bangkok is home to Asia’s first dental spa offering aromatherapy and relaxing foot, body and head massage in an avant garde spa-style setting as part of the dental treatment package. Most patients shudder at there mere though of a visit to the dentist. Time spent in the waiting room is an anxious and traumatic experience. The monotone whirring and hum of the dentist’s drill typically heard in the waiting room heightens the element of fear as patients vividly “re-live” memories of their last session in the dentist’s chair.

Tags: Asia,Bangkok,Dental,Dentist,Spa,Thailand
Categories: Bangkok
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This is a Book Review!

Bangkok Inside Out was co-authored by Daniel Ziv (a seasoned peripathic) and Guy Sharett who has managed to sit still long enough to put down some roots in Bangkok. It was released in 2005 (Equinox Publishing, ISBN 979-97964-6-6) and is printed in Thailand.

Tags: 7-Eleven,Bangkok,Gambling,Grace Hotel,Guidebook,Thailand,Yaa Baa
Categories: Bangkok
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