Bangkok Day 3: Giant Lizards, Skyscrapers, Chinatown and More

On our second morning in Bangkok, we again woke up super early from jet lag. This time, we decided to make the most of it, and started our day with a gym session when the fitness suite opened at 6 am. That's definitely not my usual holiday routine, but we felt better for getting up and doing something rather than trying and failing to sleep. The fitness suite was on the top floor of the hotel and had great views over the city, so it was a nice way to start the morning.

After breakfast, we decided to start our sightseeing in the nearby Benchakitti Park. We had seen a lot of temples the previous day and were keen to see a different side of the city. The park is really beautifully designed and peaceful, and we loved the sky walk, which takes you over an area of wetlands.

Crossing over a bridge, we arrived in another park, Lumphini Park. This is actually a place that my sister and brother-in-law told us about. They also had a honeymoon in Thailand and recommended this park because of its large population of monitor lizards! These lizards are absolutely massive, and we had a lot of fun spotting them going in and out of the park's lake. 

You can take a pedal boat out on the lake free of charge for 20 minutes, which is a super nice experience. We had a great time looking for the lizards and also spotted a little turtle!

We also saw a few lovely cats! When we had our vaccines before travelling, we were advised not to touch cats or dogs in Thailand because of the risk of rabies, but it was still nice to admire them from a distance.

After a coffee break, we took our first tuk-tuk ride! It was really fun, and we were at our next destination in no time at all.

We'd arrived at King Power Mahanakhon, one of Bangkok's tallest skyscrapers and an interesting building architecturally. It looks a bit like a game of jenga! There's a modern mall next door, which we had a look around, and you can also pay to go up to the top of the building, but at 1000 baht per ticket, we thought it was a bit too costly.

By this point, we felt ready to see some more temples, so we decided to take the Skytrain over to Wat Paknam Phasi Charoen, where you can find the biggest Buddha statue in Bangkok, which stands at 64 metres tall. 

Unfortunately, we came at a bad moment, as the statue was covered in scaffolding! However, we still enjoyed visiting other parts of the temple complex.

We took a taxi over to a mall to pick up a quick bit of lunch and then took the Skytrain and metro over to Chinatown. To be honest, this wasn't a place I'd really thought about visiting, but Claudio wanted to see it, as it had been featured on a Chilean TV programme.

While we were in the metro, the lack of sleep really began to hit me, and I was actually falling asleep a bit while standing up. But as soon as we stepped out into the streets of Chinatown, the smell of durian accosted us and woke me up good and proper!

Bangkok's Chinatown is really different to the picturesque streets of London's Chinatown - it's noisy, choatic and crowded. In fact, it's rather like how we imagined Bangkok would be in general, though the rest of the city surprised us with how modern and attractive it is. This is the part of the city where you can find culinary delights such as scorpions and maggots on sticks! It certainly wasn't our favourite part of the Thai capital, but it was interesting to experience.

We had hoped to do some other activity in the evening, even if that was just going to the hotel pool, but as soon as we got back to the hotel, I went to sleep and pretty much slept all the way through to the following morning. After that, my jet lag was finally gone!

This was our last full day in Bangkok, as the next day we took a day trip to see the historic temples in Ayutthaya. Overall, we had a fantastic time in the city, and liked it a lot more than we expected to. It would have been nice to have spent a bit longer there, but who knows, maybe we'll have the chance to go back at some point in the future!