Berlitz Pocket Guide Bangkok (Travel Guide eBook)

Berlitz Publishing

• Publisher: Berlitz Travel
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781785730931
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Persönliche Entwicklung
• Subtopic: Reisen

Cosmopolitan Bangkok blends evocative street markets with glitzy modern malls, Buddhist philosophy with animism, and traditional reserve with lashings of fun. Berlitz Pocket Guide Bangkok is a concise, full-colour travel guide to this vast, frenetic city; small but packed with useful facts, inspiring photography and handy tips to help you uncover the best sights and experiences.

Inside Bangkok Pocket Guide:
Where To Go details all the key sights in the city, while handy maps on the cover flaps help you find your way around, and are cross-referenced to the text.

Top 10 Attractions gives a run-down of the best sights to take in on your trip.

Perfect Day provides an itinerary of the city.

What To Do is a snapshot of ways to spend your spare time, including shopping in the city's markets, finding the best nightlife and catching a Muay Thai match.

Essential information on Bangkok's culture, including a brief history of the city.

Eating Out covers the country's best cuisine.

Curated listings of the best hotels and restaurants.

A-Z of all the practical information you'll need.

About Berlitz: Berlitz draws on years of travel and language expertise to bring you a wide range of travel and language products, including travel guides, maps, phrase books, language-learning courses, dictionaries and kids' language products.

Where To Go

Although the sprawling capital of over 10 million may at first seem daunting, virtually every part of the city is accessible by elevated rail, Metro subway, river and canal boat services or city bus. For any place not easily reached by public transport, taxis are a reasonably priced alternative. Most of the neighbourhoods described here can be explored on foot.

The giant reclining Buddha at Wat Pho

Peter Stuckings/Apa Publications

Ko Rattanakosin (Royal Island)

Resting in a bend of the Chao Phraya River, Bangkok’s oldest district contains some of the city’s most historic architecture – Wat Phra Kaew, the Grand Palace, Wat Pho and Wat Mahathat, along with the National Museum and the prestigious Thammasat and Silpakorn universities. The river bank in this area is busy with piers and markets, worthwhile attractions in themselves. Despite its name, Ko Rattanakosin is not an island at all, though in the days when Bangkok was known as the ‘Venice of the East’, Banglamphu Canal and Ong Ang Canal – two lengthy adjoining canals to the east that run parallel to the river – were large enough that the area felt like an island.

Teardrop-shaped Ko Rattanakosin is bounded to the west by the Chao Phraya, to the north by Phra Pin Klao Road and to the east by Atsadang Road and Khlong Lot. The district is accessible by boat via the Tha Chang Chao Phraya river pier, or by road via taxi and public bus.

Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew 1 [map]

Also known by the English name, Temple of the Emerald Buddha, and more formally as Wat Phra Si Ratana Satsadaram, the royal monastery of Wat Phra Kaew A [map](daily 8.30am–3.30pm; entry fee includes admission to Dusit Park) adjoins the Grand Palace on common ground consecrated in 1782, the first year of Bangkok rule. The 95-hectare (234-acre) palace grounds encompass over 100 buildings that represent more than 200 years of royal history and architectural experimentation. Most of the architecture is Rattanakosin or Old Bangkok style. Visitors are forbidden to wear shorts or have bare shoulders, but you can hire clothes for a small fee. Guides and audio guides can also be hired.

The travelling Buddha

Neither the origin nor the sculptor of the Emerald Buddha is known, but it first appeared in 15th-century Chiang Rai chronicles. Legend says it was carved in India and brought to Siam via Ceylon, but stylistically it belongs to northern Thailand’s 13th to 14th century Chiang Saen or Lanna periods. In the 15th century, the Buddha is thought to have been sealed with plaster and gold leaf and placed in Chiang Rai’s own Wat Phra Kaew. While being carried to a new home, after a storm had damaged the stupa (reliquary) containing it, the Buddha lost its covering in a fall. It then stayed in Lampang for 32 years until it was brought to Wat Chedi Luang in Chiang Mai.

Lao invaders took the Emerald Buddha from Chiang Mai in the mid-16th century. General Chakri, later crowned as Rama I, brought it 200 years later to the then Thai capital Thonburi. When Bangkok became the capital, he moved the Buddha there. The statue has three royal robes, one each for the hot, rainy and cool seasons. which are changed accordingly by either the king or the crown prince.

Wat Phra Kaew’s ornate roof

Peter Stuckings/Apa Publications

Inside a large chapel heavy with gilded ornamentation, the 66cm (26in) Emerald Buddha B [map] (actually carved from nephrite, a type of jade), after which the wat is named, sits in a miniature glass-paned pavilion with an intricately carved, five-tiered roof, on a pedestal high above the heads of worshippers. The enigmatic aura of the jade figure is enhanced by the fact that it cannot be examined closely, nor can it be photographed. Its lofty perch emphasises the image’s occult significance as the most important talisman of the Thai kingdom and legitimisor of Thai sovereignty.

The other temple structures are equally colourful and include gleaming, gilded stupas (Buddhist reliquaries), polished orange-and-green tiled roofs, mosaic-encrusted pillars and rich marble pediments. Extensive murals depicting scenes from the Ramakien (the Thai version of the Indian Ramayana epic) line the cloisters along the inside walls of the compound. Originally painted during Rama I’s reign (1782–1809), the murals have undergone several restorations, including a major one finished in time for the 1982 Bangkok/Chakri dynasty bicentennial. Divided into 178 sections, the murals illustrate the epic in its entirety.

The king’s current residence is Chitrlada Palace in the northern part of the city, but the Grand Palace C [map] (Phra Borom Maharatchawong) is still used by the monarchy for selected ceremonial occasions such as Coronation Day. The palace is open to the public every day, from 8:30am to 3:30am.

Chakri Maha Prasat Hall in the Grand Palace complex

Peter Stuckings/Apa Publications

The largest Grand Palace structure, the triple-winged Chakri Mahaprasat D [map] (literally ‘Great Holy Hall of Chakri’, but usually translated as ‘Grand Palace Hall’) was designed by British architects in 1882 and displays a unique blend of traditional Thai and Italian Renaissance architecture, resulting in a style Thais call ‘European wearing a Thai classical dancer’s headdress’, as each of the three wings is roofed with a tiered and heavily ornamented spire. The centrally positioned and tallest of the spires contains the ashes of Chakri kings, while the flanking spires hold those of Chakri princes. Thai kings traditionally housed their huge harems in the Chakri Mahaprasat’s innermost halls, under the guard of combat-trained female sentries.

French-inspired Borombiman Hall E [map] served as residence for Rama VI, and is still occasionally used to house visiting foreign dignitaries. Originally a hall of justice, Amarindra Hall to the west is used only for coronation ceremonies in the present day. Further west stands Dusit Hall F [map], originally built for royal audiences but later used as a royal funerary hall.

Wat Pho (Wat Phra Chetuphon)

Wat Pho 2 [map] (formally known as Wat Phra Chetuphon; daily 8am–6:30pm; www.watpho.com) is the oldest and largest Buddhist temple in Bangkok and has the longest reclining Buddha in Thailand. The temple site, just south of the palace complex, dates from the 16th century, but the monastery was completely rebuilt in 1781 in preparation for the founding of the new Thai capital the following year.

Chetuphon Road divides the complex into two sections, each enclosed by high whitewashed walls. Only the northern section is open to the public and contains the wat’s most famous feature, a huge, gilded reclining Buddha image representing the passing of the Buddha into parinibbana (nirvana after death). Measuring 46m (151ft) long and 15m (49ft) high, the figure is made of brick moulded with plaster and finished in shining gold leaf. Mother-of-pearl inlays on the feet display the 108 different auspicious characteristics of a Buddha.

Two smaller sanctuaries to the east ...