Bangkok

Bangkok has no centre. It has lines.

Almost every mistake a first-time visitor makes in Bangkok comes from looking for a city centre and booking a hotel near it. There isn't one. The old royal quarter around the Grand Palace is the historic core but almost nobody lives or works there; the commercial weight sits several kilometres east along Sukhumvit; the money sits south around Silom and Sathorn; and the river runs between all of it.

What actually organises the city is the transit network. The elevated BTS Skytrain and the underground MRT define where the city is easy, and everything outside a comfortable walk of a station is a different, slower place. Bangkok traffic is not a cliché — a three-kilometre taxi ride at 6pm can genuinely take fifty minutes, and the same trip on the BTS takes eight. This single fact should drive your accommodation decision more than the room, the pool or the price.

The practical rule: look up the nearest station before you look at the photographs. A plain hotel 200 metres from a Skytrain station will give you a better week than a beautiful one twenty minutes' walk from anything, because in this heat twenty minutes' walk is not a walk you will take twice.

The river is the second network and the one visitors forget. The Chao Phraya express boats run north–south past the old city, connect to the BTS at Saphan Taksin, and cost a fraction of a taxi. For the temples and the old town, the boat is not a tourist novelty — it is the fastest way there.

Where to base yourself

The districts below are the realistic shortlist. None is the 'best' — they suit different trips, and the difference between them is larger than the difference between hotels within them.

Arriving: two airports, and they are not interchangeable

Bangkok has two. Suvarnabhumi handles most full-service long-haul flights and connects to the city by the Airport Rail Link, which is cheap, takes about half an hour to Phaya Thai and is immune to traffic. Don Mueang is the older airport north of the city and handles most low-cost carriers; it has no direct rail link of the same kind and a road transfer at the wrong hour can be punishing.

If you are connecting between the two on separate tickets, give yourself far more time than the map suggests. They are roughly 50km apart with the whole city in between.

For taxis from either airport, use the official public taxi rank and insist the meter is running. There is a legitimate airport surcharge added at the rank, plus tolls, which the driver may ask for in cash — that is normal. A flat fare quoted before you get in, by someone who approached you in the terminal, is not.

The rhythm of a Bangkok day

Plan around the heat and the traffic rather than the opening hours. Mornings before about 11am are the usable outdoor hours — temples, markets, walking. The early afternoon is for anything indoors and air-conditioned, and this is not laziness; the combination of temperature and humidity between roughly noon and 4pm defeats most visitors on day one and ruins day two.

In the May–October rainy season, expect a heavy downpour in the late afternoon rather than all-day rain. It typically clears within an hour or two, and it comprehensively breaks the traffic while it lasts. Build the afternoon around being somewhere you are happy to sit.

Avoid moving across the city between about 4.30pm and 7pm if you have anything to catch. If you must, take the train — that is exactly the window in which the rail network stops being a convenience and becomes the only sane option.