It was Friday afternoon and I was sitting inside an aluminium chamber, looking through my window with droplets of water on it. My mind was wandering into the snippets of a few minutes back, wandering into the green-rectangular fields, streams, thick clouds and what edible item I could put inside my mouth because I was hungry as a pig.
I ran out of the plane in search for food and found a great food court inside the Suvarnabhumi Airport. I fell in love with Thailand when I ate that Tom Yum noodle soup and that is how I kickstarted my Thailand vacay.
It was a small, cozy trip of 7 days with my best friends between Bangkok and Phuket.
I won't be mentioning each and everything in this article but put in the places that I think are must visits. For any question, DM me on Instagram :)
Kata beach, Phuket
Brief day wise itinerary
| Day | Activity |
|---|---|
| 1 | Leave Bangalore at and Arrive Bangkok. Take a cab to Hostel in Khaosan. Visit Khaosan and Soi Rambuttri. |
| 2 | Floating market. Chatuchak market. China Town. Final drink at Jack's bar. |
| 3 | Catch a morning flight to Phuket. Laze around that day. |
| 4 | Go to the beach. Visit Old Town Phuket. |
| 5 | Meet the Elephants. Eat at naught nuri's. Visti Bangla Road. |
| 6 | Catch a flight back to Bangkok. Visit Wat Arun. Watch a freaking drag show in Silom. |
| 7 | Fly back to Bangalore |
Thailand is a proper tourist destination suitable for all types of travellers. You will find places where you can drink till 4 in the morning to places which are extremely quiet and close down at 9 in the night.
Floating market, Bangkok
Old Town, Phuket
VISA
For Indian travellers, Thailand visa is free until the end of October 2019 (and that means a long queue at the immigration). You just need to have all your documents(stay, travel, passport) and a filled VISA form. The VISA requirement document mentions that you must have 10,000 TBH cash but nobody checks that and you'd be spending more than that, definitely.
Weather
August is supposed to a wet month, though less than September. The predictions showed 80% precipitation but we encountered a pleasant weather. It rained one day for about 20mins in Bangkok and a full day in Phuket. I guess we were lucky!
Food
A lot of it is soup, noodles, rice, pork and sea food. It's usually a little sweet and spicy. Great taste but we got tired after a few days and were craving for American or Indian food. One tip, if you're not into sweetness in your food, ask before ordering how sweet the dish is, or you'll regret after ordering.
Surprisingly, we found a lot of restaurants in Phuket selling American/Italian food which was great. You can order these dishes without worrying about the taste.
Travel
Bangkok
For your travel in the city, you'd want to download GRAB. Grab is similar to Uber, super convenient and reasonable.
For travel from Airport to your stay (not at odd hours), you can consider taking the skytrain. It'll cost you relatively less. We took a taxi and it costed us 550 THB including the highway tolls during peak time in the evening.
Phuket
From the airport to your stay, you'll find these shared 12 seater cabs for 200 THB per person. You can also get a personal taxi at 1000 TBH. We took the shared cab. Our hostel was near Kata beach and it took us around an hour to reach there from the hostel. GRAB works well in Phuket as well.
Stay
Bangkok
We were pretty clear that we wanted to book hostels. We thought that it'll be better if we book our tours after we reach Thailand considering the weather conditions. We were also not sure about the cost of the tours. We found Hostels to be really resourceful and cheap considering the quality of the hostels. You could book tours, bikes or just hang around with the folks at the hostel. We'd booked our floating market tour from the hostel at 350 THB per person. The cost of the same tour on KLOOK was 700 TBH.
We stayed at La Moon Hostel in Khaosan. It's 2-3 blocks away from the Khaosan Road, away from the hustle and bustle.
When we came back from Phuket on 14th, we stayed at Bed Station hostel khaosan. Great hostel. Not really a cozy hostel, crowded but feels like a 4 star hotel.
Phuket
We wanted to stay a little far from the noise and decided to stay near Kata beach. I wouldn't really recommend this hostel. It's good for its price but I'd suggest go for a hostel which is atleast ₹500 per night. You'll get a great hostel in that price.
Another thing that we didn't consider was that kata beach is really toned down on it's night party scene. It gets really empty after 9 in the night. You'll still find small bars open late in the night (which apparently don't have any food menu). They have pool tables which is free if you buy a drink. We would go down to one of these local bars and spend 2-3 hours in the night.
We stayed at Sleepy Station in Kata beach. If you're a sucker for night life, you should consider staying in Patong.
Sleepy Station, Phuket
Must do things in Bangkok
KHAOSAN ROAD
I'd say not a place everybody would enjoy. On this road you'll find bars and pubs on either side of the road with blasting music. I would recommend this for its sheer madness. You'll find people selling dried quid, crocodile meat, fried crickets etc. Just walk by the road for the sake of experience.
SOI RAMBUTTRI
After you've walked through Khaosan Road, you'll love this place. It is a quieter and prettier lane with cocktail trucks and open-street restaurants. You can hang around here as long as you'd want to because this place is on till late night. On our last night, we were here till 4 in the morning.
WATCH A DRAG SHOW AT STRANGER BAR
It's the house of drag queens. It's an extremely small bar. You'd enter the bar and expect another floor because it's so small it's unbelievable. But I guess that is the USP of this bar. The queens come to you, sing to you, dance with you and it's the best thing ever. It's an intimate bar the the drag queens, as they are, were tremendously funny.
Must do things in Phuket
ELEPHANT SANCTUARY
We booked this experience from our hostel. There are a lot of companies that will provide you this experience. It costed us 2,200 THB. I think that is the most beautiful thing that I've experienced. We met 2 fully grown elephants and a baby elephant, fed them, bathed them and kissed them.
EAT AT NUGHTY NURI
Beautiful place with a live band and really great pork ribs. Great hospitality, great food, great drinks, great ambience! Oh and you can also request the band to play a song for you. :)
We couldn't do a lot of things that people usually do in Thailand such as island hopping and snorkelling but we made the best of whatever days we had. In all, it was a short and sweet trip with my friends.