Solo in Bangkok, Day 2: First Full Day in the City
Waking up in Bangkok to a transport puzzle: cracking the BTS and the river boats en route to the Grand Palace, then a street food education near Wat Pho.
My trip
- Visited
- November 2011
- Length
- Three weeks across Southeast Asia
- Stayed
- Lamphuhouse, Banglamphu
- Got around by
- Airport Rail Link/taxi; BTS/MRT, river boats + taxis
Part of the Southeast Asian Odyssey series · Bangkok, Thailand
After my adventurous day in Tokyo, I landed in Bangkok and went more or less straight to bed. I was exhausted. But before I slept, I had pad thai, and that set the pattern for the whole trip: every day I was in Thailand, I ate pad thai, most often for breakfast, and it felt wonderful every time.
My plan for the first full day was simple on paper: get across to Rattanakosin, the old royal island, and see the Grand Palace. Getting there turned out to be the actual lesson of the day.
Working out the BTS and the river boats
The BTS Skytrain itself was easy once I realised the ticket machines want coins, not notes, which meant a slightly awkward first ten minutes hunting for change. The real trial and error started at Saphan Taksin station, the interchange for the river boats: a short walk down to Sathorn Pier, where the Chao Phraya was genuinely chaotic with different boats coming and going and nothing obvious explaining which one was for me.
The boats are colour-coded by flag, and the one I needed was the Orange Flag boat, which runs the standard route up to the Old City. It costs a handful of baht, a fraction of what the private long-tail boats circling the pier charge, but the flag colours are only painted small on the hull, not announced, so getting on the right one took a couple of false starts.
The ride itself is worth doing on its own terms: river wind, the smell of the water, the city going past from a completely different angle than the BTS gives you. I got off at Tha Chang (N9), the pier closest to the Grand Palace, and stepping off that boat onto solid ground felt like a genuine small win after twenty minutes of second-guessing which flag was mine.
The Grand Palace and Wat Pho
The Grand Palace complex is the reason to make the crossing, and no amount of photos prepares you for the scale of it. I spent a few hours wandering the halls, courtyards and murals around Wat Phra Kaew and the Emerald Buddha. The heat by midday is real, but the detail everywhere makes up for it. Day 3 has the full practical rundown on tickets, hours and the dress code if you want that before you go.
One thing worth knowing in advance: a well-dressed man approached me near the entrance to say the Palace was closed for a ceremony that day. It's a well-documented scam that steers tourists toward a gem shop or a tailor instead, and having read about it beforehand made it easy to just smile and keep walking. If someone outside tells you the Palace is shut, it isn't; the only real closures are announced officially.
From there it's a short walk to Wat Pho, home to the reclining Buddha, a completely different kind of impressive after the ornamentation of the Grand Palace: one enormous gold figure rather than a complex of smaller detail.
Street food: the real education
Bangkok's street food reputation is earned, and the first day was a crash course in eating like it. Near the Palace that morning I had moo ping, grilled pork skewers marinated in coconut milk and garlic, with a bag of sticky rice from a cart, eaten standing up like everyone else around me.
After Wat Pho, lunch was a bowl of kuay teow at a street-side stall, ordered mostly by pointing: pork, then a spoonful of chili flakes and fish sauce added myself from the condiments tray already on the table. It's the right meal for the heat and it's fast; I was eating within a few minutes of sitting down. On the walk back, a stall selling mango sticky rice finished the day the way most days there ended up finishing: sweet, salty and cold enough to actually matter in that heat.
Getting back, and what clicked
The boat back from the Old City to reconnect with the BTS was noticeably less nerve-wracking the second time round, mostly because I already knew which flag colour to look for. By the end of the day the transport network had stopped feeling like a puzzle and started feeling like two systems, the BTS for distance and the river boats for the historic core, that you use together rather than choose between.
Where to go next
What the official advice says
Thailand, Level 1: Exercise normal precautions (Unrest)
Level 1 overall. The advisory carries an unrest indicator, and the far-southern provinces bordering Malaysia are rated separately and higher.
Source: U.S. Department of State, issued July 2026. Checked 16 August 2026. Advisory levels change, so check the source before you book.
Common questions
How many days do you need in Bangkok?
Three or four covers the historic core, a market day and time to wander without rushing. Two is enough only if you accept you are seeing the temples and nothing else.
Is Bangkok easy to travel alone?
Unusually so. Eating alone is completely normal, street food means you never have to negotiate a table for one, and the backpacker infrastructure around Banglamphu makes meeting people straightforward if you want to.
Where should a solo traveler stay in Bangkok?
Banglamphu near Khao San Road is the classic base: central, walkable to the Grand Palace and the river, and full of other people travelling alone. Silom and Sukhumvit are quieter and better connected by BTS if you would rather not be in the middle of that.
