I finished The Ink Black Heart (all 1012 pages of it) in Bangkok, and am consequently feeling more literary than I have for a long time. Which makes one thing clear: a good, long book is always an essential travel item.
But I haven’t written anything for a while, save for tedious advice on the legal problems that plague the G0v+ (what? You mean the G is plagued by legal problems?!?!), so this will be structured like one of those. If you found this readable and easy to understand, you are most welcome to go to my LinkedIn page and endorse the relevant skills I have demonstrated.
Background
I was determined on this trip that we would do something other than take the Chao Phraya tourist ferry (one of our favourite things to do, hasn’t gotten old). Accordingly, we ended up at: (1) SEA LIFE Bangkok Ocean World (“Aquarium”) – totally unplanned – and (2) Safari World Bangkok (“Confused Zoo”) (sort of planned, but evidently we did not plan ENOUGH as you will see).
Food and accommodation
We had enough Golden Circle points from previous holidays and staycations in Singapore to make staying at Shangri-la Bangkok (again) worthwhile. We got a suite, which had a sofa in the “living room” that converted into a bed, where we unceremoniously told Them they were to sleep. They had a blast, of course, saggy mattress and likely unwashed sofa cushions notwithstanding.
The shops in the area mostly survived the pandemic – I went back to Serene Massage (about 5 minutes’ walk from Shangri-la) for a full body massage, foot reflexology and a pedicure; the coffeeshop across the road was still bustling, and I recognised the roasted meats uncle from when we were last there. The noodles didn’t taste as great as they did the last time, but I put that down to Their being able to squabble more loudly and coherently now.
Sarnies Sourdough opened just down the road from Serene Massage. The food is great, and if you’re lucky like us you’ll get to see influenzas in action, posing in front of the quaint and cute storefront (I typed that with a small eye roll), and holding up plates of eggs benedict while smiling appealingly at the iPhone wielded by their long suffering insta bfs.
Things we did
(1) Aquarium
12/10 would recommend going:
a. Nicer vibe, more thoughtful exhibits than the S.E.A. Aquarium. Jon’s thoughts on this are summed up thus. The S.E.A. Aquarium was RWS’s afterthought, built to distract from the main business of the casinos. The Aquarium felt more like it had been built for its own sake.
b. We paid for a combo ticket that gave us free popcorn and Pepsi (Coke?) (which we didn’t redeem), and a 4D Aquaman show. Which turned out to be a highlights reel of the Aquaman movie (i.e. the worst one in the Marvel franchise, ever, or so I was told) in 4D. You decide whether you want to skip it.
c. Also included was a glass-bottomed boat ride, and entry to Madame Tussaud’s Bangkok. The former is quite short – the boat just takes you around the tank that makes up the underwater tunnel exhibit – and the guides are enthusiastic young people who speak heavily accented English that isn’t the easiest to understand, but it was cool enough and it’s always nice to see young people enthusiastic about something meaningful (in this case marine life, and its preservation and care of). We skipped the latter, because we spent a good 3h or so in the Aquarium, inclusive of said boat ride.
d. Highlights of the Aquarium include the spotted garden eel, and manta ray feeding – look out for the other fishes fighting over the scraps the manta rays failed to grab with their flat, always smiling but are they really mouths.
e. The Aquarium is located in Siam Paragon, which appears to have been renovated since the last time we were there pre-pandemic. The oyster omelette at the Bangkok’s “Best Of Hawker Food 2022” pop-up was better than the one we had in Chinatown (we didn’t manage to get a table at T&K this time so went to the restaurant opposite), and the “award-winning” tom yum seafood noodles were so-so. BUT there is a Smokey’s in the food court, with proper baked beans.
(2) Confused Zoo
Confused Zoo is divided into two parts: Safari Park and Marine Park. The latter is a bit of a misnomer, because there were more than marine animals there. 4.5/10, but maybe this was because we didn’t do enough planning?
We naively thought it would be like the Singapore zoo (Bangkok generally gives me a Singapore-esque vibe, it’s quite efficient and clean) – buy tickets online, rock up and enter by scanning the QR code.
This, of course, was not the case. It was an exceptionally crowded day, and we ended up queueing for close to an hour before we got to the counter to scan the QR code to get hardcopy tickets, which were the only means by which one could gain access to the Confused Zoo.
Our Grab driver initially offered to queue for us – the queue for Thai citizens was relatively short – and we think he wanted to drive us into the safari, but because we had no clue what to except, we rejected his offer. We ended up having to queue for tickets for the bus to the safari as well.
I’m on the fence about whether the queueing was worthwhile (hence the 0.5 deduction to 4.5/10):
a. Because of the above, we missed the not-to-be-missed orang utan, dolphin, and elephant shows. But this could have been mitigated through better planning and research? We caught the sea lion and bird shows though. Overall, Marine Park was more like a show-based theme park than a proper zoo with exhibits for learning about animals.
b. Kids generally like seeing real giraffes, zebras, tigers etc., so that was nice for Them, because we got to see said animals in their “natural habitat” in the Safari Park (on that note I heard a HK tourist say to his companions that he asked whether he could walk through, and was told that it was a 7km journey. It would in any event have been dangerous. Best to go to the Safari Park after visting the Marine Park).
c. The Confused Zoo is probably best suited to young adults wanting a laugh and something different from the usual Bangkok eating and staycation without parents activities (sniggers): the energy to get there, into, and back from the place; gawping at the cage-on-a-truck from which tourists can feed tigers (an additional 1200THB which we did not pay and anyway it was all booked out); signs peppering the tiger enclosure in the Safari Park entreating you not to get out of your car under any circumstances, and if your car stalled, to stay in your car and keep horning; the wild west stunt show at Marine Park that featured a lot of shooting and people falling into “wells”, and had a scene where two characters were caught in flagrante delicto (the many children in the audience notwithstanding); and the piece de resistance, the “MUST-GO” River Safari which had robotic animals, extremely politically incorrect exhibits (life-size dioramas depicting a “tribal” village, complete with dark-skinned robot natives holding spears and a captured (robot) white explorer hanging upside down above barking (robot) dogs), and a SCARY CAVE meant to depict coal mining but how do you explain the (robot) wild boar which pounced out at us?! Here's a YouTube video of the entire River Safari. A throwback to the 90s and a simpler, more uncomplicated time.
d. You can feed giraffes at Marine Park (I TOLD you this was a misnomer), but Jon and I were too drained from queueing for tickets to engage in this activity, even for Them.
e. The Indian buffet looks marginally better than the International buffet (this place came with a “buffet lunch”) but Jon made us choose the International buffet, whereat I could only bring myself to eat Thai mango salad and slices of guava. Word to the wise: best pack your own food and bring it in surreptitiously. There was a bag check which suggested they would confiscate food not purchased there.
f. The journey to the Confused Zoo took about 45-50mins from the hotel. Obviously we didn’t plan for how we were going to get back to the city; Grab predictably failed us and Jon ended up having to walk to the main road to get us a taxi, which only agreed to bring us to the nearest mall (it was called Fashion Island, I kid you not, and was surprisingly modern and crowded).
(3) Last full day in Bangkok
This was the day after we went to the Confused Zoo. We had breakfast at Sarnie’s Sourdough, Jon went for a run in the hotel gym while I went for foot reflexology and a pedicure while They played Woodoku on my phone. Then we all went to the swimming pool, ate hotel food poolside, then went up to the room and piled into the big bed after we all showered and watched NatGeo and ordered more hotel food. The boys declared this their favourite day of all 5 days we spent in Bangkok.
Conclusion and next steps
I hope you enjoy your next holiday. Or, you know, you could just save the airfare and staycate again (see third activity).
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