Bangkok: Wat Pho, a Rained-Out Go-Kart Track, and 1,200 Drones in the Sky

Asia · Solo Travel

Solo traveller · 14 min read

I’d landed in Bangkok the afternoon before, and this was the first proper day of sightseeing, starting at Wat Pho. My friend Ted, a local content creator with his own channel, joined me for the day, and we opened with breakfast at On Lok Yun, an eatery that’s been running since 1933.

Kaya Toast here comes with soft egg on the side, jam and butter between crisp bread, and I paired it with the French Toast, steamed bread topped and fried in egg for a crispy exterior. Condensed milk, egg, kaya jam, sugar, it’s a combination I hadn’t imagined as a breakfast before trying it, and the strong local coffee held its own against all that sweetness. Small detail worth knowing: they leave a slip on your table when you order, and it gets collected to total your bill when you’re done.

From there, the MRT to Sanam Chai station, genuinely one of the more attractive stations I’ve passed through, and a five to seven minute walk to Wat Pho itself. The entrance is guarded by statues that once stood watch over Chinese trading ships, a nice piece of context before you even get inside. The temple holds 95 stupas, called chedis locally, many containing relics of Thailand’s royal families, and at the centre of it all is the Reclining Buddha, 46 metres long, covered in gold leafing, with mother-of-pearl inlaid into the soles of its feet. Along the corridor sit 108 bowls where visitors add coins, and mural paintings nearby depict scenes of earlier Thai village life. Worth knowing before you go: entry now runs 300 THB for foreign visitors, and it isn’t mentioned in the moment on the video, so don’t be caught off guard by it.

Wat Pho is also where Thai massage genuinely originated, and the massage pavilions right there charge 340 THB for 30 minutes or 520 THB for an hour, current pricing still matches almost exactly what I paid. The Grand Palace sits a 10 to 12 minute walk away, and while I’d planned my day around skipping it (it’s a real 2 to 2.5 hour visit on its own, and I had other plans for the afternoon), it’s genuinely worth doing on a trip where you’re not racing the clock. From there, a short ferry ride gets you across to Wat Arun, another of Bangkok’s well-known temples, if you want to keep the temple-hopping going.

A ferry across the Chao Phraya got us to IconSiam in about ten minutes, and Ted’s suggestion to start from the top floor and work down turned out to be a genuinely good call, the skyline view from up there, ferries moving on the river below, was worth seeing before getting swept into the mall itself. We arrived a little past the window for the ground-floor fountain show, which runs 12 to 2pm and 5 to 8pm, worth timing your visit around if you want to catch it.

The mall itself has the usual branded stores, a kids’ section, even a Volvo showroom, but the real draw for me was the ground floor, a food hall representing all 77 of Thailand’s provinces, something like Delhi Haat but built entirely around Thai regional cuisine, mostly non-vegetarian options.

I’d planned on Khao Soi, Northern Thai curry noodles, at a well-known spot in the food hall, but ended up with Tom Yum soup and Pad Thai with tofu instead, alongside rice and a half-fried egg. The Tom Yum came in a portion clearly built for one person, mushrooms and salad floating through it, and built specifically on kaffir lime leaves, galangal, and lemongrass, the actual pieces aren’t meant to be eaten, just the broth they’ve flavoured, which took me a beat to figure out. Everything arrives at once here rather than in courses, soup and mains together, a real departure from how I’m used to eating.

The Pad Thai came with ground peanuts through it and a wedge of lime that balanced the sweetness out properly, if you know the Indian version with paneer and regular noodles standing in for tofu and rice noodles, this is the real template it’s built from. For dessert, mango sticky rice, the butterfly pea variant, coconut milk poured over it, moong dal sprinkled on top, and it’s not the first time I’ve had this exact dish, it was the one thing I specifically remembered not to skip from an earlier trip to Thailand.

One more from the same food hall, Khanom Krok, a coconut pancake made from rice flour and coconut milk, served in joined pairs, crispy outside and soft inside, sweetness kept deliberately restrained. Best eaten hot, straight off the pan.

I’ve noticed the same quiet road discipline here that stood out to me in Singapore, minimal honking, people patiently holding lane at a signal instead of pushing through.

An 8km Grab to TopKart cost 259 THB and took a slow 55 minutes thanks to traffic. Ted mentioned the George Fair Market I’d visited on an earlier Thailand trip has since moved to the Ratchada area, about 4.5km from where we were, worth knowing if you’re trying to track it down now. Go-karting itself was 700 THB for an 8-minute session, but the track had gone wet from rain and was closing for an hour to dry out. Waiting an hour for 8 minutes of driving didn’t make sense to me, so I called it and moved dinner up earlier instead.

Dinner at Sukhumvit Soi 22 turned into Amritsari Kulcha, Indian food, and Ted’s first time trying it. Crispy, well-stuffed, genuinely fragrant, and the accompanying chole was only average next to how good the kulcha itself turned out. We worked through the rest of the plate together, curd, dal, a potato and cauliflower mix, chapati, a sweet dip to cut through the salt, no fixed order, just working through it piece by piece. Ted’s read on it summed the whole meal up well, a completely new world of food, tried for the first time on a random Tuesday in Bangkok. There’s something genuinely nice about introducing a friend to your own country’s food thousands of kilometres from home.

Worth mentioning, since it’s part of the same Bangkok stopover even though it happened the evening I landed: I took a dinner river cruise along the Chao Phraya, temples lit up along the banks, genuinely one of Bangkok’s better evening options if you want the skyline without walking it. What I hadn’t expected was what came after, somewhere between 1,000 and 1,200 drones lighting up the sky in shifting formations and colours, followed by a fireworks display after a short pause. I’ve seen a fair number of fireworks shows on this trip alone, and this is genuinely the most unique one I’ve come across, worth checking what’s currently scheduled if you’re planning a Bangkok evening, since these large-scale drone shows tend to run around specific dates rather than every night.

Wat Pho entrance	300 THB for foreign visitors; includes a bottle of water
Wat Pho massage	340 THB / 30 min, 520 THB / hour, official rates, no advance booking needed
Grand Palace	Budget 2 to 2.5 hours; separate entrance fee applies, check current pricing before you go
Dress code	Shoulders and knees covered at Wat Pho and the Grand Palace; sarongs available on-site if needed

From here, I flew to Singapore, which turned into its own small series on this blog: Merlion Park to Chinatown: Singapore, Singapore: Katong, Marina Bay Sands, and Little India, A Day in Singapore: Orchard Road to Night Safari, and Sentosa Island and Universal Studios Singapore.