Field report · Bangkok and the Gulf of Thailand coast, Thailand
The coast between two Bangkoks
Two stretches in Bangkok bracket a week on Thailand's gulf coast, with wild elephants, mangrove canals and a ringside seat at Rajadamnern in between.
Thailand
We landed in Thailand twice, on either side of a week spent on the gulf coast, and the two Bangkoks barely felt like the same stop.
The last flight out of Laos put us down in Luang Prabang on December 23, with an AirAsia plane and a Lao Airlines sign behind us at the gate, the final domestic leg before Thailand. From there it was on to Bangkok, and into a city that would end up bookending this whole stretch of the trip rather than sitting at one end of it.
We had planned on Bangkok. We had not planned on the week in between.
“We had planned on Bangkok. We had not planned on the week in between.”
From the journalFour days in the first Bangkok
Our first stretch in the city ran from December 24 to 27. Christmas Eve dinner opened with a starter of shaved black truffle, prosciutto and burrata, a quiet, deliberately low-key way to mark the day away from home.
Two days later we took a longtail boat out onto Bangkok's khlongs, the canal network that runs behind the modern city. The boat cut past stilt houses built right to the waterline, and the ride brought us out onto the Chao Phraya River with a clear view of Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn, catching the afternoon light from the water. A tuk-tuk ride the next day closed out the stop before we headed south along the coast.
Kui Buri and the coast south of Hua Hin
From December 28 through January 2 we based ourselves on the coast near Pranburi and Hua Hin, a part of the trip that had not been on the original plan at all. It turned into one of the fuller stretches of the whole Thailand leg.
On December 29 we took a wooden boardwalk through mangroves toward a limestone karst hill, and later went out by boat to a floating fishing community built on stilts, kayaks tied up alongside the houses. The next day we drove inland to Kui Buri National Park, one of Thailand's known spots for viewing wild elephants outside a sanctuary setting. We photographed the visitor centre sign first, then found a small herd grazing at the edge of the grassland with cattle egrets moving alongside them, a genuinely wild sighting rather than a staged one.
New year on the gulf
We saw in the new year at the same coastal base, a quiet poolside evening on December 31 rather than anything organized. On January 2, a boat trip up a mangrove canal in the Sam Roi Yot area gave us a great egret working the shallows, a calm, green, slow-moving contrast to the elephants two days earlier.
“The week on the coast was not the plan. It turned out to be the part we would add back in without hesitating.”
From the journalBack to Bangkok, ringside
We returned to Bangkok on January 5 for a longer stay, this time at the Bangkok Marriott Hotel The Surawongse, matching a booking note from the original planning documents and confirmed by the GPS location in our photos. On the evening of January 8 we went to a Muay Thai match at Rajadamnern Stadium, the stadium's name clearly lit on the ring-side signage, a fitting, noisy close to a leg of the trip that had already covered a temple by boat, elephants at a treeline and mangroves twice over.
Thailand. Our own photographs from the trip.
The photos from this leg run out on January 10, one day short of the checkout date in the original booking. Whatever the last day actually held, it is not in the record we kept, so we are leaving it there rather than filling it in.
From the journal · The Travelling T · Went late December 2024 to early January 2025
