Bangkok & Phuket — City and Sea

Into the city and checked in, with the evening for a rooftop bar and a first look at the river. Bangkok makes very little sense from the ground on day one — the scale, the heat and the traffic are all more than most people expect — and seeing the Chao Phraya from above with the city lit around it is the fastest way to get oriented. Nothing else is scheduled.

The Grand Palace at opening, before the heat and the tour groups: a walled complex begun in 1782 holding Wat Phra Kaew and the Emerald Buddha, a jade figure that is the most revered object in the country and whose robes the king changes with the seasons. Wat Pho next door holds a reclining Buddha forty-six metres long. The afternoon is a longtail through the Thonburi canals, where houses sit on stilts over the water and the older city survives. Street food after dark.

A short flight south to the Andaman coast, which takes about ninety minutes and is much the best way to make the journey — the overnight bus and train both exist and both cost a day. Into Phuket around the middle of the day and onto the west coast for the afternoon. The beach here faces west, which means the sunsets are the event, and the sea state changes markedly with the season.

Out by longtail into Phang Nga Bay, which is the reason to be on this coast — several hundred limestone karsts standing vertically out of shallow green water, undercut at the base by the tide. The day includes sea caves and the hongs, collapsed cave systems inside the islands reached by canoe through low tunnels passable only near low water. The tide table rather than the clock sets the timing.

Phuket Old Town in the morning, which most visitors to the island never see: rows of Sino-Portuguese shophouses in ochre and green, built by Hokkien Chinese tin-mining families in the nineteenth century and now restored, with cafés and small museums along Thalang and Dibuk roads. The Sunday walking street runs through it if the day falls right. Back to the west coast for the last afternoon and the sunset.

A last morning on the coast before the transfer. Phuket airport is at the northern end of the island and the drive from the southern beaches can take an hour or more in traffic, so the departure needs more margin than the distance suggests. If the flight is late there is time for a final swim, or for the Big Buddha on the hill above Chalong, which has the best overview of the island.