By Keith Austin
Like all big cities there is a Bangkok beneath the Bangkok that most visitors experience, the one made up of those spots only the locals know about, the bit of the tourist iceberg below the waterline.
Which is all very well, but what if you don't know any locals? Then the Anantara Bangkok Riverside Resort and Spa has just the thing in its Streetwise Guru and Klong [canal] Guru tours. With the help of an English-speaking member of staff, you can burrow a little more deeply under the skin of a capital city that can be intimidating even for experienced visitors.
Our 'guru' for the tours – we are doing both in one day - is the improbably named Diamond Geezer (an epithet bestowed on him by a visiting Londoner). Mr Geezer (aka Waiyawit Thongserm) is a concierge at the hotel who is funny and knowledgeable about the city that he has made his own and wonderfully enthusiastic about making sure we experience a side of it not often seen by visitors.
Tailboat in the Thonburi area on the west side of the Chao Phraya River. Credit: Keith Austin
The day starts with a 15-minute boat ride from the resort to Sathorn Bridge Pier and a short walk around the corner to Wat Yannawa, an urban Buddhist temple off the usual tourist path. Situated on the edge of the Chao Phraya River the temple complex is unusual in that it includes a huge concrete prayer hall in the shape of a Chinese junk.
It was built on the orders of King Rama III who reigned from 1824-1851 and who, it seems, was a bit of an anorak for junks. Realising that steam ships were gradually replacing the vessels that had done so much to bring trade and, therefore, prosperity to his country he had the 'ship' built in homage and in memoriam.
The temple area in general is a whirl of genuflecting worshippers and festooned with the usual mix of Buddhist statues, giant candles, bright flower garlands and saffron-robed monks.
Khlong Bang Luang and the Artists House (Baan Sinlapin). Credit: Keith Austin
At the rear of the complex there's a platform from which, after buying a loaf of bread from a nearby vendor, you can feed the frenzy of catfish which wells up from the murky depths of the river.
Soon after, we begin our very own feeding frenzy. It starts at a fried banana stall in Charoen Krung Road and continues through the next three hours during which we manage to put away fruit that looks like it's fallen out of an alien's shopping bag and then dive into startlingly soft chicken satays, sugary iced coffees, a shot of lao khao, a strong rice whisky that market workers nip on during the day to keep them going, and khanom krok, a street sweet made of hot coconut pudding in a crisp rice pastry shell garnished, oddly, with shallots. This is hugely popular throughout Thailand, but blow on it before eating it as it is filled with lava. Trust me on this.
We follow Mr Geezer down side streets and narrow alleyways which open on to bustling covered markets where we are the only Caucasian faces. He points out the "naked butcher" who, thank heaven, isn't actually nude but always works bare-chested, surrounded on his stall by large hunks of meat and offal impaled on vicious-looking hooks. Just across the way another khanom krok seller is cooking up his little chunks of nuclear fission, and just beyond that a shaft of light illuminates a small, flower-swathed Buddhist shrine on a peeling pedestal.
Fried banana stall in Charoen Krung Road. Credit: Keith Austin
Shortly after this we jump on a tuk-tuk or two and weave through the frantic traffic to the Bangkok flower market (Pak Klong Talad) on and around Chak Phet Road near Memorial Bridge. There's been a market of sorts here for many years – a general floating market gave way to a riverside fish market and then to a produce market – but you'd never know it today.
There's a mind-boggling array of fresh flowers; the sheer volume is staggering. Here are flowers threaded together to form myriad garlands and other arrangements, blossoms packed into plastic bags like rainbow-coloured sardines, bouquets sold in packs of 50 or 100.
We spot roses, iris, forget-me-nots, orchids, lilies, chrysanthemum, gerbera, tulips, snapdragons and more. Jasmine and marigold are especially plentiful, mainly because of the demand from the local poor who make a living stringing them together into the traditional Thai phuang malai (flower garlands).
![Anantara Bangkok Riverside Resort and Spa's Streetwise Guru and Klong [canal] Guru tours.](https://static.ffx.io/images/$zoom_1%2C$multiply_0.361%2C$ratio_0.666667%2C$width_1424%2C$x_76%2C$y_0/t_crop_custom/q_62%2Cf_auto/bf2d54aca6df9e5308af78d3d718bf232865103c)
Anantara Bangkok Riverside Resort and Spa's Streetwise Guru and Klong [canal] Guru tours. Credit: Keith Austin
It's a smorgasbord of electric colour, street after seemingly endless street of flowers gathered together like multi-hued clouds or a Jackson Pollock. And the whole gaff smells pretty good, too.
In one covered market piled high with marigold we try locally made ice-cream and then, a little further along, top up with a skewer or two of the BFC (Bangkok fried chicken) that TV chef Anthony Bourdain loved so much – and rightly so.
Our next stop is Tha Din Daeng Road where we take a seat at a roadside noodle stall and sip cool beers while Mr Geezer orders up a storm. Do we have room? Oh well, if you insist.
What arrives are bowls of delicious boat noodles, yet more satay and a welcome salad. As we slurp away, the sound of sizzling meat on the long makeshift grill nearby is accompanied by a blue-grey haze of charcoal smoke that wafts across the street.
Not far away, a gai yang (BBQ chicken) vendor is basting chooks that sell for about A$4 each and give off an aroma that is as beguiling as they are cheap. It's so enticing that we end up ordering one and devour it with our fingers standing at the stall.
In the afternoon, after a well-deserved food coma, sorry, siesta, we pile into one of the distinctive longtail speedboats for a tour of the canals that dot this part of the city. Bangkok was once criss-crossed by hundreds of kilometres of canals and was known as the Venice of the East, but today most of them have been filled in.
However, the Thonburi area on the west side of the Chao Phraya River still retains a patchwork of the old klongs and it's to here that we head, entering through a large lock and immediately emerging in a wide canal lined with ramshackle waterside huts on flimsy stilts.
Here, the obligatory gaggle of giggling children wave and tumble photogenically into dark waters where prehistoric-looking monitor lizards glide and the swollen bodies of dead dogs bob about like furry balloons.
We pass once-pretty homes succumbing to rot and large concrete factories with all the charm of a 1960s London council estate and then ease around a bend to discover a charming temple, riverside one-stop shops made of recycled wood and plastic tarp, luxurious teak houses and agreeable old colonial mansions.
In a word, it's brilliant. Despite the disquieting dichotomy of so much wealth cheek-by-jowl with so much poverty, this is a glimpse of a more tranquil Bangkok before the skyscrapers and the car-jammed expressways.
We stop at a small Buddhist temple rarely visited by Westerners, Wat Ratcha Orasaram Ratchaworawiharn , and then putter on to Khlong Bang Luang and the fascinating Artists' House (Baan Sinlapin).
This old two-storey teak house sits right up against the canal and is built around a stone chedi, or stupa. Depending on your source the newly renovated house is up to 200 years old while the chedi, which stands in an open-air courtyard, is anything from 300 to 600 years old. Either way, it's pretty cool.
You'll know you're there by the sight of the life-size human statues – painted red, black and white - sitting on the upper balcony overlooking the river. Once dilapidated and in danger of falling into the klong, the house has been restored and now houses a few small shops and art galleries. A popular thing to do is buy a huge plastic bag of brightly coloured pellets to feed to the fish from the balcony.
The Artists' House itself is at the end of the balcony and is an eclectic and fascinating combination of art centre, souvenir shop, stationery store, café (great iced coffee, by the way) and an art galleryThere's also a daily (except Wednesday) traditional puppet show in the garden around the chedi.
We then troll back through the laidback neighbourhood, where smaller art studios, galleries, cafes and a restaurants have begun to spring up, and climb back into our tailboat for the short trip back to the hotel where we take our leave of the irrepressible Diamond Geezer with a cheery 'luvvly jubbly day, my son'. And it was.
TRIP NOTES
MORE INFORMATION
GETTING THERE
Most of the major airlines fly direct to Bangkok from the main Australian cities. Visit www.webjet.com.au for details.
STAYING THERE
Anantara Riverside Bangkok is a five-star hotel on the banks of the Chao Phraya River in 11 acres of gardens. It has 396 rooms and suites as well as 10 bars and restaurants. Rooms start at $166 a night (including local fees and taxes). Each room also comes with a complimentary smartphone with unlimited calls, texts and internet. Visit www.bangkok-riverside.anantara.com for more details.
THE TOURS
The Streetwise Guru Hidden Bangkok food tour costs 2,500 Thai Baht (A$95) per person and includes transportation, all meals, non-alcoholic beverages and admissions charges.
The Klong Guru Riverside Culture Tour leaves the hotel at 11am daily and costs 2000 Thai Baht per person (A$76). Both tours require a minimum of two people to go ahead and reservations must be made three days in advance.
Keith Austin was a guest of Anantara Resorts and Spas.
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