Hop On Hop Off boat tour

Wat Rakhan Royal Temple

November 18th, 2024

We took the sky train to buy tickets to the Chao Phraya Tourist Boat Co. hop-on hop-off. The boat goes up and down the river and allows people, like a hop-on hop-off bus, to get on and off at various tourist sites along the Chao Phraya River. I have to admit, I enjoyed it more than I expected to. I have taken hop-on hop-off bus tours in other cities and ran into issues with the buses running late or being full. These boats ran on a tight schedule and kept to it. I was impressed.

I think the ticket was around $5, and we made full use of it. After stopping at a temple, we had a snack at the Wang Lang Market and then went to ICONSIAM, a huge shopping mall with a huge food court. We got Pho for lunch in one of the restaurants before heading to the hotel to take a break.

It was then on to the Temple of Dawn (Wat Arun). We wanted to get there around sunset knowing they were going to light it up right after sunset. It was packed with both Thai people as well as foreigners. Many of them dressed in traditional costumes.

I remember years ago, before social media, visiting Ukraine and noticing that people loved to dress up in different costumes and pose for picture. As I watched the groups of people posing for pictures at Wat Arun, I couldn’t help but notice that they had gone all out with costumes, full hair and makeup and professional photographers.

We waited to see them light it up and then we fought to get on one of the last boats to Asiatique, a fun riverfront area with restaurants, clubs and shopping along with a Ferris wheel and haunted house ride. Bangkok has a lot of malls, and each one tries to outdo the previous one.

We had dinner at Peppery Thai Bistro and both of us were impressed. They have several locations; we made sure to note the name for future trips.

We decided that we had to go on the Chiang Ferris Wheel, and we even went on the haunted house ride. The Ferris Wheel was fun, and the views were great, but the haunted house ride was cheesy.