The Best 5 Tours in Bangkok
1. Bangkok’s Best Bicycle Tour
2. Ayutthaya and Bang Pa In Summer Palace (Winner 2023 Viator Experience Award)
3. Floating Market and Train Market Private Tour
4. Grand Palace, Wat Pho and Canal Tour
5. Dinner Cruise by Night
Thailand’s capital Bangkok is a city of many faces. It seems like every neighbourhood has a unique character, looks different. The old royal city centre is relatively quiet, if you walk into some of the narrow streets, you will see how people really live here, you will find unexpected markets and small altars. In contrast, around Sukhumvit is actually busy, with luxury shopping malls, stall trading, and good street food and nice local restaurants in the side streets. A totally different experience is the Chao Phraya River, where the Grand Palace and the city’s main temples stand on its banks. There are long-tail boats, ferries and even bigger ships. If you take one of these long-tail boats on the city’s oldest canals, in no time you will find yourself in the countryside, with wooden houses, monitor lizards looking for food and small boats with merchandise. Then you also understand why floating markets were once a daily occurrence here.
Bangkok is a fun and whirlwind city, where it is busy, but where in many places you experience a tranquility you wouldn’t think possible in a city this size. There are lovely markets to stroll across, hundreds of temples whose striking roofs glisten over the surroundings, rooftop bars with breathtaking views, and large parks with ponds and swamp gardens. Explore the city and the wider area by bike or boat, accompanied by our guides, who will make sure you don’t miss a thing.
These are 5 tours you absolutely want to do!
1. Bangkok’s Best Bicycle Tour
Cycling in Bangkok is one of the best ways to see a lot of the city. Even if you’re not a very experienced cyclist, you can do this half-day tour that takes you through the city’s oldest neighbourhoods, to markets and riverside parks, and through Chinatown, one of Bangkok’s most spectacular districts. Of course, our guide will also take you to some temples that are unfairly overlooked by many visitors, but are defining landmarks of the Thonburi district, the very beginning of what became the cosmopolitan city of Bangkok.
Take a look at Bangkok’s Best Bicycle Tour.
2. Ayutthaya and Bang Pa In Summer Palace
Winner of the 2023 Viator Experience Award. This day tour takes you past royal sites through Thailand’s rich history. In Ayutthaya, which was a prosperous kingdom of its own for hundreds of years, you’ll visit the most beautiful temples and palace ruins, such as Wat Phu Khao Thong, also called the monastery of the golden mount, and come to the temple with one of Thailand’s largest bronze Buddha statues. After lunch, the tour continues at Wat Lokaya Sutha, with a large reclining Buddha. Bang Pa-In was already a king’s summer palace in the 17th century, and has been maintained and expanded by subsequent monarchs over the hundreds of years since. The result is a beautiful complex full of gardens and ponds, with original palace buildings and impressive replicas of historic Thai pagodas and towers.
Take a look at the Ayutthaya and Bang Pa In Summer Palace tour.
3. Floating Market and Train Market Private Tour
A day at the market has never been so much fun. On this tour, you will visit two of Thailand’s most remarkable and eye-catching markets: Damnuern Saduak, the country’s most famous floating market and the Maeklong train market. Here, an approaching train forces traders to remove their wares from the tracks in great haste. As soon as the train has left the narrow market street again, in no time the merchandise is displayed on the track again, as if no train has ever passed. At the Damnuern Saduak floating market, you take a long-tail boat ride on the klongs, the narrow canals where the market takes place, and find yourself amidst the trade in fruit, vegetables and Thai delicacies.
Take a look at the Floating Market and Train Market Private Tour.
4. Grand Palace, Wat Pho and Canal Tour
This tour takes place entirely in the heart of old Bangkok, on and around the Chao Phraya River. You visit the Thai capital’s most important temples and take a one-hour boat trip on the ‘klongs’, the narrow canals of Thonburi, the place where King Taksin created the beginnings of Bangkok in the 18th century, and where time seems to have stood still. You won’t experience the watery Bangkok countryside anywhere better than here. The Grand Palace is where Thailand’s first kings lived and worked. The Emerald Buddha, the country’s most important statue, stands there in the palace’s Wat Phra Kaew temple, the capital’s most glamorous and radiant temple. Wat Pho, best known for the 46-metre-long Reclining Buddha, has a different vibe. This largest temple in Bangkok, with more than 1,000 Buddha statues, is still in use and therefore the best experience to see what a temple looks like inside in Thailand.
Take a look at the Grand Palace, Wat Pho and Canal Tour.
5. Dinner Cruise by Night
It is not difficult to eat well in Bangkok. You can probably already do it around the corner from your hotel, and otherwise at a popular local restaurant or at a beautiful rooftop location. But truly unique is enjoying a delicious first-class dinner in the open air on an antique teakwood Thai rice barge, cruising peacefully along the Chao Phraya River. As you discover why Thai cuisine is considered among the best in the world, you sail past some of Bangkok’s most famous buildings, such as the brightly lit Grand Palace and the strikingly beautiful stupa of Wat Arun.
Take a look at the Dinner Cruise by Night.