Or the subway. The Chatuchak Market area is one of the few places the Skytrain and subway intersect. But the Skytrain is better for the views.
I’ve been to Pattaya many times, and have yet to see sex in the streets.
Still wouldn’t recommend taking children there.
Get SIM cards for your phones at 7-11/FamilyMart or whatever quick convenience store is closest. They will program it in if you prefer although the cards come with instructions in English.
You might not need an adaptor for electronics, I think any big hotel would have the multi-prong-type outlets.
Hilton? The Millennium is on the river, very dramatic setting. It’s on the opposite bank but they have a cross-river ferry for guests. Can’t remember if it also takes you to the Skytrain/River Boat stop (diagonally across), I think so.
In most countries, you can pick up a local-config USB charger plug for about five bucks, at any shop that sells electronics. I have one for European plugs which I carry along, it works in Thailand. They all fit a standard USB connector, with a mini- or micro-USB on the device end. Voltage doesn’t matter anymore, you don’t need a converter for current.
Well I didn’t see it 
Also, I wouldn’t say that was the norm, there was a lot of outrage about it. If I found someone arrested for public oral sex in New York City, I wouldn’t say there was “sex in the streets” to someone looking to visit there.
Yeah, it was Soi 6 after all. And those of you who know Pattaya, I’m sure “Soi 6” are the only two words needed, heh.
A friend who goes to Pattaya a lot took photos along that soi earlier this year, with the girls outside holding up English-language signs such as one I remember that read: “Buy drink, free fuck in ass.” A lot of people would say, “Yeah, but the drink’s $30 or $50, right?” Well, no, the drinks are only a couple of bucks. (Granted, the “free fuck in ass” is probably false advertising, she’d expect a “tip.”) But who’s to say a newbie with family in tow wouldn’t inadvertently find himself on Soi 6 – or Soi LK Metro, or Soi Diana, or Soi Honey, or Soi Chaiyapoon, or Soi Lengkee, hell, even Walking Street – and not end up having to cover his kids’ eyes if not flee at full trot? 
Add to that you really can’t swim in the water there without risking a number of skin and other diseases, for that you have to go to all the way to Wong Amat north of the town proper – like I did last October – or to Jomtien to the south. No, there are more family-friendly places in Thailand. Just about every other place in Thailand is more family-friendly. Pattaya is Sex-Tourist Central.
Is the best way to get from Bangkok to Chiang Mai by airplane, if you don’t want to spend all day on a train? Are there internal airlines I should stay away from?
And I guess this could be a stupid question, but I cannot find a single first class seat from Bangkok to Chiang Mai on any airline, any flight. Is that just not done internally? 
Airplane is definitely the easiest way to go. It’s only about an hour.
As for first class - you can’t go wrong with business class on Thai Airways, which is very trustworthy and has a TON of flights.
Well, maybe an hour and a half. But yeah, I think Thai Airways may be the only airline that has classes domestically, although I’m not sure about Bangkok Airways. All other domestic carriers are budget airlines and don’t do classes. But then for such a short hop, most people don’t care.
I would stay completely away from Thai Smile, a budget airline of Thai Airways. They’ve been having a lot of trouble lately. Our former favorite domestic carrier, Nok Air, another budget carrier of Thai Airways, has also had many problems lately and recently started taking to canceling flights with no notice due partly but not completely to pilot walkouts, so we don’t touch them anymore. And if you fly Orient Thai Airlines, there is a good chance you will die, but fortunately for you they don’t fly to Chiang Mai.
Thai Airways itself now operates at a heavy loss each year. It’s become a complete money sink for the government. I remember it was a great airline in the 1980s and even into the 1990s, but now it seems like the Letters page in the local newspapers are routinely flooded with complaints. And they’re godawfully expensive compared with everyone else, both domestic and international. For example, we chose Vietnam Airlines over Thai Airways for our Vietnamese trip due to the latter being something like three times the cost.
Nowadays we always fly Thai AirAsia domestically, the local subsidiary of Malaysia-based AirAsia. That this is our domestic carrier of choice despite it being largely owned by the Shinawatra family, who is heavily despised by myself but especially the wife, says a lot about its performance.
I definitely would not recommend the train anymore. This is another former icon that was great 20 years ago, but has fallen into trouble lately. I swear there were daily derailments earlier this year and last year. The State Railway of Thailand is quite a joke nowadays. Twenty and 30 years ago, they were a great way to travel, and their limited coverage was a pity. Now it’s a crap shoot if you’ll even get to your destination, if not due to your train derailing then from the track being closed due to some other train derailing. I’d take the bus over the train now, as buses are faster than trains, and they’re not as dangerous as in some other nearby countries such as China or Vietnam.
Thank you for the advice. I’m not certain yet about Chiang Mai, but this is great information.
I like Chiang Mai, but the last time I was there, last July, it was chock-a-block with Chinese tourists, and that was low season. Not the mass tour groups the rest of the country sees but independent travelers who now come overland from southern China. They all want to see the location shoots for a popular Chinese movie called Lost in Thailand (2012), which was filmed in northern Thailand, mainly in Chiang Mai. Like everywhere else here, it’s become a bit more crowded than in my salad days but still worth a look. Chiang Mai is known as the Rose of the North, although problems with garbage pickup and attendant smells a few years ago led to lots of interesting variations on that name. I think that’s been taken care of though.
We like staying near the Pratu Thaphae, the eastern gate of the walled Old City, but others like it farther from the Old City down Thaphae Road near the Ping River or even inside the Old City itself. Our hotel of choice for years was the Montri Hotel, but a few years ago they renovated and rebranded themselves as the Hotel M. When we tried booking, they gave us a song and dance about the rate advertised on their website not being available for whatever reason and offered us a “special” higher rate, so we said screw that. Stayed instead in what turned out to be a rather comfortable little guesthouse behind the M called Awanahouse, Dutch-owned and -operated. Looked chaotic at first, and other places nearby looked much nicer, but we ended up liking the place. The most expensive room was only about US$25, and it had air con and a private bathroom. Quite sufficient for our needs.
Chiang Rai is another nice place in the North. It’s where the Golden Triangle is. You can have your picture taken while standing in Thailand with both Myanmar and Laos right behind you.
There’s my old home of Mae Hong Son province. I lived in the capital city of Mae Hong Son from 1988-90, when the town’s population was only 5000. I think it’s up to 7000 now, still the smallest provincial capital in the country. I love just hanging out in the town. Always I pass on the “resorts” located on the edge of town and stay in the centrally located Baiyoke Chalet. I remember when it opened in 1988, and its nightclub became quite the hotspot. Then it went downhill a bit but looks much nicer now after a major refurbishment a few years ago. The Mel Gibson film Air America was filmed in this town while I was there, and I met Gibson briefly. (It was supposed to be Laos, but American viewers can be forgiven for not knowing all of what they’re seeing is Burmese style and not Lao.)
The problem with getting there is you have to take a long van or bus ride – eight or nine hours one way by bus, maybe six or seven by van, due to the mountainous nature of the area – or take the 35-minute flight from Chiang Mai. That was a good flight, operated by Thai Airways. The government declared it an essential route due to the lengthy land travel and subsidized it, keeping the one-way fare to a cheap $14. At one point, Bangkok Airways even started flights from Bangkok. But for one reason or another, the Bangkok flights stopped, and the government stopped subsidizing the Thai Airways service. Now all that flies there is the tiny Kan Air, from Chiang Mai. They’ve not had any problems, but the airline was founded as a hobby by a property developer, and it just doesn’t inspire confidence. I think the planes now are only 12-seaters. But it’s still nice standing at the Shan (local Burmese ethnic group) temple on the hill overlooking the town and looking down below you on the flight as it comes in for a landing and takes off.
Another place in MHS province that’s good is Bang Ma Pha district, home to many Shan and hilltribe villages. (The Shan, who make up the majority of the population in the province, are a Burmese ethnic group and not a hilltribe.) Unlike in my day, the province has electricity now, and the old Cave Lodge is still operating a few miles from the main town of Soppong. Cave Lodge is owned and operated by John Spies, an Aussie who has written several books on spelunking in the area, and his Shan wife Nang, who if I’m not mistaken was the first female trekking guide in Chiang Mai way back when. They possess a wealth of knowledge about the area.
I would not recommend the party town of Pai, about halfway on the northern route between Chiang Mai and MHS towns. It was a sleepy, lovely one-hotel town back in my day but has since been transformed into Party Central, an overgrown version of Bangkok’s Khao San Road backpacker haven and attracting every hippie-wannabe from the world over. It’s really become a slum.
Nan province on the other side of the North from MHS, bordering Laos instead of Myanmar, has been billed in recent years as “the other Mae Hong Son,” but that’s a sad overstatement. It’s nothing of the sort. But still a nice place.
As you can tell, I’m partial to the North.
Is there a beach near Bangkok you’d recommend for a day trip? We don’t care about group sex or other stuff on the beach, but I understand some of them are very polluted or not really safe?
Just don’t go to Pattaya for the beach. It’s filthy, and group sex might be the least of your worries.
The beach at Hua Hin is nice, about 2-1/2 hours on the upper peninsula. Maybe Cha-am just before Hua Hin. It’s been awhile since we were there though, but I’d say Cha-am and Hua Hin are probably the closest that would fit the bill. If you have to go to Pattaya, slightly closer in the other direction, then swim north of Pattaya at Wong Amat or south of Pattaya at Jomtien. The area is still no great shakes. We just came from there yesterday, and we weren’t packing any swimsuits.
As for beaches, I don’t know if you’d have time for it, but the best beach is generally considered to be Railay Beach in the southern province of Krabi. I’d be hard-pressed to disagree. Very nice. It’s connected to the mainland, but due to tall limestone cliffs, you can reach it only by boat, giving it an island feel. Not far from Phuket, which gets all the publicity but which to my and many others’ minds is largely crap. (I was there once almost 15 years ago. That was enough.)
I’m not much of a beach person, at least not here, not after living in Hawaii. I have seen nothing here that can compare with the grandeur of Hawaii. I’ll be moving back there in August, and I’m not hitting any beaches here for a farewell look, because I know so much better is coming around the corner. However, one plus that Thailand has over Hawaii is a distinct absence of shark activity.
Thank you. I don’t swim and beaches hold little interest for me other than visual (I’ve never been the “bake and get drunk on sand” thing), but Fierra swims.
That tiger temple has been raided and closed down.
If it’s visual that interests you, definitely avoid the beach at Pattaya. Head down the other way to Cha-am or Hua Hin if you want to stay close to Bangkok.
IMHO, and that of many others, those “monks” are just gangsters hiding behind orange robes. Every one of them ought to be defrocked and thrown in prison for a good long time. (And it may be about to happen, finally.) It’s just been announced this morning that a tiger slaughterhouse has been found near the temple. This after one of the head monks was caught trying to sneak tiger body parts and pelts out of the temple in a pickup truck last week that earlier raids failed to find.
Illegal trade in tiger parts is highly lucrative across Southeast Asia, their parts are believed to have magical effects. Few people here doubt that particular temple itself was heavily involved in the trade. It took in an estimated 100 million baht (US$2.84 million) annually in entry fees and related surface activities alone, never mind what they made in the illegal trade, and that pays off a lot of officials. National Geographic issued a damning report against the temple earlier this year, and there have been many investigative reports over the years, all of them negative. The temple has always been able to throw money at “the problem,” but they’ve finally reached the end of the road.
There are good monks, but there are many bad monks here too. Visitors often don’t understand being a monk is not a lifetime commitment like in the West. Traditionally, all Thai males are expected to be a monk at least once in their lives, often during the three-month Buddhist Lent period from July-October. If you are a monk before you are married, then your parents get the credit for it in the afterlife, if after marriage, then the wife gets the credit, so parents always push it before their sons’ marriage. But with hectic modern lifestyles, the three-month period has generally been pared down to thee days. I’ve even heard of some guys being a monk for just half a day!
And many temples act as de-facto rehabilitation centers or even hideouts. I very well remember one such temple who took in drug addicts. It was in the same province as the Tiger Temple, Kanchanaburi. This one young British lady tourist was visiting the temple 20 years ago, when one of the addict monks said he had “something special” to show her out in the woods. Supposedly, she felt very honored. “This holy man wants to show me something special.” Well, what he wanted to show her was special all right. It was between his legs. While attempting to rape her, she resisted, and he ended up killing her. My “favorite” story is the monk near Bangkok who at night would don a toupee and civvies, then cruise around and pick up chicks, taking them to an apartment he’d rented and outfitted with hidden cameras to record the sex. There have even been cases of temple gang rumbles, the monks from one temple and those from another duking it out.
There are many good monks, but I’ve become quite jaded about monks in general. Enjoy the temples, but don’t get carried away thinking this is some sort of spiritual paradise that it’s not.
Just wanted to pop back in an thank all for the advice. Found several options for 3 bedroom apartments and several sources to hire a driver and minivan for all of us. Was toying between going further out to Hua Hin or south of Pattaya to Jomtien and found Rabbit Resort in Jomtien so was leaning towards that. 3 days in Bangkok over the holiday weekend and then 2 days in Jomtien. Kids also want to do elephants so am looking at a day trip to Kanchanaburi, I was able to talk them out of any of the Tiger tours.
All that being said, my in-laws are still interested in just doing a package tour from Taiwan and are still looking into that so my plans are on hold and may be for naught or doing last minute once I go to Taiwan at the end of the month (rest of the family is already their now).
Kanchanaburi is lovely, and there’s no missing the Bridge Over the River Kwai (despite all the tourist dreck that’s built up nearby) and the Allied cemetery in town. Across from the cemetery is the Thailand-Burma Railway Centre, a really nice little museum. And if you have a chance to go out to Hellfire Pass, where so many of the war prisoners suffered and died, it’s quite a moving experience. I also like the nine-tier Erawan Falls, although that may be a bit farther afield than you’re looking for. One reason I like it is it’s so clean. There’s a strictly-enforced policy of no food or beverage containers above the second level, you leave them for safekeeping at a park-ranger stand. This is good because Thais are horrible litterbugs, and this keeps the place pristine.
But for elephants, a reputable outfit that’s closer to Bangkok is Elephantstay in Ayutthaya province, about an hour and a half north of Bangkok. It’s owned and operated by a couple of Aussies, one of them a former senior zookeeper at the Melbourne Zoo. They’re the go-to guys whenever a movie or TV show needs an elephant.