Bangkok for kids: Our experience
Bangkok for kids: G’day mates. We have been in Bangkok for just over a week, and have had a pretty whirlwind, not-stopping-for-breath experience of the Thai capital.
Our main reason for being here was as a pitstop on the way to the charity that we are visiting further north in Thailand, but it has turned out to be a fantastic spot to see and do some of the highlights of Thai city life. We’ve visited the Disney-esque neon-pink theme park Dream World, eaten rainbow ‘fairy floss’ in a Unicorn cafe, posed with 3D illusion art at the Art in Paradise museum and considered breathing through a colander to filter out some of the dirt in the air.
Bangkok for kids: It’s intense
Bangkok is not for the faint-hearted; its gritty, dirty, dark and full of adventure. In the evenings the sky turns a peach haze as the sun fights through the smoggy atmosphere and everything is covered in a layer of black grime.
We’ve been staying at the Blue Jasmine Hostel, the usual kind frequented by backpackers staying in dorms. We have a room on the third floor (big mistake, 70 steps up and down any time we want to do anything) with four beds and a private bathroom. In hindsight we should have got the bunk room with 6 beds and a shared bathroom; we thought we’d be ok with the two inflatable mattresses that we had packed in our suitcases. Queue a lost mattress valve and no space to inflate both of them anyway, and things got just so awful cosy.
Want to hear a joke?
“What’s worse for all your relationships than sharing a 33 degree, 4-bed room with your 3 kids, mother and husband?”
“I don’t know, what is worse for your relationships than sharing a 33 degree, 4-bed room with your 3 kids, mother and husband?”
“Nothing!” Ha, ha, *sob*.
We’ve done it, we coped and we are outta here, to a Real Hotel With Separate Rooms, hallelujah.
Bangkok for kids: Snakes, lizards and unicorns
But first, about Bangkok. I could tell you all about the locations and entrance costs and all that jazz of everything we’ve done, but I’ll leave that for the boring info posts. What you guys want to know about is what they have in the parks here instead of ducks, of course, so I’ll tell you.
Giant monitor lizards, and snakes.
Lovely. Patrick took the kids for a run around in Lumpini Park near to where we are staying- Bangkok is crowded and it is a fair challenge to find ample space where you can just breathe and run around and get some air (no matter how much of it is in fact, soot).
On their return, I asked how the park had been.
“Great Mummy, the lizard saved us from a snake!”
And so it had. A black snake had slithered towards them, and a monitor lizard had sprung out of the murky lake nearby, pounced on it, entertained a brief fight and swallowed the thing like a noodle.
I don’t know about you, but when I wave my kids off for a quick play on the swings and an ice-cream, I don’t expect them to come back sounding like characters from Jumanji.
The other notable thing in Bangkok, apart from Jurassic Park playgrounds, is mango. Mango flavoured smoothies, mango flavoured ice cream, mango flavoured buns, mango flavoured mango. And more mango.
Also, durian fruit. What’s with that? It smells awful, like old drains, and is so pungent that hotels and hostels have fines for anyone who brings a durian within their walls.
Bangkok is surprisingly packed with child-friendly activities and attractions. In our week we visited Dream World theme park, the 3D Art in Paradise Museum, the Discovery Museum, the gorgeous cinema (what, no, Patrick and I didn’t cry at the new Disney film Coco, who told you that?) and several shopping malls, which seem to take up most of Bangkok’s square footage. we also rode in a Tuk Tuk, ate rainbow food at the unicorn cafe, hopped on a taxi boat, got the kids massages at Khao San road, and bought the kids’ Christmas presents. Phew!
We really thought that we would struggle to find things to do with kids in Bangkok, but we didn’t even scratch the surface. We will definitely be back to the Thai capital to take in more city attractions, re-visit the Unicorn cafe and shorten our life expectancy by another couple of years from inhaling air that is 99% vehicle fumes and 1% air.
To read about our time in Bali, including a complete guide to the island, click here.
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