In Bangkok you can buy anything you can think of — and quite a few things you can't. Clothes, accessories, electronics, fake university degrees, counterfeit FBI badges.
A walk along Khao San Road and the surrounding alleyways reveals the backpacker heartland of the Thai capital. Everything is geared towards the Western tourist: food stalls, street massages, guesthouses at every price point, transport and visa agencies, restaurants, bars, and stalls selling clothes and electronics.
But what really caught my attention was the sheer proliferation of fakes.
All kinds of fake IDs for sale on Khao San Road
Even fake university degrees!
Street vendors aren't just a Khao San Road thing. All of Bangkok is packed with sellers trying to catch the eye of anyone who walks past.
In Bangkok's streets you can find anything for sale. ANYTHING.
The best part of all, though, is that if you go hungry in Bangkok it's a conscious choice. On every corner, in every street and down every alley you'll find at least one stall offering Pad Thai, soups, meat skewers, sausages or fruit. And always at standard prices. That said, it's always worth checking the price before you commit and refusing to pay more than the going rate: 10 baht (about 25 euro cents) for a skewer, 20 baht for something slightly bigger, 30 baht for a simple meal, 40 for a normal portion and 50 for something large or with something special.
You'd be hard pressed to walk 50 metres in Bangkok without passing a street food stall
Enjoying a good meal for 50 baht (€1.25).
Delicious vegetarian rice with tofu and garlic sauce for 30 baht
The tourist's constant companion in Bangkok is the tuk-tuk — drivers will hassle you on every corner — but unless you're a seasoned negotiator and they've got nothing better to do, the chances of getting a reasonable price are slim. For public transport, nothing beats the bus (very cheap), the river ferry (my personal favourite), metered taxis (supposedly cheap and honest about the meter) or the Sky Train for longer distances in a hurry (much pricier than the bus, but you'll skip the traffic jams).
Bangkok's most tourist-friendly form of transport: the tuk-tuk.
A snapshot of Thai life at one of the river ferry stops
During our time in Bangkok we did a fair bit of shopping, heading to the shopping centres in the more central areas of the city. We picked up some camera accessories and kicked off the business we'd use to keep ourselves going during our first months back in Europe: buying dresses and blouses to sell on in Latvia.
