BANGKOK

It is a chaotic but beautiful city, with many splendid attractions and I have visited it many times, the first in 1990 during a trip in the company of a friend of mine from Trieste when we went to visit Indonesia and Singapore and then he left and I flew instead to Bngkok to visit the city but also the north of the country. I then returned there several times during several trips to South East Asia and Bangkok was always the airport of arrival and departure when I visited Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia, Vietnam and even India and Malaysia. The main jewel of the Thai metropolis is its royal palace which leaves its visitors speechless with the beauty of the colorful buildings rich in statues and unusual architectural forms for us Europeans, it is made up of around a hundred buildings surrounded by walls for about 2 km and along the bank of the Chao Praya river which crosses the city like the Grand Canal in Venice. The most renowned piece is Wat Phra Kaew which contains a statue of the Emerald Buddha and is highly revered by Buddhists. Then there are various temples such as the beautiful Wat Arun on the river in the shape of a missile and whose name has to do with the dawn as in these hours the temple takes on particular and romantic lights. Then Wat Pho, the oldest temple and home to the first school, which houses an enormous reclining Buddha 46 meters long and 15 meters high with mother-of-pearl feet with the representation of a hundred scenes from his life. in the beautiful surrounding gardens there is a tree whose roots derive from the tree where the Buddha meditated and received enlightenment. Another beautiful temple is Wat Saket, you have to climb 300 steps but after that you can enjoy an unparalleled view of the city. Wat Tramit which houses the largest solid gold statue in the world, a three meter tall Buddha weighing 5 tons, highly revered in the country The beautiful home of the American architect and entrepreneur Jim Thompson who disappeared in 1967 during a trip to Malaysia and was never found. The residence is made up of a series of six teak buildings with wonderful exotic gardens crossed by canals. The furnishings made up of porcelain, antique furniture, sculptures and ceramics are extraordinary. But Bangkok also has a modern, commercial and cosmopolitan soul like that of Siam Square with shopping centers, with restaurants offering local specialties but also an aquarium and Madame Tussaud's wax museum. The BACC Bangkok Art & Culture Center is a museum inside a nine-storey building that offers everything for all tastes. The rooftop bars on the top floor of skyscrapers where in the evening you go to taste cocktails and admire the panorama of the illuminated city. Bangkok also has a nice relaxing park, the 58 hectare Lumphini Park, which is much loved by residents who come there to escape the chaos of the city which, however, has improved a lot since the metro line and the elevated road were built which, together with the boats on the canal constitute an alternative to taxis and tuk-tuks, very well-known and noisy local taxis inside our Ape Piaggio and which are sometimes better avoided because they cost more than a taxi with a speedometer if it is operated and you have to ask and demand it. Then there is the famous Khao San Road, the street food street with many stalls offering low-priced Thai food and many clothing shops, bars, restaurants and low-priced hotels frequented mainly by travelers on a low budget who travel around with their backpack, the district was very successful after the film "the Beach" with Leonardo di Caprio who stayed there. The Damnoen Saduak floating market, which features stalls on longtail boats but is 100km away from the centre. Then there is the strange Maeklong market 65 km away where there are stalls for different types of goods between the train tracks and when the train arrives the sellers pull the goods on display back so as not to be overwhelmed. A large amusement park with six zones, Siam Park City, The ancient capital Ayutthaya can be reached by train in a couple of hours north of Bangkok. At the time of its splendor it had three royal palaces and 400 temples, today you can visit three of which there is a Buddha head set among the roots of the trees and then a 19 meter high statue of the Buddha. However, the site is suggestive and relaxing, you can get around with rented bicycles or by taxi which costs little. Don't miss the huge Chatuchak market open on Saturdays and reachable by train or bus and where you can buy everything from handicrafts to clothes. Otherwise the MBK shopping center in the center with an 8-storey shopping center and 2,000 shops. Of course we know that Bangkok is also the city of traditional massages (recommended are those at the Wat Po temple by blind professional masseurs and then the oil ones given by good masseuses some of whom ask at the end if you want a happy ending... . The nightlife is especially popular in the Patpong district where there is a night market and the red light district for all tastes and genres, certain streets dedicated entirely to gays, others where drag queens perform and many massage parlors with willing girls but don't forget that in Thailand prostitution is a crime to which one eye and the other are turned, but which can also reserve unpleasant surprises