Bangkok

A garden of saltwater pools behind Siam Paragon, two minutes from the busiest BTS interchange in the city.

Every room faces the Chao Phraya, and the teak shuttle boat to the BTS is half the pleasure.

A boutique base five minutes' walk from Thong Lo BTS, priced well below the riverside big names.

A 1930s Shanghai fantasy in silk and lantern light, right on Yaowarat with the food stalls at the door.

Isaan cooking done properly for next to nothing, and they'll let you bring your own beer.

Come for the curry crab, order it without hesitation, and let the rest of the menu play backup.

Chinatown's loudest seafood corner: green shirts, wok smoke, grilled river prawns, and a queue by seven.

Le Du ('season' in Thai, despite the French look of the name) is chef Thitid 'Ton' Tassanakajohn's modern Thai flagship near Silom — crowned No.1 on Asia's 50 Best Restaurants in 2023 and Michelin-starred for tasting menus built on peak-season Thai produce.

Go at 08:30 or don't bother, the Emerald Buddha's courtyards fill up fast and stay full until closing.

Go at 08:30 sharp, cover your shoulders and legs, and give it three hours rather than one.

Porcelain-covered spires best seen late afternoon, and yes, the midday heat on those grounds is brutal.

Everyone comes for the 46-metre Reclining Buddha, but the stupas and courtyards are what stay with you.

A quick sandy escape from Bangkok when the southern islands are too far for one day off.

Go at six in the morning, before the heat turns 15,000 stalls into an endurance test.

Vast, air-conditioned and genuinely easy to navigate, with a top-floor food scene worth the trip alone.

Go at dusk, arrive by the free shuttle boat, and treat it as an evening out rather than a shopping trip.

Eight floors of small stalls and haggling, closer to an indoor market than a mall, and all the better for it.

Khongsittha Muay Thai pairs serious training with rare polish — a purpose-built camp in Bangkok's Lat Phrao area offering walk-in classes, multi-week programs, and on-site accommodation for travellers structuring a trip around the sport.

Bangkok Fight Lab is the city's modern combat-sports gym — a big, clean Sukhumvit-side facility where muay thai classes run alongside Brazilian jiu-jitsu and MMA, taught by an international coaching team with genuine competitive pedigree.

Elite Fight Club brings muay thai to the heart of expat Sukhumvit — a well-equipped Phrom Phong gym where walk-in group classes run morning to evening and the Thai trainers, most with long stadium records, coach beginners with unusual patience.

Luktupfah is Bangkok's heritage academy — the school of the late Grandmaster Woody and successors devoted to muay boran, the ancestral fighting arts that modern ring muay thai grew out of.

Adults-only, neon-soaked and unapologetic, and best understood after 9pm rather than described.

Loud, tacky, unfiltered and worth one night of your trip, ideally between 7 and 10pm.

You're paying for the 64th-floor view and the Hangover II bragging rights, so go in knowing that.

A Prohibition-era gangster fantasy under a Sukhumvit hotel, with cocktails that arrive as full theatre.

Book a day ahead, take the two-hour Thai massage, and let it anchor your Sukhumvit evening.

Down a leafy residential soi off Sukhumvit 31, Oasis Spa is the day-spa experience without the hotel-spa bill: garden villas around greenery, treatment rooms built for couples, and a menu of multi-hour packages that treat massage as an occasion rather than an errand.

Let's Relax is the chain that made spa-standard massage a walk-in habit in Thailand, and the Thonglor flagship is the branch worth crossing town for — the only one built around a proper Japanese onsen, so a session here is soak first, massage second, and the combination beats either alone.

This is the Bang Rak shop that word of mouth built.

An interchange stop in Bang Sue that's more use for changing trains than for anything above ground.

The airport link changeover that saves you an hour of Bangkok traffic, and it's an easy walk between platforms.

The BTS-to-Yellow Line handover point, with a market and a mall attached at the bottom of the Sukhumvit line.

A major BTS Sukhumvit Line terminus serving as a key transport hub for northern Bangkok, including Chatuchak Market.