Some Americans will return from their transatlantic summer vacations subdued by how much they spent in Europe. But there are several international destinations where costs remain blissfully low. Such a place is Thailand, and its capital of Bangkok.
From $1 meals of spicy Thai food to $10 hotel rooms surrounding breezy courtyards, the prices in Bangkok simply can’t be beat in any other great world capital.
You can keep basic living costs down to $20 a day, and even when you add activities – full-body massages for $6.25, private tours of the khlongs (canals) in a long-tail boat for $5-$10 – the impact on your wallet is light. And most of the endless parade of elaborate wats (temples) and golden Buddhas is free to view.
Round-trip flights to Bangkok can be had for $596 from the West Coast and $805 from the East Coast (cheapflights.com). Packaged vacations, bundling airfare with five nights in a hotel, start at $629 per person out of Los Angeles this fall (go-today.com).
In Bangkok, full meals run as low as 85 cents in the simple restaurants patronized by locals, where wooden tables are set on cracked tile floors under whirling ceiling fans, and a chef offers two or three versions of roasted chicken in a spicy sauce piled on plump rice.
Such down-home eateries are all over the city, but even at fancier restaurants – with full menus and English-speaking waiters – dishes rarely run more than $2 to $4.
For lodging, peruse the prices at asiahotels.com andhotelthailand.com, which can put you into five-star riverside properties for less than $190. Hotelthailand.com was offering 19 hotels in the $10 range, another 50 in the $20 range.
You could spend all day browsing Buddhas for free, but the two most famous do charge a small admission.
Wat Phra Kaeo ($6.25), in one corner of Bangkok’s glorious Grand Palace, is a complex of pinnacled golden stupas, colorful demon statues two stories high, and elaborately painted outbuildings.
At the heart of it all is the bot housing the Emerald Buddha, more than 500 years old and the most venerated in all of Thailand.
Though likely made of jadeite (not emeralds) and measuring 2 feet tall, this statue is so revered that the king himself is in charge of changing the statue’s three seasonal outfits. The floor inside the bot is crammed with the devout prostrating themselves before the Buddha’s high golden altar.
Just across the street to the south of the Grand Palace lies the 20-acre temple compound of Wat Po (50 cents). Under one long roof, propped up on his elbow, lies the massive Reclining Buddha, roughly 50 feet high and 150 feet long.
Wat Po also houses Thailand’s most renowned massage school. Hour-long, full-body massages cost a mere $6.25 (show up early; the wait can last hours).
For the best variety of handicrafts and shopping bargains, browse the innumerable street markets or head to Narayana Phand at 127 Ratchadamri. You can find luxurious silk scarves for $4, fashion-label knockoffs, lacquered masks, carved wooden figurines and traditional musical instruments. All of it is of the highest quality and inexpensive – plus, you’re expected to bargain them down more.
Arthur Frommer, who first published “Europe on $5 A Day” in 1956, is a recognized authority on budget travel.
