Lumphini Park
Fifty-eight hectares among the towers, with monitor lizards crossing the paths.
Duration
45 min – 1 hr 30 min
Best time
in the morning
Open
Every day, 4.30am – 9pm
Entry price
Free
Lumphini was given to the city by Rama VI in 1925, on what was then royal land at the edge of town. The city caught up with it: today it is ringed by office towers, and that contrast is the point.
At six in the morning, hundreds of people do tai chi in groups, run, or follow a collective aerobics class over a loudspeaker. It is the best place in Bangkok to watch the city live without being a tourist.
The lake holds a population of water monitors, two-metre lizards that cross the paths in no hurry. They are wild, they were here before the park, and the city has given up on moving them.
Getting there
MRT Lumphini or Si Lom, and BTS Sala Daeng: three stations border it, the best-served point in the city.
Rules on site
The water monitors living in the lake reach two metres. They are not aggressive, but do not feed them and do not get between them and the water.
Other places in Bangkok
- Grand Palace and Wat Phra KaewThe former royal residence and the Emerald Buddha, inside the same walls.
- Wat Pho, the Reclining BuddhaForty-six metres of reclining Buddha, and the country's oldest school of Thai massage.
- Wat Arun, the Temple of DawnThe porcelain spire on the west bank, at its best in the setting sun.
Chatuchak MarketThousands of stalls, weekends only. You come to get lost in it, not to tick off a list.