There's more to Chatuchak than just shopping...

If you are reading this and are wondering where all the missing blogs are, well, I have to confess that it's been a lot harder this time around to try and keep up with them. The main reason is time. I don't seem to have enough time to try and catch up with our days. It's also a little different this time because we have others with us, so we are often doing something else in the evening, or I'm too exhausted to think about switching on the laptop or writing up our days. I also had a few days of being knocked out with a bug, and then his nibs got the same bug too, so that changed the dynamics a little, also. Additionally, I did have a post in the draft form, and when I went to post it the other day, I discovered that it was not there (I couldn't have saved it!!!). So the thought of having to re-do that was another thing that had me put off the laptop. Though here I am, early in the morning before everyone gets up, trying to catch up a little by starting on the missing post!

So let's go back to where we left off....the 19th December 

Once we arrived at the market, we showed A&A where the mall was, and we left them there to explore as we went off to discover the nearby parks. We knew that there was a large park right beside the market area, but we didn’t realise at the time that there were actually three separate parks and the combined size of this area was about 3-4 times that of the Chatuchak Market. It was huge!!

Chatuchak’s Three Parks

Chatuchak Park

We started off our walk in Chatuchak Park. Chatuchak Park is a public park in the southwest part of Chatuchak District. It is also the name of the Chatuchak Park MRT station that lies under the park. It is one of the oldest public parks in Bangkok. It was built on the land formerly owned by the State Railway of Thailand (SRT). The park includes a wide variety of trees and plants in the garden with different themes, a flower courtyard, a multipurpose ground, a clock tower, Princess Sirindhorn’s birthday anniversary garden, sculptures and an inactive train museum. An artificial lake runs along this thin and long park with numerous bridges crossing the lake. The park is suitable for recreational and exercise activities.

This was a beautiful park – very clean with numerous people sitting having their lunch or taking a rest.

Next, we crossed over a main road and entered Wachirabenchathat Park, also popularly known as State Railway Public. This park borders the Queen Sirikit Park and Chatuchak Park. It is one of the most popular parks in Bangkok.

Formerly being the State Railway of Thailand (SRT)'s golf course, the 148-acre plot of land was converted into a public park for recreational activities and exercises of people living in the vicinity. Some parts of the old golf course were conserved for children's golf practices. The park is commonly used for biking. It has a winding three-kilometre track for walking and biking around the park. At the start of the bike track, there is a rental shop where visitors can rent bicycles for riding. Near the bike track, there is a lake where people can rent paddleboats to go around. In the park, there is a beautiful butterfly garden and insectarium for visitors' relaxation and education. The other interesting point is a miniature town. The town features a scaled-down version of Bangkok's famous buildings and tourist attractions.

Now I don’t think we were in this park for very long, as we weren’t really following any particular route, and because we could see an entrance way that looked quite fancy, we started to walk in the direction of this. This then took us to the entrance of the Queen Sirikit Park.

Queen Sirikit Park is a botanical garden in the Chatuchak district of Bangkok. It was established in 1992 and named after Sirikit, Queen of Thailand, to celebrate her 60th birthday. It contains many fountains and pools where lotus flowers bloom. The park has a high biodiversity in an ecosystem which has a great variety of plants and butterflies. There is a great variety of banana, palm tree, coconut and bamboo cultivars, hibiscus and lotus, more than 200 species of waterlilies, as well as many other species of flowers and plants.

After we had walked around the park areas for some time, we nipped back to the mall to get a late lunch, and then it was time to start heading back to the apartment. We took the BTS from the Chatuchak Park station back to Phloen Chit, picking up a few evening groceries on our way.

Today we are heading back to Chatuchuk Market again. Though this time it is with A&A as we want to show them how to use the BTS and MRT systems as well as introduce them to the market and mall at Chatuchuk.

After breakfast, we take the shuttle bus from the apartment complex to the Phloen Chit BTS station, getting off the Sukhumvit line at Asok and transferring to the Sukhumvit MRT line to Kamphaeng Phet.

Later on in the evening, we realised that the Red Cross Fair in Lumphini Park was only on for a few more days, and as we had wanted to visit this area in the evening, we thought we would check it out after dinner. Partly this was because we were taking R to the airport the next evening, so we wouldn’t be able to go then, and we didn’t want to visit the Fair on the final evening as it would be really, really busy then.

It was great to see the park all lit up in the evening, but it was still so busy and very, very hot. As we were so close to the Dustit Central Mall, we also stopped off at this to take some photos of the evening lights, but unfortunately, we could not get up to the top of the roof area as there was an event on and access was restricted. Nevertheless, we had a great view. We wearily walked home from here and were exhausted from having completed over 25k steps.

Our route today:

Day 25: 19 December 2025

Bangkok, Thailand