Bangkok

Shorts and bare shoulders are turned away. Wraps are lent at the gate, but that queue runs longer than the ticket queue. One ticket also covers the Emerald Buddha inside the walls. The gates close at half past three each afternoon, so make it a morning.

The reclining Buddha is 46 metres long and fills its hall so tightly that you never see all of it from one spot, and its soles carry 108 symbols inlaid in mother-of-pearl. The massage school in the grounds takes walk-ins at its practice rooms.

The pattern over the central prang is broken crockery, porcelain Chinese ships carried as ballast and masons set into the plaster. The stairs are steep and narrow enough that people going up and down tangle. For the whole tower in one frame, cross the river.

The stalls are all up on Saturday and Sunday, in twenty-seven numbered sections; walk in without the map and you will pass the same one twice. The plant section trades on Wednesday and Thursday instead. After midday no air moves in the aisles.

Flag colour at the bow does the work of a route number, each colour calling at a different set of piers, and orange stops at the most. You pay a conductor on board, and if you name your pier they will call it out for you.

Monitor lizards live here and you meet them on the paths and the pond banks. They keep clear of people unless somebody feeds them. Loudspeaker aerobics take over the lawns at dawn and dusk, and the lake rents out pedal boats.

By day it is gold shops and dried-goods wholesalers; after dark the stalls go up on the same road. The pavements are narrow enough that the crowd spills into the traffic, though prices drop visibly one layer into the side lanes.

Six teak houses were brought in from other provinces and joined into one. You cannot wander it alone; you join a timed guided walk. The man who built it went into a Malaysian hill forest in 1967 and was never found.

Car-part shops fill the lanes and engines stack up on the pavement. Murals have gone up on the walls between them, so people photographing them share the alley with people carrying gearboxes. A Hokkien shrine sits at the river end.

It occupies the old Front Palace north of the Grand Palace, so the collection is scattered across separate buildings. Closed Monday and Tuesday. Plenty of rooms are labelled in Thai only, which makes the volunteer guides' days worth checking first.

A gold chedi on an artificial hill of piled earth. Some 300 steps spiral up to a view over the old city roofs in every direction. Bells hang along the climb, and people strike them one after another as they pass.

Built of Italian marble, hence the nickname, and its image is stamped on the 5 baht coin. Some 50 Buddha images from different periods line the cloister. In the early morning monks collect alms at the gate.

A pair of red timber posts over 20m tall rises from the plaza facing the temple. They held a Brahmin swing rite, dropped in 1935 after too many injuries. The murals in the cloister around the main hall draw few people, so you can look a long time.

A building stacked with 37 iron spires, one of only three of its form ever built and the only one still standing. Pillars crowd the interior like a maze around a central stair to the summit. The Golden Mount is a ten-minute stroll off, an easy pairing.

The temple holds a solid gold Buddha weighing over 5 tonnes. Covered in plaster, it passed as a clay image until 1955, when the plaster cracked during a move and the gold showed. It sits at the Chinatown end, handy before walking Yaowarat.

A wholesale flower market that never closes, busiest after midnight when the trucks roll in. Every stall has hands threading jasmine garlands. Marigolds and lotus go by the sack, so the floor is always wet.

Backpacker hostels and bars packed into a street of roughly 400m. Daytime is sleepy; once night falls the road shuts to cars and music from both sides overlaps. Soi Rambuttri, one block over, is much calmer.

An hour or so west of Bangkok, a market laid out on the tracks. The train passes eight times a day, and each time traders fold their awnings and pull back baskets as it rolls past a hand's width away. The timetable changes, so check before going.

Traders grill seafood in boats in front of the wooden houses lining the canal on each side. It runs Friday to Sunday from the afternoon, and after dark firefly boats head out. People pair it with the Maeklong Railway Market in one day.

A canal market in Ratchaburi about 100km from Bangkok. You hire a small boat and buy noodles and fruit as you drift between floating stalls. Early morning, before the tour coaches arrive, is the least crowded hour.

A three-headed copper elephant stands on top of a three-storey building. Stairs lead up into the elephant's belly, where a room has the cosmos painted on its ceiling. It is in Samut Prakan, a walk from BTS Chang Erawan.

Green land wrapped in a big bend of the Chao Phraya, called Bangkok's lungs. Small boats ferry riders over from the Khlong Toei side, and hired bicycles run along raised walkways. On weekends the Bang Nam Phueng market sets up.

A seated Buddha 69m tall, finished in 2021, sits beside the canal. On the top floor of the white stupa next door stands a green glass stupa under a ceiling painted with the cosmos. Inside the stupa you go barefoot.

An unfinished elevated rail span turned into a park. You cross the river on foot, looking down on temples and bridges on both banks. It is free and shuts at 8pm, so aim for sunset.

Opened in 1945, Bangkok's oldest Muay Thai stadium. Watch from the wai khru, the dance each fighter performs circling the ring before the bout. The upper stands, where gamblers bet by hand signal, are more of a show than ringside.