Arriving at our hotel in Bangkok early in the afternoon, we wanted to have a fairly relaxing day. Our accommodation was located near one of two enormous public parks, so we decided to go for a walk through both of them. Benchakitti Park and Lumphini Park are also connected by the world's longest skywalk, so off we went, as did some fishing tackle. I was pretty sure that fishing in the parks wasn't permitted, but perhaps another opportunity would present itself!
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| Benchkitti Park. No fishing allowed. |
Heading west, we eventually ended up at the north-west corner of Lumphini Park, having struggled slightly to find an entry point, and feeling quite hungry, we decided to bite the street food bullet and visited the famous 50 baht lunch buffet.
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As you can see, the price has recently gone up. It used to be only 40 baht. Even with a 25% increase how they provide unlimited food so cheaply is a mystery! £1.16 at the time of writing! |
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| All freshly cooked and very tasty too. |
Our stomachs nice and full, we entered Lumphini Park had a wander around it. We were quite surprised to discover several monitor lizards were casually wandering around it too!
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| There’s a health population of monitor lizards in Lumphini Park. Very cool to encounter a few of them up close. |
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| Lumphini Park. No fishing allowed. |
There were plenty of fish in Lumphini Park’s ponds. Shoals of tilapia in the margins, what I think may have been some species of barb further out, and we also spotted a couple of giant snakehead, sneaking about close to where someone had been throwing bread in for birds. No doubt hoping to get a snack themselves!
Leaving Lumphini Park, we walked further west until we reached the King Power Mahanakhon Building, where we took the elevator up to its 360° degree observation decks and open rooftop for some breathtaking views of Bangkok.
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| The King Power Mahanakhon Building has quite an unusual design. |
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| The views of the city and the Chao Phraya river were superb. |
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| It looked like it was raining heavily to the west. This reminded me of Singapore. |
The following day, we headed out again to do some more sightseeing. I took some fishing tackle with me again. Having had no opportunity to fish the previous afternoon, I was keen to see what I could catch from some of the city’s water systems. Catching the metro from Asok to Sam Yot, we exited the station and walked a short distance east to a canal. Quickly spotting some tiny fish close to the edge, I set up my tanago rod and set about trying to catch one. They were nibbling away, but even using tanago hooks, it took me a little while to eventually hook and successfully hoist one up from the water below.
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| After counting the fish's dorsal fin rays, I realised that this tiny fish was actually my first ever western mosquitofish. |
Happy to have caught a fish in Bangkok, we followed the canal north and visited the Golden Mount inside the Wat Saket compound.
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| The Golden Mount is built on the ruins of a previous shrine that collapsed. |
Next, we began heading west towards Wat Pho, so we could visit the Reclining Buddha there. On the way, we crossed over another canal, and I was given the nod to fish for a while. Spotting some interesting looking but tiny, orange and black fish occasionally swimming up to the surface, I tried to catch one, but they were quite shy, and I had no joy tempting them with a tiny crumb of bread. Lillian had been feeding a few small pieces of bread further out, and after I'd caught a few more western mosquitofish from the edge, some larger fish soon arrived and started taking the bread she’d thrown in from just below the surface. I couldn’t make out what they were, but switched over to my ultralight rod so I could fish a small piece of bread in their vicinity to hopefully find out. I did get the odd bite up in the water, but whatever they were, they expertly stole the bread and avoided the hook every time! Adding a piece of split shot so I could fish on the bottom, my bread wasn’t down there too long before my rod tip was pulled round and something swam across the current towards the other side of the canal. After a short scrap, a very strange looking fish came to the surface and was soon landed.
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| I believe this is an iridescent shark catfish. |
The fish had some nasty spines on it, so I handled it very carefully with a towel. Encouraged by this, I carried on fishing on the bottom for a little while longer, but this only resulted in a procession of the odd looking, spiny bottom dwellers.
Content with opening my Thai account with two new species, and aware that repeatedly catching and unhooking these strange catfish would no doubt result in a potentially nasty puncture wound eventually, I packed up my tackle and we resumed our sightseeing. As planned, we soon arrived at and headed into the temple housing the Reclining Buddha.
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| The scale of this massive golden statue is impressive, and difficult to capture in a photo. |
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| At fifteen metres high and forty-six metres long, it is one of the largest Buddha statues in Thailand. |
Later in the evening, after exploring a little more of the area on foot, we enjoyed a nice meal and a few drinks by the Chao Phraya river. From our rooftop table we had an amazing view of Wat Arun on the opposite bank of the river.
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| Wat Arun looked fantastic all lit up! |
Our short time in Bangkok had come to a drunken end, thanks to several cocktails and too many beers. Catching the metro back to our hotel we had to get packed for an early flight in the morning. Phuket was our next destination, and I was really looking forward to doing quite a lot of fishing there!
Tight lines, Scott.
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