Prior to the trip, I received two very enthusiastic recommendations from two former co-workers for the same 5-hr bike tour ending with a 30 min long boat tour of the river/canals running through Bangkok. Perhaps I was reminiscing back to my Mike’s Bike Tour days while backpacking across Europe as I thought this sounded like a fabulous way to see “the Bangkok locals’ experience”, although I admittedly didn’t really know what that meant and didn’t really bother thinking about it. Amy was fully onboard and we were both excited so we met our tour guide and other 8 fellow bikers promptly at 7am. At no point in time did Amy or I question our decision making or pause to consider the fact that a bike tour in a frenetic city of 9 million people, in which it’s difficult to cross a street given the insane traffic, is perhaps a crazy idea. We were up for it. Or so we thought.
With very little guidance from our guide “Andy/Andi” (we consistently debated on whether it was a he/she and whether he/she was 13/30), we were off and Amy and I found ourselves at the rear of the pack as the rest of the group consisted of Dutch from Amsterdam. We shortly discovered what “seeing the city as locals do” means as we were not biking on streets (see frenetic city comment above). I don’t think you can even call them side streets or alleyways. We were biking on tiny (TINY!!!) sidewalks bordered on both sides by walls of buildings housing shops & homes with their associated contents spilling out onto the path. It seemed like the underground secret version of Bangkok one never gets to see. It was very interesting for the first 30 minutes. And incredibly exciting. Primarily bc I felt as if I was risking my life and the lives of the locals who use these tiny sidewalks as their main thoroughfare. We passed women cooking (I first realized this as I felt significant heat on my left leg from a pot of boiling oil & was thankful I didn’t burn myself), men working on their motorcycles, locals preparing food and wares in advance of the day’s business and simply sitting on their stoop pleasantly enjoying their tea until a group of 12 bikes come careening past. We maneuvered through ruts, 90 degree corners with unknown obstacles awaiting on the other side, and periodic instances in which these paths burst out onto main streets requiring additional dodging of buses/cars/taxis/tuk tuks/motorbikes until we could race to the next secret path. Locals didn’t flinch even when we were forced to ride within inches of them or their property.

The interest fell off after 30 minutes when we came upon a sidewalk that wasn’t wide enough to ride our bike (so we had to hop it through) & a cat jumped out across my path and nearly sent me careening into a parked scooter (while dogs would just lie in the middle of the path, refusing to move & daring you to hit them). I started to feel as if we were intruding upon their way of life instead of “experiencing it” and I realized I had no idea what we were actually seeing and in fact, I really wasn’t seeing much of anything bc I was so intently focused on not crashing my bike that I was staring intently at the path in front of me with a death grip on my handles. We finally got a break after 45 minutes of this when the two-year-old son of a Dutch couple erupted into hysterics after he threw up all over himself (evidence of a rough ride perhaps?). The gang pulled aside on a path while the parents attended to him. Amy and I briefly interacted and realized we shared similar concerns so once the baby drama was properly dealt with, we approached Andy/Andi. I asked if the rest of the tour (we still had 4.5 hours left) would be much of the same (this was confirmed) and Amy assumed the role of “bad cop” by simply stating “we’re not enjoying it”. They handled it wonderfully as they “only want everyone to be happy” so we biked another 5 mins to a pier and someone from the bike shop met us there so we could follow them back (no chance in hell we could’ve found our way back on our own). It’s a massive city with a ton of things to do and the last thing we were going to do was spend another 4.5 hours on a bike tour NOT seeing the city with our heads focused on the path. Frankly, the only thing that shocked me was the fact that nobody joined us in our early exit… Even the parents of the puker stuck it out. So at the end of it all, we got a very memorable hour bike tour of “local Bangkok” for free so maybe that makes us the best negotiators?

We ended up making it to the “can’t miss Bangkok sites” of the Royal Palace and Wat Phra Kaew by its 8:30am opening time and happily toured those until 11am. While hunting down a tuk tuk to take to another site, we then experienced another Bangkok “can’t miss”… Getting scammed by, as Amy put it “the really nice man who told us we should say we’re teachers in Thailand instead of visitors from the USA”. Before we knew it, we ended up on a tuk tuk destined for a long boat tour of the river/canals. No real other options upon arrival but for a long walk the other way to catch another tuk tuk. Seeing the river was on our list of to-dos, we chalked it up to experience and plunked down the TB to take the cruise that promised views of famous wats from the river, another behind-the-scenes look at Bangkok, and a fabulous floating market. The long boat itself was a nice experience and seeing the variety of local homes along the canals was truly unique. The scam became overtly obvious upon discovering the “floating market” consisted of 3 guys in their canoes who rowed up next to us to hawk their wares… Buddha trinkets, pop-up hats and finally beer (had they started with the beer, they probably would’ve had takers).

At the end of the long boat tour, we were in the lock awaiting passage from the canal to the river when a long boat full of dorks wearing life preservers pulled alongside us. A girl said “hello”. I said “hello” back and then an “OHHH, HELLO” as Amy whispered in my ear that our bike tour group had just pulled up alongside us. Oh wait. The dorks in the life preservers were our bike tour group. In all of Bangkok, we part ways at 8am, have 3 hours of great touring, somehow end up scammed to do a long boat tour and then end up in the boat next to our tour group’s in the lock. Where we waited for an awkward 5 minutes as the water level slowly gained a foot. The day came full circle, wrapped neatly in a perfect big bow, and it was only 12:30. I don’t think we had ever laughed so hard.