Fly into Bangkok and get visa on arrival. For Indian passport holders, they give 30-day stay on arrival. The line gets long, but the process is fairly straight forward. Only thing to keep in mind is, at the Bangkok airport, the money exchangers don’t take Indian Rupees for Baht. So, I used the US dollars I had with me to get enough Baht for the visa.
First stop – Khoa San Road. This road is filled with inexpensive, backpacker hostels. But, the street is super crowded and extremely noisy for me. If you take a little detour to neighboring streets such as Soi Rambuttri and further down, there are plenty of hostels and the streets tend to be bit quieter. So, I opted for a next street hostel for a $15/night for a private room.
By the time I got to the hostel it was afternoon and all the local tours have left for the day. So, I was left with a map (got it from the hostel) and an urge not to waste time as I was in Bangkok only for a few days. So, I decided to go to the monuments myself. Got to the nearest pier and took the boats and hit the temples, markets, china-town and some random monasteries.
For the next day, I had negotiated an organized day tour to Ayutthaya. It is possible to get a public bus to go to Ayutthaya, but I decided to go on an organized tour as it was my birthday, and I decided to treat myself with a nice tour. I quickly realized that the sites in the town are so dispersed that it is easier to take a tour than figuring out public transportation, unless one is biking around.
The following day, I took a bus from Bangkok to Damnoen Saduak floating village. Bus each way is very cheap, something like 30-40 Baht. And if I were to do this trip again, I would skip this village all together, unless I want to see floating tourists. It was not a worthy day-trip in my opinion for such an extremely-touristy-trap location.
Last day in Bangkok was dedicated for massage, palace visit (took a solid 3-4 hours), dinner with newly made friends before flying out to Phukhet.