The Monocle Travel Guide to Bangkok: The Monocle Travel Guide Series

Great useful information

Terrific guide book that is filled with fun facts and good tips. I was in Bangkok for 2.5 weeks and this proved very informational. We were able to find the more "touristy" places like the Grand Palace and Jim Thompson house (Especially great if you only want a short tour and time to explore) as well as the more unique places like record stores (Prepare yourself, they are not cheap!) and bars.

Awesomely designed, which is a big plus. However, mostly recommendations for pricey and/or expensive places and experiences. No surprise. But if that's not your thing, there are still useful tips and it's much nicer than almost every other guide. And not that pricey itself, comparatively.

This book is almost a literary masterpiece. Reviews of featured countries are written by journalists, publishers and writers. The pictures are great and concise. It shows the different highlights of the countries as well as places that are off the beaten path. Food and drink sections are awesome. It's a travel book you want to keep in your collection for a long time.

Photos and essays are...okay. Essentially what you would expect from Monocle. As a guide book, pretty much useless unless you are already very familiar with the city. Imagine a guide book claiming to show recommended walking paths in a number of neighborhoods, both touristy and not. Sounds great, right? Now imagine that the maps omitted all mass transit information. Perhaps you have a cryptic "start from this station and take a taxi" or similar reference, but would it kill the editors to include markings on the map showing where the train stations are? Wouldn't that be a better "curated" experience? No, you say, the discriminating readers of this guide would prefer not to use mass transit, particularly the expensive-for-locals BTS, which would clearly mark them as tourists. Fine, I say, but anyone who has actually been to Bangkok will and should know that no taxi driver is going to understand most instructions (or addresses) in English (nor should they!). A user friendly guide book would include at least one of: the establishment name, the address, or at least the cross streets in Thai, particularly if the recommendation is to take a taxi. With Monocle, you'll need to curate this knowledge on your own. Good luck! (A small number of the places recommended are genuinely local, which is cool in a city where shopping malls are king, but this means that often their entire web presence is all in Thai, so good luck if you don't speak the language!) Most of the other recommended spots are either not particularly special or worthwhile. Also very few details about opening times and other information you might want from a guidebook. The design is visually pleasing and will help you get your yearly quotient of hipster fluff, so if that's what your looking for, go for it. Otherwise, skip it.

I'm a temporary Bangkok resident and I bought this book for a curated look into the city. I didn't want an exhaustive guide, just the best bits, so keep that in mind. A spread on design-centric shopping made me want to purchase this book, I hate touristy souvenirs and want my Thailand shopping to be local, beautiful and authentic. In addition to the shopping and design, we found some great walks we will be doing to explore Bangkok neighborhoods. Looking forward to doing some exploring soon!

Hipster guide to Bangkok, fine if that’s what you want but not my thing.

In terms of content, the Bangkok travel guide is pretty similar to all the rest of the Monocle titles: funky and upscale lodgings, restaurants and shopping, along with big local tourist sites and some design heavy places- although given the sheer diversity and craziness of some of the buildings I saw in Bangkok, the book didn't do it justice. I chose the hotel we stayed at based on the Monocle recommendation and was pleased- I find they are pretty good at finding small design hotels that other guides might have missed. What drops this book down is something an earlier reviewer noted; it doesn't do justice to life on the ground in Bangkok and I think that might be because, unlike just about every other town they cover, Bangkok is a total outlier. English will only get you so far there and, as rightly pointed out, if you can't show a Bangkok taxi driver where to go in Thai, you are utterly screwed. And it really doesn't prepare you for the living hell that is Bangkok traffic- always assume it will take you twice as long as the locals say to get anywhere. I enjoyed Bangkok but I can't deny parts of it can be overwhelming. Went to Hong Kong afterwards and it seemed like a sleepy fishing village compared to the big B. Glad I had the book, but found it overall to be a pretty superficial view of the city.

Guía que no defrauda!

Wer ein englisches Buch kauft, der muss eben auch Englisch können, darüber müssen wir nicht diskutieren. Sehr wohl können wir aber darüber diskutieren, dass dieses Buch in mancherlei Hinsicht für einen Bangkok-Anfänger nicht geeignet ist. Das liegt zum einen daran, dass diese Stadt sich schneller verändert, als irgendjemand Reiseführer schreiben kann - von daher ist dem Autor zwar kein Vorwurf zu machen, aber es gibt durch das Internet zeitnahere und damit aktueller Informationsmöglichkeiten. Was mir aber extrem aufgefallen ist, dass bei der Schilderung der Spaziergänge einfach Bezugspunkte fehlen. Da fehlt, z.B., auch wenn es der Kartenausschnitt hergäbe, die entsprechende skytrain Station bei Thonnlgor & Ekkamai (S.128), wobei der Leser hier vollkommen hilflos ist, da er, um sich zurecth zu finden, wissen muss, dass der Endpunkt des Spaziergang zwar in der Soi Thong Lo ist, er wird das aber nicht finden, da es sich dabei um die Sukhumvit Soi 55 handelt. Das gleiche gilt bei Ari (S. 130) und auch bei Silom (Seite 132), wobei die bessere Wahl nicht die dort genannte Station Chong Nonsi ist, sondern die Station Surasak, dort beginnt nämlich der Spaziergang.

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Practical and useful content

Apart from the rather attractive front cover this 'guide' is effectively useless. As one other reviewer described here it's difficult to see what market the guide is aimed at. Without any maps beside a very basic small one showing different districts and no information or maps regarding transport the guide feels its more a project in creative vanity than being anything remotely useful. The writers 'essays' are again pretty to read but ridiculously self absorbed and the recommended walks though helping the reader to experience a different take on the city are hopelessly without detail. I read it on the flight over and didnt pick it up again once when I was in the city....