Sidestory: The Thailand Temple Trip ~ Kung Bang Kachao

13-Oct-2026

Today, our destination is Kung Bang Kachao (ตำบล บางกะเจ้า). Remember the spot of darkness that I saw when landing in the early morning? That's that!

It's a little sanctuary of nature in the middle of a vast urban area, located on a fluvial peninsula, that stands out quite clearly on any map.

Clarification: The peninsula also contains other districts, but Bang Kachao is the one we're visiting today. It's also no longer part of Bangkok, but of the neighbouring Samut Prakan (สมุทรปราการ) province.

But before we go, the day begins with leftovers from yesterday's dinner, still very tasty. And Chella loves it too!

And then we're off, relatively early in the morning.

We're walking to a nearby bus station. And of course, we still bump into a few new shrines along the way.

Now here's how the bus stop looks like. Since this one is on a main road, it's actually super modern: It has fans of cooling air, free WiFi, and even charging ports for phones. Smoking is prohibited, and it also has a screen with rough ETAs for the buses. Those are VERY rough estimates, though, and in reality all of the buses I've observed here came and left earlier than their ETA. So I figure riding a bus here is less about the schedule and more about the interval.

 

To get a bus to stop you have to signal it down. Buses also come in two kinds: REG (Regular) and AC (Air Conditioned). The regular buses a cheaper, while the air conditioned ones are more comfortable. They are also color coded: Red for regular, and blue for AC. The display board also announces the AC buses with a ❄️ icon.

To ride a bus, you simple hop on. In addition to the driver, each bus has a conductor who will ask you where you want to go, and then sell you a ticket. If you don't speak Thai you can just show them the bus stop you want to go to on your phone. The fair is pretty cheap too: I only need to pay 24฿ for Chella and me together.

We need to go all the way to the final stop, so there's no risk of missing that. But even if we weren't, there's this display to show the upcoming station names alternatingly in Thai and in English, plus if it's not too busy (like now) the conductor will also inform you when your stop is coming up (at least if you look like a clueless foreigner).

Here's the route that the bus takes:

And here's a video of the bus ride through the busy and honestly rather bumpy streets. This road has a dedicated bus and motorbike lane, so the motorcyclists are not quite as reckless as normally. 

Anyway, here we are at the Khlong Toei Bus Terminal.

Before we proceed to Bang Kachao, there's still two temples in the area that I want to visit. Fortunately, they're both pretty close to the bus terminal.

To get to the first one, we have to go through a shady alley...

...where we come across an absolutely adorable cat shrine.

 

At the end of the alley awaits Wat Khlong Toei Nai (วัดคลองเตยใน), the first of the two temples here. Among other things, this one features many cats that are fed by the monks, as well as some interesting rope writing.

  

Also, I give a little donation to the temple, so it won't have to be staffed by a skeleton crew in the future.

 After that, we go back to the bus terminal, and then continue to Wat Khlong Toei Nok (วัดคลองเตยนอก), which doesn't have that many cats, but instead features a row of chibi superheores and other cute figures.

  

 

 

Now, some of you might have noticed that there's no bridge here. So that means we've got to cross the mighty Chao Phraya River by ferry. A ticket for Chella an me costs 80฿ and includes the return trip, so it's effectively 20฿ each way per person. It's also a kinda interesting system that you have to give back the ticket upon return.

 

 

 

The trip across the river on the small boat only takes a few minutes. But along the way, we get a good view on the skyline of Bangkok.

 

 

And then we're on the other side, where we are greeted by copious amounts of rental bicycles and motorbikes. Sadly, Chella doesn't know how to ride a bike, or else I would have rented two bikes without hesitation. But it is how it is, and so we walk.  

Our complete route in Kung Bang Kachao looks like this:

 

I probably don't need to say it by this point, but of course we run into a few shrines along the way to our destination here.

Also this rather quaint sight. Funny to see snowmen in a country that probably didn't see any snow since the last ice age, and maybe not even then.

Anyway, our destination here is the Sri Nakhon Khuean Khan Park and Botanical Garden (สวนสาธารณะและสวนพฤกษชาติ ศรีนครเขื่อนขันธ์), which we get to enter completely free of charge.

 

 

 

This is a really relaxing oasis of greenery, which is both great for walking and also cycling through.

There's way too many plants here to enumerate them all. However, the Pong Pong Suicide Tree still stands out.

There's the Kuankhan Mahka Bridge (สะพานเขื่อนขันธ์มรรคา) leading across the lake. It seems to have a lot of history, but sadly, I can't read any of it.

And there's also a gangplank way leading right into the bush, which is where we see a little monitor lizard next to the way. It's a little over 1m long from the tip of its snout to the tip of its tail.

We move deeper into the park...

...and there we come across a shrine, because why not?

  

Next up is the bird observation tower. We climb it, but sadly can't observe any birds. And with how high the surrounding trees are, we can't even observe anything of the surrounding landscape. Oh well, at least we get to observe the treetops.

We continue our way through the park...

...and run into two more shrines!

Then we reach the end of pavement...

 ...but not the end of shrines.

 

Also, whatever in the name of Dragon that is.

And then we're back at the entrance of the park, where there's this compound of buildings that look a little bit like a temple, but isn't actually a temple.

After that, we walk back towards the ferry port.

And on the way we come across another shrine that we somehow missed on the way there.

We arrive at the pier just in time to catch our boat.

And then it's back across the river again.

Once we're back on the other side, Chella gets distracted by a fruit car again.

And then we go into the nearby Cafe Amazon. That's a local chain of stores selling Coffee and other drinks, and you can find branches of it all around Thailand. There, I have some iced Lychee Juice and I treat Chella to a Chocolate drink.

 

After that, we head back to the bus terminal and wait for our bus to depart. By the way, here you can see the red regular buses in contrast to the blue AC bus. The green one is actually also a red one, but with a commercial on the back. It's red from the front.

We're waiting a little extra in order to catch an AC bus back to our place.

Here's the route the bus takes back. It's a little bit different, and due to a language-barrier induced misunderstanding they also drop us off one stop earlier than we intended. But that's fine. We can walk from there.

Anyway, along the way we end up behind a van advertising for a familiar hospital. Looks like I had the honor of getting treated in one of the best specialised hospitals in the Asia Pacific area.

Anyway, dropped off a bit early, we start walking back towards our Airbnb.

• (+) There's a sidewalk
• (-) It's actually more like an obstacle course 

• (+) An obstacle course with several shrines along the way

 

Also, there's this random empty plot with a single house on it in the middle of tall buildings all around. I wonder what's up with that? Suburban style living in the heart of Bangkok for those who can afford it?

Then we come across a nice rustic place to have lunch at: The Saphan 55. I can already tell this is going to get expensive when an American guy greets us in English and invites us in, but the stuff they have on the menu looks like it's gonna be worth it.

They have both native and western dishes, as well as drinks. Though what confuses me here is that their Bavarian Lager Beer apparently comes from the Netherlands.

I get a dish called Pla Muek Tod there, which amounts to fried calamari, and Chella orders a bowl of Toma Yum Gai Bai Makham On for the both of us. That's effectively a sort of mixed everything soup that's lemony-sour, and if you want to die you just have to eat one of the Chilis that float in there. It's good that Chella ordered that soup for the both of us, since my portion is a little bit small, and Chella has to wait for over an hour for her chicken rice to finally get served.

Moving on from there, we cross the Khlong Saen Saep (คลองแสนแสบ) channel, which also serves as a waterway for boats and water taxis, though there's none of those in sight right now.

On our way home, we buy ingredients for dinner at the Al-Khaleej Minimart (سوبر ماركت الخليج - بانكوك), which is also quite close to our home. Nice to see a different language that I can't read for a change.

Back home, I'm preparing another round of dinner for Chella. It's pretty much the same as yesterday since we still have leftover Erengi and pasta, but with tomato sauce this time.

 

And that's it for today. Tomorrow, we have another trip planned. But I'll write about that in the next post. So stay tuned and be of great cheer! =^,^=