Bangkok

Bangkok (Krung Thep to Thais) is one of the most intense and most captivating metropolises in Asia. Some 10 to 15 million people live in a vertical tangle of gold-spired Buddhist temples, floating markets, ultramodern shopping malls, steaming street-food lanes and glass towers reflecting the tropical sky. The city is simultaneously a millennium-old royal capital and a 21st-century urban machine, and it is this tension between past and present that makes Bangkok unforgettable.

The headline sights are plentiful: Wat Phra Kaew and the Grand Palace, Wat Pho with its 46-metre reclining Buddha, Wat Arun glittering in porcelain on the banks of the Chao Phraya, the Chatuchak and Chinatown markets, the canals of old Bangkok. But the city also keeps its surprises for those willing to step off the marked trail: a hidden café in a Chinatown shophouse, a neighbourhood temple where monks chant at sunrise, a back-soi night market untouched by any guidebook.

Few Asian capitals reward curiosity quite so generously. Each district has its own grammar — Rattanakosin its royal heritage, Yaowarat its gilded chaos, Sukhumvit its glassy international face, Thonburi its riverside calm. Move between them by BTS, by river boat or on foot through the alleyways, and Bangkok slowly stops being a single overwhelming city and becomes a stack of villages, each with its own pace, smell and small loyal crowd.