As I mentioned in an earlier article, one of the best ways to find things to do while visiting a destination is to use the Meetup app. Not only will you find many local groups offering regular activities, you’ll get many ideas for things to do, even if you can’t attend an event.

This past week I joined a Meetup walking tour group for a stroll around Bangkok. I was excited to get to know the neighborhood from the perspective of a local. While there were some places I knew, I learned about others I didn’t.

The tour met at Chong Nonsi station, one of my favorite stops on the BTS sky train. There are many things to do here, and I decided to arrive early so I could stop in at my favorite pastry shop in Bangkok, Brioche from Heaven. This place isn’t kidding; anything I’ve tried here has been absolutely heavenly, including the plain brioche.

One of my favorite things about the place is that it is designed to look like a French bakery including little round tables out front for sipping coffee and enjoying a pastry as you watch people hustle on their way to work. It is a busy sky train station as there are several international companies nearby and even a tourist site, the King Power Mahanakhon building.

Our tour, however, didn’t include any of the typical tourist sites. It began with the Sathorn mansion, built in 1888 for a wealthy Chinese businessman. The building later served as the Hotel Royal, the Russian embassy and, since 2015, a restaurant and entertainment venue for the W Hotel in Bangkok.

Continuing with historic Bangkok, we headed to the Parsi cemetery. Despite its name, most of the people buried here are Chinese Christians. The cemetery is not generally open to the public, but with the assistance of our guide, we were able to talk our way in to see the graves. Apparently, there were more graveyards in the area that were removed for the construction of office buildings.

Thai people are particularly superstitious and fearful of ghosts, which is why the tenants of the new buildings are primarily foreigners. Those superstitions were reinforced in 2018 when the owner of the nearby King Power Mahanakhon building, built on a former cemetery, died in a helicopter crash.

About 15 minutes from the Parsi cemetery is the Sri Maha Mariamman Temple. This does show up in tourist books but only because it’s an ornate Hindu temple in a primarily Buddhist country. Some people were surprised to see swastikas and a Buddha statue, but our guide explained that the swastika existed as a symbol long before Hitler appropriated it for his Nazi party. The connection between the Buddhist statue and the Hindu temple comes from the Buddhist monk, Bodhisattva Xuanzang, who traveled 10,000 miles on foot and horseback, from China to India and back.

Probably the best place to learn about Bangkok history is a library, and our next stop was the Neilson Hays Library. It was built by Dr Thomas Heyward Hays in honor of his wife, Jennie, who was one of the thirteen British and American women who established the Bangkok Ladies’ Library Association in 1869. One curious detail of that story is that Jennie, hearing that two suitable young American doctors were on their way to Bangkok, selected Hays as her future husband prior to him disembarking the ship.

Next we visited a small alley filled with new establishments run by young people. It was like an incubator for small businesses including a couple coffee shops, a wine tasting room, a record shop and a vintage clothing store. It reminded me of being back in Portland, where the owners were very detail oriented about their craft. There were six different types of matcha to be chosen from at one of the shops.

The walking tour ended at my hostel,The Prince, which is one of the reasons I signed up for it. I’d learned a bit about the hostel during my stay and ended up filling in the gaps for our guide who didn’t know much about its modern use. His only knowledge was of its use as a casino and later an adult film theater.

With just a couple days left in Bangkok before heading to Europe, I’m checking off my Bangkok to do list including a visit to a Japanese bath and kayaking the canals of SW Bangkok, another Meetup up activity. Every day brings another adventure in Bangkok!