10 Bangkok Tips for a First Timer (Save time & Money)

10 Bangkok Tips for a First Timer (Save time & Money)

In this video, I’m going to go over 10 essential tips that you should know before you 
visit Bangkok, Thailand. Let’s go. All right, guys. So, we are walking to 7/11 
right now. There’s so many 7-Elevens. There’s like 12,000 of them in Thailand or something like 
that. Crazy. Crazy. But obviously 7-Eleven is not one of the things that you should know about 
Bangkok. But 7-Eleven does happen to carry one of the first things that you’re going to need 
when you get to Bangkok, and that is a SIM card. So, that’s probably one of the first things 
you noticed when you got off the plane is that when you turned airplane mode off, either your 
phone didn’t work or you got a text message from your carrier saying that you are now running 
off of their international roaming plan. And usually most carriers are going to charge you a 
daily fee for this. The first time I came here, I attempted to use this, you know, 
international roaming. And uh my phone, I was lucky if it would work half the time. 
It was super super bad. Constantly losing service. To think that you’re paying $12 a 
day for that is is really freaking sad. So, of course, just like anybody else would do, 
I opted for a tourist SIM card. And the crazy thing is is that my $12 per day after 3 days, 
that’s $36 of horrible service. With DTAC, I can buy a one month 30-day unlimited data, 
unlimited phone calls, unlimited text, SIM card for 990 baht or around $30 US for a month of good 
5G service. I always suggest getting a SIM card. Now, the next thing I want to go over is utilizing 
the trains. One thing that’s very intimidating to people the first time they come here is 
public transportation, specifically the train, because there’s more than one. People can’t 
sometimes read the map very well or read even any map very well and they just get intimidated 
by it and have no idea how to use the train system and then they end up spending substantially 
more amounts of money using things like taxis and tuk-tuks and stuff like that. But learning 
how to use and utilize the trains is going to save you time and money. There’s many really 
good tutorial videos on YouTube that walk you through how to use the train system, how to use 
the kiosks and stuff like that. Not only that, but a lot of these employees at these metro 
stations are bilingual anyways. And as long as you can get relatively close to pronouncing 
the station that you’re trying to get to, they’re going to be able to figure it out. 
Plus, you can show them on your phone if you really feel nervous about it. like 
there’s no way that you’re going to be able to pronounce it correctly. Just pull up 
that station on your phone and show it to them and they’ll completely understand it. There’s 
no judgment. These people realize that you’re more than likely a tourist and you don’t know 
the local language. And there’s nothing wrong with that at all. This is not only a daily but 
an hourly or minute occurrence here in Thailand. Now the next topic that I want to go over is 
cash in forms of payment. Now when you go to a lot of places, malls, stores, even some of these 
little street food vendors, they’re going to have online sorts, you know, sorts of payment. Some of 
them are going to take cards and stuff like that. But cash is boom, almost accepted absolutely 
everywhere. I’ve never come across a place that doesn’t accept cash. So, I always try to 
carry cash as much as possible. Not only that, but I don’t like to use my card anyways, as little 
as possible to prevent potentially any sort of uh card skimmers and stuff like that. So, 
I try to use cash as much as possible. But make sure when you carry cash with you, if 
you’re going to be going to a lot of these small street food vendors and these kind of outdoor 
shopping markets where they sell clothes and stuff like that, try to break down your bills. 
A lot of these vendors don’t have enough change to constantly be breaking 1000 baht bills. 
And so they may have the change on hand, but the odds of them actually turning down your 
money in service because you only have thousand bot bills are actually pretty high. Believe it 
or not, when you go to an ATM or you convert your money, the first thing I would do before 
you go out is try to break a couple 1000 baht bills into smaller bills. Even 500 baht bills 
are going to get you significantly farther in terms of somebody wanting to service you 
and give you change than 1,000 baht bill. So, the next pro tip for you is when you come to 
Thailand, no matter where you stay, try to eat as much street food and as much food from small 
family owned and operated, you know, restaurants as possible. Try to avoid the modern-day 
western influenced restaurants that you see on the frontage of all the main roads. So, you’ll 
notice here just on this corner alone that across the street we have one of those modern western 
influenced restaurants as well as the steakhouse across the street in this other little cafe over 
here. And it’s not that these are bad places to eat, but the prices are typically significantly 
higher than the smaller family owned and operated restaurants. And the food many times seems to 
lack in quality. What I’ve noticed from experience being here and eating here for a couple of years 
is that you’re pretty much always going to get a better tasting food from street food vendors in 
the small family restaurants than you are any of those more modern restaurants. And you’re also 
going to get it for significantly less money. Now, one of the next key things before you come 
over here is to ensure that your devices and chargers, any electronics that you intend on using 
here in Thailand, are compatible with our power grid. Thailand runs off different voltages, has 
different outlets than what you would find back in the States or in other parts of the world. 
So, you want to make sure that your device is either compatible with, you know, our grid here 
or you have the appropriate converter to ensure that you’re not going to damage your device or 
damage the home or hotel or whatever it is that you’re renting. Many devices like cell phones and 
laptop chargers and stuff like that have built-in converters already, and this is not going to 
be a problem. But there’s many things like hair straighteners, hair dryers, hair curlers, 
and other miscellaneous electronic accessories that potentially won’t have a converter and you 
can damage your device. It could even melt. But not only that, if worse comes to worse, it can 
start a fire and then you may have a big problem. So before coming here, just make sure that all 
of your stuff is compatible here. and if not, get what you need to be compatible or potentially 
source out the right gear when you get here. What’s going on everybody? So, it is the next 
morning. Yesterday, I upgraded my video editing software on my computer and that was probably 
the worst thing that I have ever done. So, it is not impressive at all. And it’s the same 
program, but it’s just the latest version that had an update. And yeah, um lots of issues with 
it, lots of bugs. So, I’m going to be downloading the older version back on my computer, going back 
to that. But, uh yeah, so just a little bit kind of behind schedule, but we’re going to jump into 
the next topic, which is scams. Now Thailand just like every other part of the world you know nobody 
is perfect everywhere has some sort of scam and uh whether those people are based in that country 
or not doesn’t matter but you know everybody worldwide is exposed to the risk of potentially 
getting scammed and in Thailand there’s lots of different scams and in my opinion what I would 
recommend is that you do some research prior to traveling here. Try to familiarize yourself with 
some of the most common scams and that way you could potentially avoid them and lose, you know, 
the risk of potentially losing lots of money and stuff like that. But a couple that I do want to 
go over specifically would be the taxi and the tuk-tuk scams. Now, when you’re traveling around 
Bangkok and other parts of Thailand as well, and you visit some of the more popular kind of 
tourist attractions or, you know, the tourist go-to destinations, you’re going to notice a lot 
of tuk-tuks in taxis parked along the street at these locations. And a lot of the drivers of these 
vehicles are going to be reaching out to you when you walk by saying, “Where are you going?” You 
know, blah blah blah, whatever. These people you want to avoid. They’re there for a reason. And 
basically, they’re trying to find an inexperienced tourist that has no knowledge of the average 
costs of transportation in Thailand. Now, with the taxis, generally what they’re going to do is 
try to offer you some ridiculous flat rate fixed price to go from point A from point A to point B. 
But this is actually illegal practice in Thailand, especially in Bangkok. It is law that these taxis 
are required to charge you by the meter. So, if you’re going to take a taxi, I personally would 
suggest that you wave down a taxi that’s driving by. Don’t grab a taxi that’s sitting on the side 
of the road. And before actually getting in, confirm that they’re going to use the meter. 
And then before you even leave that spot, make sure they turn the meter on and it shows the 
35 baht, you know, minimum rate on the screen. Never agree to one of the fixed flat rate charges 
that these people try to throw out to you because they’re never a good deal. They’re always going to 
be more than what it would cost to actually just go by the meter. Now, with the tuk-tuks, it’s 
a little different, but it’s kind of similar to an extent. You know, they’re not required by 
a law to follow any sort of meter. And a lot of these are privately owned little tuk-tuks, 
and they kind of can make up their own rules, but they’re definitely out to dig deep in 
your pockets. And they also have little deals with these local stores where if they can 
convince somebody to buy something from a store, they’re going to get a kickback. And the 
way that works, and we’ve experienced it for ourselves firsthand, is they’ll try to reach 
out to you and you know, maybe you’ll say, “Hey, this is convenient enough. I’m going to catch a 
ride with this guy, right?” And they’re supposed to be bringing you to MBK or they’re supposed to 
be bringing you to Icon or whatever. Well, all of a sudden they stop out front of some small little 
shop in the middle of nowhere, not anywhere near where you’re actually supposed to be going, and 
they’re like, “Hey, I want to show you my buddy’s shop quick.” And here it’s some small crappy 
jewelry store with fake gold and fake diamonds and stuff like that. There’s a lot of places like 
this around Bangkok in other parts of Thailand. And if they can convince you to shop in this place 
and buy something, that store is going to give them a kickback. And uh I would just advise that 
you potentially avoid tuk-tuks altogether. Now, if you’re interested in going directly from 
point A to point B and you don’t want to use taxi services because you’re worried about potentially 
getting scammed with high rates, I would suggest your best options being downloading the Bolt and 
the Grab app. And you may be wondering, why would I download both? Well, easy. Because there are 
different apps and you know on different rides, they’re going to offer different prices. Sometimes 
one will be less than the other and sometimes the other will be less than the other. It all depends 
on distance traveled and demand at that time. Sometimes there can be a substantial difference. 
Now, the nice thing about these apps is that the person picking you up is not giving you a price 
based on your looks or your ethnicity or anything like that. It’s actually the app generating the 
price, you know, according to distance traveled and availability of drivers and stuff like that. 
So, you know that you’re not getting scammed. It’s kind of like a fair practice. Everyone’s going 
to get generated the same prices if they pick the same trip at the same time. This is actually 
one of my favorite means of transportation here in Thailand when I’m not riding the train because 
no matter what whether you can speak Thai or not, it doesn’t matter because you don’t even have 
to talk to the driver at all. You’re putting your location of pickup and drop off in on the 
app. They get all this information up front. They accept the drive, they pick you up, they drop 
you off, you pay them, and it’s that simple. Plus, they accept all forms of payment, including cash. 
By the way, if you ever come to Lumphini Park, you’re going to notice a ton of street cats here. 
They hang out here. There’s probably a thousand of them in the park full-time. During the day, 
they like to sleep, obviously, find shade and stuff like that. But pretty cool. If you kind of 
get a little bit of cat fever or you like miss your cats or whatever, come see them. Now, the 
next thing I want to go over is time management. being realistic in your expectations every day. 
If it’s your first time to Bangkok, after spending a few days here, you’re going to realize that 
Bangkok is crazy. It’s very crowded, super busy, high paced, but you have no control over anything. 
Just like maybe you live in a small town out west, slow paced, and you can kind of pretty much expect 
how much time it’s going to take you to do pretty much anything, right? Well, I’m going to run up 
to the store and grab some laundry detergent. 6 minutes. Okay. Around here, that’s not the case 
around here. It’s hard to actually just assume how long something is going to take. And I think 
a lot of that has to do with uh the population. There’s so many people here. And there’s major 
differences hour to hour in how long it could take you to do some simple things. And you never 
know when you know the train station is going to be congested and it may take you significantly 
longer to make it through the line to get your ticket to get to the kiosk or whatever it may be. 
And not only that, but some of the trains actually get so full that you might have to skip the next 
train and jump on the next train because there’s long lines to get on the train at every door and 
there’s no way that all these people are going to fit. And so you don’t have control over a lot of 
these things and you’ll figure that out the first time you come here. But I always advise people to 
be realistic in their expectations of the number of things that they’re going to do every day. So 
if you think something might take you an hour, give yourself at least 2 hours. Try to give 
yourself double the amount of time that you think it might take. Once you spend a longer 
period of time here and you get pretty familiar with kind of the general rush hour here in all 
the different neighborhoods and stuff like that, then you’ll be able to manage your time manage 
your time a lot better and uh be able to squeeze more things in every day. But at first it’s 
going to be really hard. Now the last thing and most important thing by far is subscribe to 
my channel. Ooh. Wo. Guilty as charged. But this is important because not only do I post videos up 
more than once a week giving out free information, but you can reach out to me directly in 
the comment section. I will give you my WhatsApp number and we could link up and if 
you need help with anything around Bangkok, whether it’s, you know, help getting a SIM card, 
help with transportation from the airport or just anything you want like a a couple days of guided 
tour around town, showing you some of the basics, I’m willing to do all this for free. The best way 
to make sure that you stay in touch with me is by subbing to my channel. And yeah, I mean, there’s 
not very many people in Bangkok or anywhere that are going to be willing to give you some free 
help. So, everybody’s out to get a buck these days. So, if any of you need a guide or you need 
any help with anything around Bangkok, reach out, post a comment. I’m willing to do whatever I can. 
I can even adjust my schedule to make it work. and uh your sub your subscriptions and your comments 
and your views, they mean a lot to the channel. They actually give me a reason to keep going. 
So, I’m excited to continue to grow on YouTube, get more viewers, get to know more and more 
people, and I think it’s going to be an an adventure. And I have tons of things planned 
out over the next year. Right now things are a little slow, but uh I have some crazy things 
planned out for next year. So stay tuned. I appreciate the views. I’ll post some additional 
stuff down in the comments section below. I hope to see you again next time. Share the video, 
like the video. Peace out. Thanks for watching.

Planning a trip to Bangkok, Thailand? 🌆 This video covers all the must-know travel tips to help you make the most of your visit — from staying connected and getting around, to avoiding scams and finding the best local eats.

👉 In this video, we’ll cover:
📱 SIM Cards in Thailand – Best options for sim cards and why its essential
🚇 Public Transportation – Why you should learn to use Bangkok’s Public Transportation systems and why it is beneficial to you.
🚗 Grab & Bolt Apps – Which one’s better for getting around Bangkok?
⚠️ Common Scams – What to watch out for and how to stay safe.
🍜 Where to Eat – Why small family owned shops are better then Large western influenced tourist spots.

Whether you’re visiting Bangkok for the first time or coming back for more, these tips will help you travel smarter, safer, and cheaper.

✈️ Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more travel guides and tips around Thailand and beyond!

Timestamps
0:00 Intro
0:20 Sim Cards
2:20 Learn the Metro Lines
4:00 Cash is King
5:00 Break down large bills
5:45 Where to eat
7:00 Electronic Compatibility
9:00 Thailand’s scams
15:00 Time management
17:00 MOST IMPORTANT!
18:54 Outro
12:58 Grab & Bolt

For any additional information or the request of a personal guide, reach out in the comment section below! Offering free help in the Bangkok Thailand area! Thanks for watching.