You are met at Suvarnabhumi or Don Mueang and taken to the hotel — anything from forty minutes to an hour and a half, depending entirely on the hour. The rest of the day is free. Your leader meets the group before dinner to go through the week and to explain the boat and rail passes, which are the two things that make a week here easy rather than exhausting.

We start early at the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaeo, which is worth the queue if you are there when it opens, and cross the compound wall to Wat Pho and its reclining Buddha. Lunch near the river. In the afternoon we take the cross-river ferry to Wat Arun and come back by express boat. The evening is free; Yaowarat, the Chinatown road, is at its best after eight.

By train from Krung Thep Aphiwat, the terminal north of the centre that took over most of these services in 2023. Trains run roughly hourly and the run takes between one and two hours depending on the class. We check in, then start at Wat Mahathat and Wat Ratchaburana, where a 1957 robbery led to the recovery of the royal gold now in the museum. Dinner beside the water.

Bicycles or a hired tuk-tuk, according to the group and the heat. Wat Phra Si Sanphet and its three bell-shaped chedis stood inside the palace grounds; Wat Chaiwatthanaram, out on the west bank, was finished in 1630 and is the most intact of the lot. A long-tail boat around the island in the early afternoon, then the train back to Bangkok, arriving in time for a last evening.

The morning is open. The Jim Thompson House is the most useful hour in Bangkok for anyone interested in how the silk trade worked, and the Bangkok National Museum is the other option if you would rather have the long view. Transfers are timed to your flight. Chiang Mai is an hour by air from here, and the sleeper north leaves from the same terminal we used on Day 3.