Bangkok in 3D: Cross the River to Wat Arun on Your iPhone

A walled royal quarter, a porcelain-covered spire on the far bank, and the river that holds the two together — in full 3D with live Street View, right from your iPhone.

Bangkok was laid out on a bend of the Chao Phraya in 1782, when a new dynasty moved its capital across the water from Thonburi and cut a canal behind it to make an island. That island, Rattanakosin, still holds the Grand Palace, and the gilded roofs behind its white walls still set the terms for the rest of the city.

It is not an easy place to arrive in cold. The heat is heavy for most of the year and the wet season adds rain on top of it. The Grand Palace stops admitting visitors in the mid-afternoon, enforces a dress code at the gate, and draws a queue before it opens — and the friendly man outside who says it is shut today and offers a tuk-tuk to somewhere better is lying. Add a long flight and traffic that turns three kilometres into an hour, and a first day here goes almost entirely on working out where things are.

That is exactly the day worth spending in advance. Bangkok is there in full 3D now, with live Street View you can step into, so you can learn the river before you stand beside it.

What makes Bangkok special

The Grand Palace is not a building but a walled quarter: throne halls, offices and, in one corner, Wat Phra Kaew, the royal chapel that holds the Emerald Buddha. The figure itself is small and dark, carved from a single block of green stone and set high on a gilded pedestal, its robes changed with the seasons by the king. Around it stand mirrored spires, gold chedis and painted guardians. One hall, Chakri Maha Prasat, carries a European facade under a Thai roof, which tells you a good deal about the century it went up in.

A short walk south, outside the palace wall, Wat Pho holds the reclining Buddha, a vast gilded figure lying the length of its hall with mother-of-pearl inlay on the soles of its feet. It is also the traditional home of Thai massage instruction, and its courtyards are full of stone giants that arrived as ship ballast.

Across the water on the Thonburi bank stands Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn. Its central prang is faced with broken Chinese porcelain set into plaster, so it reads pale grey from a distance and dissolves into pattern up close. Despite the name, the light that suits it comes late in the day, from the eastern bank.

How to explore Bangkok in 3D

This is where MAPAS comes in. Instead of a flat map and other people's photographs, you get Bangkok rendered in real three dimensions, with live Street View you can drop into anywhere.

Tilt the map and the spires lift out of a very flat city. Rotate, and the river stops being a blue line and becomes the thing the plan is organised around. For a first run, try this order:

1. Search for Bangkok, Thailand and switch to 3D, then tilt until the palace roofs and Wat Arun's prang stand above everything near them.
2. Circle the Grand Palace at roof height to see how large the walled compound is and where the chapel sits inside it.
3. Drop into live Street View on Na Phra Lan, the road to the main gate, and follow the wall south.
4. Walk to Wat Pho, then to Tha Tien pier, and cross to Wat Arun the way the ferries do.
5. Lift the camera and follow the Chao Phraya downstream past Chinatown to the towers of Silom, watching the bends do the work of streets.
6. When you travel, use GPS navigation to walk the same route on the ground.

Beyond the Grand Palace

• Yaowarat — the Chinatown spine, gold shops and street kitchens, with the solid gold Buddha of Wat Traimit at its edge.
• Wat Saket and the Golden Mount — a stairway around an artificial hill, and the only real climb in the old city.
• The Thonburi khlongs — canals on the west bank, wooden houses on stilts, and a sense of how the city moved before roads.
• Dusit — wide European boulevards, the domed throne hall, a quieter register altogether.
• Lumphini Park — the green break in the middle of the office district, east of the old quarter, with monitor lizards in the lake.

A city with no hills

Bangkok is built on the soft silt of a delta, and the 3D view makes that clear at once. There is essentially no natural high ground. The one hill in the old city, at Wat Saket, was raised by hand on the rubble of a collapsed chedi, which is why climbing it feels like an event.

What organises it instead is water. Tilt the map and you see the Chao Phraya swinging through deep meanders, Rattanakosin inside one of them and Thonburi wrapped around the outside. The canals branching off it were the original streets. The old quarter stays low near the palace while the glass towers cluster east along Silom and Sukhumvit, so from the river the skyline reads as two cities on the same flat ground.

Before you go

November to February is the cool, dry season and the best time to walk. March to May is genuinely hot, with Songkran in mid-April. The rains run roughly June to October and arrive as heavy afternoon downpours, heaviest late in the season, when low streets flood and clear again within the hour.

The Grand Palace sells its last tickets in the mid-afternoon and can close in part for royal ceremonies. At any temple, take your shoes off where the sign says, keep shoulders and knees covered, and never point your feet at a Buddha image. The express boats and the Skytrain beat a taxi in traffic almost every time.

Common questions

Can I do the Grand Palace and Wat Arun in one day?

Comfortably. They sit within about a kilometre of each other with Wat Pho between them, and the crossing is a short ferry from Tha Tien. Start at the palace when it opens and finish at Wat Arun in the late light.

Is the Emerald Buddha actually emerald?

No. It is carved from a single block of green stone, usually described as jade or jasper, and is far smaller than photographs suggest. Photography is not permitted inside the chapel.

Is MAPAS free to use?

Yes. It is free on the App Store, needs no sign-up before you start exploring, and works on iPhone and iPad.

No flight, no queue at the gate, no dress code. Just Bangkok in three dimensions, at whatever hour you feel like crossing the river.

Open MAPAS and follow the Chao Phraya tonight.