Suvarnabhumi Airport to Chinatown (Yaowarat)

After dark, Yaowarat Road becomes one of the great street-food theatres on earth: charcoal smoke rising off a hundred woks, neon Chinese characters blazing overhead, queues forming at stalls that have grilled the same dish for forty years. Bangkok's Chinatown is dense, chaotic and gloriously edible, and (until fairly recently a taxi-only proposition) it now has a proper way in by rail, which changes the arithmetic of getting here from Suvarnabhumi.

The new rail route to the woks

The trick is to combine the Airport Rail Link with the MRT. Ride the Rail Link to Makkasan for around 35 baht, change to the MRT Blue Line, and it carries you to Wat Mangkon, a station that opens almost onto the heart of Yaowarat, around €2 in total, roughly fifty minutes, and entirely above the fray of the traffic. That last point matters here more than almost anywhere: Chinatown's narrow lanes clog with cars and delivery bikes, so arriving underground and surfacing on foot spares you a long, hot crawl. For a hungry traveller travelling light, it is the neatest way to land.

The cheap cab to the door

Of course, this being Bangkok, the taxi is barely an extravagance. The metered fare to Chinatown runs around €8 to €13 with the airport surcharge and the tolls included, and it deposits you and your bags at the door — welcome after a flight, and the obvious choice if you are laden or arriving late. The problem is the traffic: the streets around Yaowarat are among the city's most congested, so a cab that is cheap on the meter can still be slow on the clock. Use the official Level 1 rank, ask for the meter, and steel yourself for a shuffle through the final few streets.

Fixing the fare before you fly

For a hands-off arrival, a pre-booked transfer or a Grab runs about €9 to €15, the price set in advance and a car waiting — a small premium over the metered taxi that buys certainty, and, with Grab, no negotiation at the kerb. It is a reassuring option if you are landing into Chinatown's chaos for the first time.

A few pointers for the Yaowarat run:

• In the evening the rail route often beats the taxi outright, since Chinatown's streets seize up badly after dark.
• Aim for the MRT Wat Mangkon station — it puts you right among the food stalls without a long walk.
• The Rail Link stops around midnight; a very late arrival means a cab or Grab.
• Bring cash and an appetite — Yaowarat's best stalls don't take cards, and you'll want to try several.

How the new metro stop rewrote the trip

For years, reaching Chinatown from the airport meant one thing: a taxi, and a slow one, because the neighbourhood's tangled lanes had no rail of their own. The opening of the MRT Blue Line extension changed that at a stroke. Now the Wat Mangkon station surfaces right in the thick of Yaowarat, and the Rail Link-to-metro combination gives you a genuine, traffic-proof way in for around €2 — a real gift in a district whose streets seize up so badly after dark. The practical upshot is that timing no longer forces your hand: where an evening arrival once meant resigning yourself to a crawling cab, you can now sail underground and pop up among the food stalls. Keep the taxi in reserve for when you're heavily laden, but for a light traveller with an appetite, the metro is the neat modern answer to an old problem.

However you come in, the reward is the same and it is intoxicating: turn a corner into Yaowarat as the woks fire up, and dinner (several dinners, really) is already sizzling in front of you. Come hungry, come with cash, and give yourself an evening to wander, because the best of Chinatown is not any single dish but the sheer, smoky, neon-lit abundance of it all.