This guide is built from the live tour page of Bangkok Old Market Food Tour on A Chef’s Tour — price, start time, group size, tastings and dietary notes come straight from the operator, never invented.

Two Bangkok Tours at the Same Price

Bangkok is a city with too many places to eat and not enough evenings to eat in. A Chef’s Tour lists two food tours there, both at US$59 per person, both with a maximum of eight guests and 15+ tastings, both led in English. The price and the group size are the same. Almost everything else is different.

The Bangkok Food Tour is the Chinatown walk. It meets at the Shanghai Mansion hotel on Yaowarat, goes on foot through 7–8 stops, and ends on Yaowarat Road, which the page describes in all its glowing neon glory. The Old Market tour starts outside the Big C Supercenter Ratchadamri, takes a taxi boat along the klong canals to an older district, and spends most of its time at a market that the page says has been feeding lunch to locals since 1899.

We are Joona and Alla, family travellers based in Rovaniemi, Finland, and we have not taken either tour. We built this comparison from A Chef’s Tour’s pages, and we mention the operator’s own claims as claims, not as things we have checked.

The Route and the Food

The Bangkok Food Tour page names peanut satay with coconut-marinated chicken skewers, a creamy curry with cured sausage from a backstreet stall, a peppery soup with crispy pork belly and rolled rice noodles, and a sweet finish on Yaowarat Road. The rest of the 15+ tastings are kept as a surprise. The operator says its small group size gets it into stalls and hole-in-the-wall joints that larger tours can’t reach.

The Bangkok Old Market Food Tour page names khanom buang yuan, a crispy mung bean crêpe stuffed with tofu, ginger and young coconut; miang kham betel leaf wraps; na dpet grob roasted duck from a shophouse eatery; kuay jab, a peppery broth with rice noodles; and two sweets, khanom tuay steamed coconut pudding and khanom mo kaeng mung bean and coconut flan. It also mentions an old district where women are trained in traditional Thai dance and the remnants of Bangkok’s oldest cinema.

The tone of the food is different. The Chinatown tour is meat-forward Thai-Chinese street cooking with a night-market finish. The Old Market tour is more traditional Thai snacks, duck and sweets, eaten in a quiet neighbourhood where, the page says, you’re unlikely to see another traveller.

Side by Side

Dietary Differences

The dietary lines are where the two pages part company, and they are the part we would read before booking. Quoting the operator’s own limits:

• Vegetarian and vegan: the Bangkok Food Tour says it is unsuitable, because over half the menu has meat or seafood-based ingredients. The Old Market page lists no vegetarian line.
• Pescatarian: possible on the Bangkok Food Tour, with meat in 3–4 tastings and limited alternatives; limited on the Old Market tour, with meat in 5–6 savoury tastings and no alternatives.
• Pork: possible on both, with pork in 3–4 dishes on the Bangkok Food Tour and 2–3 on the Old Market tour, and no alternatives available.
• Gluten: both say fine for mild intolerance and not advised for coeliac disease, because of unavoidable traces of soy sauce.
• Peanuts: possible for mild allergies, with peanuts in 1–2 tastings on the Bangkok Food Tour and 3–4 on the Old Market tour.
• Seafood and shellfish: possible on both, with seafood in 3–4 tastings on the Bangkok Food Tour and 1–2 on the Old Market tour, and fish sauce and oyster sauce in more.
• Halal: both say they have no halal-certified vendors on the route.

Street-food tours cannot promise an allergen-free plate, so anyone with a severe allergy should treat both with caution.

Families and Kids

Only the Bangkok Food Tour lists a child policy: children aged 3–12 pay half price and infants aged 0–2 join free. The Old Market page lists none, so ask A Chef’s Tour (info@achefstour.com) before bringing a child. A canal boat ride is a plus for many children, but the tour is four hours long and starts at around 10am in Bangkok’s heat, so we would think hard about it for under-fives.

For the Chinatown tour, the morning departures at 10:45AM or 11:15AM suit families better than the evening ones, as long as everybody copes with the midday heat.

Timing, Heat and Cancellation

Bangkok is hot all year, so the time of day matters. The Chinatown evening departure starts between 3:00PM and 5:00PM, finishing at about 6:30–9:00PM, with the walk cooling as the sun sets. The Old Market tour starts in the late morning and finishes in the early afternoon, which means most of the walking is in the hottest hours, with the canal boat at the start as the cooler stretch.

The cancellation lines differ. The Bangkok Food Tour allows a full refund up to 24 hours before; the Old Market tour needs 48 hours. If your plans are fluid, that is a real point in the Chinatown tour’s favour.

Getting there and back is on you, but the pages help a little. Both say guests come from all over the city, so to save time there is a fixed meeting point, and both say your guide can help you find transport back at the end of the tour. For the Old Market tour the meeting point is outside a supermarket mall called Big C Supercenter Ratchadamri, with full details on your booking confirmation. For the Chinatown tour it is the Shanghai Mansion hotel on Yaowarat. Leave a margin for Bangkok traffic on either, and check the confirmation before you set off.

On what to wear: light clothes, comfortable closed shoes and a hat for the daytime departures, plus a small umbrella in the rainy season. Both tours are mainly outdoors, and the Chinatown route goes, in the operator’s words, where tuk-tuks cannot go, so expect narrow alleys and uneven ground.

Which One We Would Book

For a first-time visitor we would book the Bangkok Food Tour, mainly because Yaowarat is one of the city’s great food streets and the evening finish is a highlight, and because the page’s dietary information is fuller and the cancellation window shorter. For a second visit, or for a traveller who prefers daytime, or loves markets and boats, the Bangkok Old Market Food Tour is the better pick.

If you have a long stay, doing both is not repetition: none of the dishes named on the two pages overlap.

If you are building a Bangkok itinerary around one of them, remember that the Old Market tour takes most of a late morning and early afternoon, so you will not want a big lunch, and the Chinatown evening tour replaces dinner completely. Plan the rest of the day with that in mind: a temple or a museum in the morning before a 3:00PM Chinatown start, or a quiet afternoon after the Old Market tour. Do not stack either of them on the day you arrive or the day you fly unless you have a generous buffer.

Price and Value

At US$59 per person for about four hours and 15+ tastings, both tours work out at under US$4 a tasting, before the drinks you may add. That is not cheap by Bangkok street-food standards if you ate alone, but you pay for a host who knows where to go and for a small group that fits where bigger groups cannot. Getting to the meeting point is up to you.

How to Book

Both tours are booked on achefstour.com through a live calendar with instant confirmation. You pay the normal price. We never take payment.

FAQ

Our Honest Final Word

Two good tours for different travellers. The Bangkok Food Tour is the one we would send most first-timers to, and the Bangkok Old Market Food Tour is the one for people who want canals, a century-old market and a quieter district. We haven’t taken either ourselves, and we have tried to quote the pages, including their limits, rather than sell a story.

We are an A Chef’s Tour affiliate and earn a commission on bookings made through our links — it does not change the price you pay. Going north afterwards? The Chiang Mai Food Tour (US$59 per person, 16+ tastings) is a different cuisine entirely.