A while back, and for the life of me I can’t remember how, I came across this event that was coming to Bangkok – the heritage race. It sounded interesting…maybe because it sounded like the Amazing Race, which is something I always wanted to join.

The Heritage Race is basically a travel industry-led event that was conceptualized to serve two purposes – to uncover local stories about places and to raise funds for a good cause. It started in Singapore and it had now made its way to the city of Bangkok.

What do you have to do in it? Similar to the Amazing Race, you race against time to uncover and solve challenges that have significance to the local area.

Naturally, I wasted little time calling up friends and registering ourselves. Originally it was 4 of us – Kanika, myself and two friends. Unfortunately one friend had to drop out.

Ready, get set…

On an early Sunday morning, we made our way to the Saranrom park, which is near the Grand Palace. This was the start and end point of the race.

When we reached, there were about 10 teams already there – mostly consisting of Thais. A while later more teams showed up and there was a mixture of travelers and expats. It was a well-balanced turnout with well over 100 participants with teams made up of 2 to 6 people.

There were several sponsors and booths where we could register, collect our goodie bag, a race passport and grab a light breakfast. The race passport was the important item as this would be used to collect stamps at the various checkpoints scattered across a 5-km radius around the park.

On the passport was a map of the area and 16 locations that we had to navigate to by foot. When we reached those spots, we had to answer a question correctly in order to advance to the next one.  Even though the locations were numbered, we didn’t have to do them in order. Which route to take was completely up to us as long as we completed the race within 2 hours.

If you’re interested to see some of these spots, I suggest following this map or just exploring the area on your own. It’s the best way to come across unique, interesting things!

Go!

After waiting around (using the time to research answers online) for about an hour for the MCs to announce the start of the race, we were off.

We kept our pace, only running at long straight roads while the rest of the time we walked briskly, enjoying the sights and sounds of Bangkok city on a relatively quiet Sunday morning.

What I loved the most was how helpful locals can be and knowing a bit of Thai can go a long way! Every time we felt a bit lost or wanted to confirm the answers, we would talk to the local people. They would show us the way and even let us in on their secret pathways and shortcuts through narrowing alleys.

We also got to eat some delicious local food like the Hainanese chicken rice and roasted duck as part of the race. We expected to eat something a bit more daring and gross but we rather enjoyed the meals since we grew up eating these dishes in Thailand.

After eating, it was a bit difficult to run around but luckily we chose our route carefully enough to have this come near the end. We had two more spots to hit and only had 20 minutes to do it. Pushing through we were lucky to make it on time and enter our passport with the stamps for the lucky draw.

Yes, I thought the prizes would be given based on whoever finished fast but I guess they didn’t want to make it too competitive. the lucky draw prizes were:

1st prize – $1000
2nd prize – $700
3rd prize – $400

There were also other superlative prizes such as best Instagram photo, best dressed, most greedy team, most social and several others. The prizes for these winners were all travel-related such as free nights at hotels, tickets to destinations in Thailand, etc.

Sadly, we didn’t win any =(

To get a more immersive feeling of how the race was like, check out our vlog below at 0:51 – 1:09. This is part of our NEW weekly YouTube series called Life Through Our Lens, where we will be sharing our activities, weekend adventures and behind-the-scenes footage from the week.