Bangkok 2014

So what do you know? I went to Bangkok over the Merdeka weekend. Celebrating the nation’s independence day, outside of the country :D. With not that many vacation days left, I took advantage of the 3-day weekend. I had to deduct one day from my annual leaves but everything should be under control for my EU trip next year. It was a bit of a last minute idea - if you can say a 3-week period as that. Someone with an OCB when it comes to planning and detailing out my itinerary, it was a kind of a short notice (B as in behaviour instead of a disorder, quoting my brother ;)).

I’m trying to fit in the Bangkok trip into a single blog entry. It may not be the best choice but I don’t think I’d have the time, resource and blog contents for more than one posting :) It already took me over a month to get this blog entry out :D

We flew with Royal Jordanian from Kuala Lumpur on that Friday evening. My friends won the bidding for a class upgrade so we were traveling in style if you will. Well it's not that often that I got to fly business class :). We got to the hotel slightly after midnight after experiencing a short delay at KUL.

The next morning, we went to the Chatchuchak weekend market after we had breakfast at the hotel. The market was pretty huge that a couple of times we ended up where we started from after making too many turns. We also tried out some street food -- squid eggs and coconut ice cream -- before we grabbed lunch at a Muslim stall at the market.

At Chatchuchak

I'd think at RM15 a pair, they're a steal

Delicious coconut ice cream

Squid eggs

After we were done with Chatchuchak, we took the MRT and BTS combo to Siam Square. Here we went mall hopping from Siam Paragon to MBK to Platinum Fashion Mall, with a couple of detours to Hard Rock Cafe (where else right?) and a mango dessert stop.

Mango with mango ice cream and sticky rice

I wonder how they could regard this as safe. And this is not as messy as others

A reminder to all tourists

Platinum Fashion Mall

From Platinum, we walked to Central World (yes, another mall) with the main intention of taking the BTS back to our hotel in Silom. That was where we stumbled upon the Japan Expo. People came in droves in costumes (read: Cosplay) and they never turned down any photo-taking requests. Utterly cool! We hung around until sundown and loaded up our mobile cameras with tons of pictures.

Japan Expo at Central World

:)

All smiles :)

The next day, we had the Grand Palace in mind. Thinking that it would be close by, we decided to walk from the BTS Wongwian Yai station. After covering like a kilometer or so, we felt like it was a lost cause and hopped on a tuk-tuk :$ Haha. At least we tried right? :)

In a tuk tuk heading towards the Grand Palace

I was wearing shorts and they were deemed inappropriate for the palace visit. On top of the THB500 (~ MYR50) entrance fee, I had to fork out another THB200 (~MYR20) to borrow some pants. I decided to forgo the palace visit and return to MBK for lunch at Yana with my friends. Food or Grand Palace? A no-brainer really. LOL! It has to be one of the best tom yum I’ve ever had!

At the entrance.  Good enough right?

Yana Restaurant @ MBK

Chicken Tom Yum

That evening, we went to Asiatique; an open-air concept mall by the river. Before ending the day, we headed to Lebua State Tower to enjoy the view from the top deck. By the way, if you plan to go to Lebua State Tower, make sure that you are casually dressed. No sandals or shorts, or you’ll be stopped before you get to ride the elevator.

Waiting for the boat ride to Asiatique

The top deck at Lebua State Tower

On Monday, we checked out of our hotel in Silom and checked in into Hansar Hotel. Our last night in Bangkok so we thought we might indulge ourselves to cap off a wonderful trip. The hotel staff was awesome and O-M-G... we fell in love with our room! I’ll let the pictures do all the talking.

Free mini bar!

Very spacious living room and work area

The toilet is bigger than my own room back home!

I need one of these at home :)

Our tamarind stash to be brought home :)

As much as we love our room, we had to get our stomach fill. We returned to MBK for lunch at Yana. Yes, the food was that good! We also had mango and sticky rice for dessert at the food court. Man, I’m drooling as I’m typing this.

That evening we took a dive in the pool to get the most out of the hotel. Man, the water was super cold that I caught flu. Dang. Good thing it was on my last night in Bangkok. Else it would take the wind out of the vacation.

The next day, we just stayed in and took our time at breakfast.

Pancakes

Waffles with mango and pineapple

Omelettes.. (or scrambled eggs?)

Then it was time to leave for home. Booo. I sincerely had a great time. Thanks to my friends for ‘dragging’ me to Bangkok. It’s not that I don’t give a darn when it comes to Asian countries. It’s just that I don’t really have that many leaves left after spending on the yearly US/EU trip and Eid ;). Would I be back? Perhaps. I have yet to check out the floating markets and Ayyutthaya, among others. And the food is definitely a great lure, but there are other amazing places in Thailand, such as Krabi and Chiengmai.  One of these days. One of these days… ;)