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It was an early flight, i was freezing at the terminal building half relying on Starbucks to keep me awake and our flight got delayed by two hours. Even with the subdue early morning half-awaken state and the fact that i am losing time because of the delay making me all fidgety in the terminal, trust me, i was in between being really excited & "omfg, i can't believe we pulled this trip off" because of the love of two things - It's a city i always wanted to visit & of course, you gotta love the shopping over there.
When we arrived and was lining up at the immigration counters, i turned around and noticed that tourism is still doing really good as there was still throngs of touristy white people, Asians and us. It was more than good, the arrivals were bustling. The concern was brought upon the fact that a week before we were to fly over, there were rumours of protest in motion in conjunction with their impending announcement of the country's election but no travel warning was announced and the fact that out flight was full, it was pretty safe.
Back to our arrival in BKK, I have heard numerous times about how friendly Thai people can be and that statement was made true the moment we got into a taxi at SVB airport after we arrived. The taxi driver with what little English he could speak had a conversation with us, almost bordering giving us a tour as we drove to Sukhumvit where our hotel was located. So much so, we booked him in advance to come pick us up on our last day to the airport.
We were staying at Silq Hotel located at district of Sukhumvit which was amazing. Being more of a boutique hotel than the usual fanfare of a large hotel, it was beautiful and warm. It is very personalized with the staff being very attentive to your needs. Being only 8 floors and a maximum of 7 rooms per floor only, the rooms were uber comfy and modern equipped with plasma TV's and free unlimited Wireless access. On top of that, they upgraded us to deluxe rooms for free, threw in breakfast and then gave us F&B discounts. The beds were incredible i swear. Even with just five hours sleep on the first night, i woke up felling super refresh and surprise that it was just 7.28 am BKK time! You can't even get me to wake up by 12pm on my holidays back in KL. No wonder they are listed as #6 of Bangkok Hotels recommended by travelers in Trip Advisor beating some incredible hotels out.
Besides that, the first few things we did was to visit three major shopping places - MBK Center, Platinum Mall and Suan Lum Night Market all in within two days with major shopping damage done. It was like a shopping haven if you know what you are looking for or if you aren't that fussy with quality. I made a list and got almost 99% of everything on it and more. By the end of Day 2, i had filled up an entire luggage with almost 30 pieces of clothing excluding accessories, hats and etc. I had also learned that being nice when bargaining and smiling lots makes a huge difference to getting what you want for so much cheaper.
Other highlights of day 1 & 2 was that everything is relatively cheaper (not currency wise) with the same basic things costing much more in M'sia for example cigarettes, alcohol, taxi fare and food. Oh, i love how efficient their Skytrain's and MRT's are. Cheap, fast, clean and importantly on time plus i wanna hand them an award for having the fastest escalators in the world at their train stations. It was so super fast that it's a sin to be slow! Also, an encounter at the train station was quite a sight. It was nearly around 7pm when we were exiting the train ticket machines when suddenly the hustle and bustle of the people at the busy station came to a standstill. It was dead silent, no walking, everyone stood up and the only people who weren't sure what was going on were us and a bunch of white tourist in front of us. Apparently, the Thai national anthem was playing overhead in the speakers and everyone was just respecting the song. Oh yeah, another thing at the train platforms that i thought was crazy were the presence of soldiers. Yes, real soldiers in full army camouflage gear, hard helmet and gun guarding the station. Talk about security!
Food wise - omg, i love Thai food. Surprisingly, it's not that spicy as how we have it here in M'sia. It basically works like this. You order a dish and in any food place on the table is a little condiment tray which has different things like chilli, sugar, fish sauce, sweet sauce and soy sauce. That's how you gauge how spicy you want your dish to be. I did found two things i craved till now- Pad Thai and mango/papaya/rambutan thai salad. Plus we had this awesome chicken noddles by the side of the road and the amazingly sour tom yum that was out of this world. And pork is available EVERYWHERE but not mango sticky rice which i had to hunt it down only to get it at the airport and carry it pass immigration only to be sitting in the terminal hurriedly eating it before we boarded.
Amazingly, everything went as planned with no problems at all. Besides the usual forgetting to bring a universal adapter, one chatty but dodgy taxi driver who wanted to bring us for a "good time" for cheap, the sudden downpour of rain that made us hail for the dodgy taxi guy in the first place and that SL night market was a tad disappointing, everything else was fuss free. And when the city turns to night, it comes alive and no, we skipped that whole red light district if you were wondering :p
Day Three/Four next....
When we arrived and was lining up at the immigration counters, i turned around and noticed that tourism is still doing really good as there was still throngs of touristy white people, Asians and us. It was more than good, the arrivals were bustling. The concern was brought upon the fact that a week before we were to fly over, there were rumours of protest in motion in conjunction with their impending announcement of the country's election but no travel warning was announced and the fact that out flight was full, it was pretty safe.
Back to our arrival in BKK, I have heard numerous times about how friendly Thai people can be and that statement was made true the moment we got into a taxi at SVB airport after we arrived. The taxi driver with what little English he could speak had a conversation with us, almost bordering giving us a tour as we drove to Sukhumvit where our hotel was located. So much so, we booked him in advance to come pick us up on our last day to the airport.
We were staying at Silq Hotel located at district of Sukhumvit which was amazing. Being more of a boutique hotel than the usual fanfare of a large hotel, it was beautiful and warm. It is very personalized with the staff being very attentive to your needs. Being only 8 floors and a maximum of 7 rooms per floor only, the rooms were uber comfy and modern equipped with plasma TV's and free unlimited Wireless access. On top of that, they upgraded us to deluxe rooms for free, threw in breakfast and then gave us F&B discounts. The beds were incredible i swear. Even with just five hours sleep on the first night, i woke up felling super refresh and surprise that it was just 7.28 am BKK time! You can't even get me to wake up by 12pm on my holidays back in KL. No wonder they are listed as #6 of Bangkok Hotels recommended by travelers in Trip Advisor beating some incredible hotels out.
Besides that, the first few things we did was to visit three major shopping places - MBK Center, Platinum Mall and Suan Lum Night Market all in within two days with major shopping damage done. It was like a shopping haven if you know what you are looking for or if you aren't that fussy with quality. I made a list and got almost 99% of everything on it and more. By the end of Day 2, i had filled up an entire luggage with almost 30 pieces of clothing excluding accessories, hats and etc. I had also learned that being nice when bargaining and smiling lots makes a huge difference to getting what you want for so much cheaper.
Other highlights of day 1 & 2 was that everything is relatively cheaper (not currency wise) with the same basic things costing much more in M'sia for example cigarettes, alcohol, taxi fare and food. Oh, i love how efficient their Skytrain's and MRT's are. Cheap, fast, clean and importantly on time plus i wanna hand them an award for having the fastest escalators in the world at their train stations. It was so super fast that it's a sin to be slow! Also, an encounter at the train station was quite a sight. It was nearly around 7pm when we were exiting the train ticket machines when suddenly the hustle and bustle of the people at the busy station came to a standstill. It was dead silent, no walking, everyone stood up and the only people who weren't sure what was going on were us and a bunch of white tourist in front of us. Apparently, the Thai national anthem was playing overhead in the speakers and everyone was just respecting the song. Oh yeah, another thing at the train platforms that i thought was crazy were the presence of soldiers. Yes, real soldiers in full army camouflage gear, hard helmet and gun guarding the station. Talk about security!
Food wise - omg, i love Thai food. Surprisingly, it's not that spicy as how we have it here in M'sia. It basically works like this. You order a dish and in any food place on the table is a little condiment tray which has different things like chilli, sugar, fish sauce, sweet sauce and soy sauce. That's how you gauge how spicy you want your dish to be. I did found two things i craved till now- Pad Thai and mango/papaya/rambutan thai salad. Plus we had this awesome chicken noddles by the side of the road and the amazingly sour tom yum that was out of this world. And pork is available EVERYWHERE but not mango sticky rice which i had to hunt it down only to get it at the airport and carry it pass immigration only to be sitting in the terminal hurriedly eating it before we boarded.
Amazingly, everything went as planned with no problems at all. Besides the usual forgetting to bring a universal adapter, one chatty but dodgy taxi driver who wanted to bring us for a "good time" for cheap, the sudden downpour of rain that made us hail for the dodgy taxi guy in the first place and that SL night market was a tad disappointing, everything else was fuss free. And when the city turns to night, it comes alive and no, we skipped that whole red light district if you were wondering :p
Day Three/Four next....
