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Sunday was jam packed so much so we had to have a schedule for the day to keep track of time. We were having breakfast in the hotel when my sis was typing diligently into her Blackberry saying things like "Ok, we have to leave at 2.30pm so that gives us 4 hours of shopping over at JJ!" I was nodding while having the most scrumptious breakfast of bacon, eggs, sausages, potatoes, baked beans and toast. The simpler the better and the idea of having pork served in a hotel makes it simply oh so good.
If you have been or planning to visit Bangkok, of course you can't complete your weekend without heading over to Chatuchak Weekend Market or aslo known as JJ home to the world's largest market with 15 000 stores and counting. Although located further north of BKK, it is so worth it if you wanna shop, people watch or just enjoy baking under the sun on a lazy weekend. It was considered late when we got there at around 11am as it was already crazy packed and blazing super hot .Essentials include very minimal light clothing, backpack to stuff all your shopping (saves tons of plastic bags!), sunblock, water, lots of energy and a stop for the infamous coconut ice cream served in lil coconut shells. In the end of 4-ish hours, we were exhausted, sweaty, sunburned but still happy even if it wasn't enough of time coz you just can't covered the entire damn market.
So next year, we are definitely gonna do two days here because firstly you can get some amazing finds here if you look really carefully which you need plenty of time and secondly, the golden rule of JJ is that you never utter the words "oh, i'll come back to this store and buy it later". This is because if you do that, you will kick yourself so hard because you will never find that store again if you are thinking of doubling back. It is so large to the point that every store and lane will look the same by a certain time to the point they have 27 sections with store addresses on it just in case you desperately want to look for that particular store. So remember the golden rule people, adhere!
And after all that power shopping, you cannot NOT leave without having a massage, a manicure, spa treatment, reflexology or anything pleasurable ok, i am gonna stop your train of thoughts for a sec before you think of something else than what i am trying to say.........and we are back because it's silly not to for it is so super cheap and the service is excellent. The sis and i dedicated the rest of our afternoon having massages and manicures. More like a full 60 min massage, a body spa treatment massage, a manicure and pedicure and a french manicure all for around $1200 Baht. The massage i had made me sleep like a baby that night and cured my back shoulder pain problem all thanks to this dude, yes a guy who had me twisted in body places i didn't know i could bend into and tossed around like a rag doll in the form of the brutally painful but killer good Thai massage.
One unconventionally thing we did was to visit the local supermarket chain which was Tops Supermarket to kinda just browse through their shelves and jealously discover items that we do not have in Malaysia. We did pick up a few items including Thai rice, condensed milk, tea, Glico brand "Pocky Sticks" in different flavours incl. ham & cheese, Milo (there is a difference to it being manufactured under Nestle Thailand. i swear it is milkier that the ones we get here. good stuff!), coffee, shampoo and a host of other things.
We did go to Boots Pharmacy which is the equivalent to our Guardian/Watson's Pharmacies to get some Boots products but pharmacy things are really expensive here. Wanted to get some prescribed medicines that you can't get here like sleeping pills and what not but didn't feel like getting stop at the immigration counters if so whatever i intend to bring back is like super illegal. I love Bangkok and i intend to return as many times possible without a record. But in the end we got stop at the immgration counter anyway because the sister so cleverly concealed a small Swiss army knife in her carry-on luggage whilst forgetting to take it out causing us to be brought one side and manually searched. In the end they found it and tossed it into this huge bin. Oh well so much for that.
So with that said, it was truly love at first city sight and there is just something about it that makes you want to come back and discover more. So till the next time x
