My flight home was disrupted pleasantly by my annual Bangkok pilgrimage. We were in the Land of Smiles to celebrate Sandy's birthday!
Alan had made reservations at Sirocco, the State Tower - an alfresco-type of restaurant which has a great view of Bangkok. Alas, it started pouring in the late afternoon and when we arrived, we had to be seated indoors instead.
Sandy staring forlornly at her food.
My snowfish dish was pretty good and I wiped out the entire plate of my food. Yeah, and the appetisers of foie gras and some mushroom thingy were pretty good too. However, to pay that price to eat indoors is really not quite worthwhile. I am definitely willing to pay that price to sample their alfresco dining experience next time.
Happy Birthday, Girl!
The hostel in which we stayed was pretty good -
Lub'd.
Outside our rooms... 3 wooden dogs lingered...
The furnishing is contemporary and Lub'd is popular with the international tourist crowd. The hostel has facilities such as theatre, internet kiosks and games tables to provide common grounds for you to befriend other tourists living in the hostel. In fact, we were quite impressed when the hostel staff noted Sandy's birthday and sent her a gift to our rooms!
The first day in Bangkok was spent trawling the streets of the Chatchuchak Market.
We started out looking for breakfast in the market.
What to eat?
We were quickly won over by a friendly man who welcomed us to his makeshift food card. The ambience was certainly primitive and not too impressive. But the food - WOW! One of the best pad-thai I have ever eaten!
Yum, yum, yum and yum!
After being nourished by a delicious breakfast, we were ready to go
shopping! We needed to get equipped for the warfare - and thus, we scanned the shops for hand-held fans to combat the humidity and heat in the market.
Our thirst-quenching fruity fans
Yup, and shop we did! Although it was only for about 4-5 hours, I think most of us were quite lethargic towards mid-afternoon and were looking forward to a massage. Since the massage palour we frequented was full and required a waiting time of more than an hour, we decided to adjourn to my favorite
GreyHound Cafe for some titbits.
Happy troopers
After our massage sessions and another wonderful dinner of shark's fin and fish maw at the famed Chinatown store, we settled back in the hotel to count our shopping loot.
Candice won the "
Who is the best shopper?!" contest.
Special honorary mention to Alan, who surprised us with his shopping abilities, despite being a member of the male gender!
Sandy was just "
okay-lah" in amassing a huge shopping loot.
I was too, "
okay-lah" in my shopping loot because my luggage is already overweight from all the stuff I had to bring back from London!
Man, the stuff in Bangkok are just so cheap, good and creative! Don't even get me started on the countless rows of shops at the Platinum shopping center. This is
almost like CCK with air-conditioning! These are mostly clothes, accessories and other fashion items. CCK still has more creativity injected into their merchandises, I feel.
Nevertheless, I love the food court at Platinum! We started our breakfast and were thoroughly spoilt for choice at the many food stores available.
We shopped till late afternoon and went for a pampering session of pedicure and manicure. Hmmm, what bliss.
And soon, Monday arrived and it was time to head back to Singapore. We will be back again soon!
