Our Bangkok Trip!

June and I just returned from our trip to Bangkok (02-Sept-07 to 06-Sept-07), and we have some photos to share with you all. :)

We decided to go for a short trip to unwind a little. (Work related stress was piling on us for a while.) This trip was more of a shopping trip rather than a sight-seeing trip, so there isn't much photos this time round. :P

Thank God for His blessings on our trip. For some strange reasons, it only rains at night, and in the day it was slightly cloudy and pretty nice to walk. Bangkok's temperatures were supposedly hotter than Singapore, but to me, it was definately cooler there than it was here. :P

Also, we didn't get conned by any taxi drivers while we were there. I had a map on my hands, but so many little streets were not documented and street names were mostly in curly fonts, so it was a little hard to know if the driver is taking you on a visual tour of the city. Our cab fare from and to places were almost the same, and the routes taken were similar. :)

We also managed to get the better deals each time we were undecided to buy stuff too. Haha, too many examples to quote. :P

OKies, enough of talking. Here's the pictures! Enjoy! :)



Before take off from Changi Airport, Budget Terminal! First time riding on a Tiger... :P


Arrived at Bangkok. Picture taken inside the airport, and just outside of it. It's quite a contrast to see such backward residences just outside the modern airport building.


The famous Chatuchak weekend market. Only had 1 photo cos was busy buying stuff. :P We thought we had missed it already, as it was supposed to close at 6pm (it only opens on weekends.) It was already 430pm after we had checked in to our hotel on Sunday. A couple of taxi drivers had refused to take us there, saying that it'll close at 5. And guess what? The place was still booming with people when we got there, and when we left at nearly 730pm, there were still shops opened! We managed to get quite a fair bit of clothing here and went back to our hotel happy. June bought a really cute piggy bag here too. Ask her to show you. :P


Here's a view of our Baiyoke Suite hotel room. It was actually made up of two rooms. The first photo shows the hall/dining area you see when you open the hotel room. From there, you open a door to the bedroom itself, which you see in the second photo. (I didn't take a photo of the attached bathroom.)




Breakfast at Baiyoke Suite is served on the 43rd (top) floor! It provides us with a magnificent view of the Bangkok city. (Baiyoke Suite used to be the tallest hotel in Bangkok, until it's brother Baiyoke Sky took over.) Breakfast was pretty tasty, better than what I had expected. :P



Our second day out! We went to Chinatown (Yaowarat) in the morning. Pretty interesting sight and sounds there, with all the chinese banners and the honking traffic. :P They've got pagoda shaped telephone booths along the streets (pict 19). :P There's also this speciality shop that sells tons of Hello Kitty bags (pict 22).

We went to the wholesale market (Baiyoke Market) around our hotel in the afternoon. There were a lot of people here, and it we had our hands full with our purchases, so no photos. :P We really bought quite a lot of clothing from here.


Here's a shot of our hotel. It's pretty easy to recognise given it's height and it's rainbow colours. The other photosare views from our hotel room. There are a lot of half completed buildings in Bangkok city overgrown with weeds, lichen and vine. Looking at the building in the first photo, you can guess that the decripit building's been left there for years, if not, decades.


McDonalds! With Ronald McDonald in the standard Thai greeting pose. :) McDonalds in Thailand is under the McThai company (printed on our receipts). The meals there are definately cheaper and bigger than local versions, but the fries there are pretty soggy; compared to local food pricing, it's pretty expensive. We ate here once cos we couldn't find proper food to eat around our hotel. The food court in the same shopping centre had little variety and a strong pork smell. Food courts in Bangkok have very strong pork smell for that matter, and you can most certainly smell a food court before you can see it. The Thais eat a lot of pork, in many different ways! :P One of the 7-11 stores we visited had cup noodles in two flavours - Tom Yam and Mince Pork. :P



Next stop, Mahboonkrong or otherwise known as MBK Centre. MBK is located at one of the ends of the shopping belt. We ate at a Japanese restaurant there. The taste isn't as good as the ones we have here, but the portions are HUGE. I couldn't find my set meal, and this was the first one I couldn't finish. I conquered the huge sets at Ichiban Boshi, but this was waaaay bigger.


Some random shots at Siam Centre and Siam Discovery Centre. There were a lot of high end shops here, so we didn't buy anything in the end. Sorry about the absense of photos of them from the outside. They were linked at certain storeys so we didn't really get to see what they looked like on the outside. :P


Some shots of the Siam Train Station outside Siam Paragon. Paragon here looks much more expensive than the one in Singapore. Super expensive looking deco, and super high ceilings (really very high). Needless to say, the stuff here's much more high end, and we went home only with photos. :P


(Made a short trip back to MBK cos we forgot something. :P)


Last of the shopping malls that we visited, the CentralWorld mall. This is supposedly the largest shopping mall in South-East Asia. I didn't manage to get a photo of it from the pedestrian walkway. It's pretty interesting how they linked all the shopping areas with sheltered linkways. Some of the linkways are really VERY long, very much like a pedestrian expressway. There were many soldiers in ceremonial attire walking around the place. We didn't stay to find out what was going to happen there. CentralWorld was really huge, and we got tired, so we didn't explore the whole place.




Our last day at Bangkok.Some final shots of the view from our hotel's restaurant. My camera batt went dead after that, so no pictures of the wholesale market we revisited (again).

It's home sweet home after that. We really missed the comfort of our own home by then. :P

You can also view these photos here