bangkok 18 oct 09 – day 5

The problem with the last day of the trip is that I always couldn’t sleep well. I would wake up every hour because subconsciously, I was worried that I might miss the flight!

We had breakfast in the hotel and went back to the room to start packing. We had quite a bit of time left, so it’s bejeweled time again! I am obviously a better player!

Before I forget, I’d better take a picture of my birthday present, from Mike. Hmmm, I look a little like the 3rd grade lady killer, eh?

The checkout was perfectly smooth and we were gently reminded if we had collected all our belongings in the room before we checkout from the hotel.

By the time we went down to level 1, the taxi which the frontdesk has arranged for us was waiting for us. The porter, was friendly and polite as always.

This flower heart was hung up on the pillar at the airport, where we had our lunch.

Mike had Thai food, which looked rather mouth-watering, unfortunately, according to Mike, the dish looked better than it actually tasted. I can’t complain about mine though, it was a hyper sinful chocolate ice-cream, with brownie, with choc chips, with syrup!

The short trip ended with a sweet note, with an amazingly good impression left with us by the boutique hotel – SilQ.

bangkok 17 oct 09 – day 4

Breakfast was settled at the hotel and we went back to the room till late morning.

We decide to return to Central World and have the boutique check the watch that Mike bought the day before. We suspect that the watch’s battery is dried up, hence not moving. The day was spent in Central World, and I managed to have my waffle after all, at Haagen Dazs.

After collecting the watch, we decide to head back to the hotel. We had lunch at the Beer Garden, and spent the rest of the day in the hotel.

When we have nothing else to do, I decided that Mike needed a new wallpaper for his newly ‘customized’ sparkling blueberry. Previously, it was just the plush meow, which I ‘forced’ him to keep as wallpaper. Now, it’s a double nightmare for Mike! He is constantly terrorized by the images of the wife and the plush meow..hiak hiak hiak.

What can I say, most Thai women are demure, and soft spoken, it’s easy to get influenced, or at least try to fake it when you stay there even for a couple of days. Right, surely for my case, it’s a denial kicked in when my bio-number took a flip in the page, so I’d probably try to discount the actual bio-number by acting cute in the photo. wahahaha

At evening time, we decided that we were not going for dinner since the late lunch was still full in the stomach. We challenged each other with bejeweled and watched Notting Hill on the telly. Suddenly, the bell rang. We were rather puzzled because we weren’t expecting anyone. When Mike opened up, the team of 3-4 hotel staff started to sing birthday song! One of them was carrying a plate of cake with a lit up candle on the plate. What a pleasant surprise! I was asked to make a wish before blowing out the candle. It’s very sweet and thoughtful of the hotel staff to do this for the guest, and I am not even the principal guest!

I am truly moved by the nice gesture.

bangkok 16 oct 09 – day 3

I didn’t sleep well the night before, could be due to the horror movie that Mike was watching before we slept. I practically didn’t sleep, or rather, I slipped in and out of sleep and awaken by anxiety.

We had bread – that we bought the day before – and coffee in the room, because I needed to sleep in a little bit before we set out for the day.

Instead of the usual BTS transport, we took a cab to the Platinum Fashion Mall instead. It all happened that way because we were reading the map outside the hotel, and the porter ran towards us to offer direction and help. Mike thought it was quite worth using Taxi to Platinum Fashion Mall so that we didn’t have to walk so much.

We decided to have lunch before the shopping spree takes off, so we headed up to the food court located at the highest floor of the mall, but decided to lunch at Fuji Restaurant which is located within the food court.

It was quite a fruitful shopping spree. Mike got himself 6 pieces of shirts, while I got myself 5 blouses and 1 t-shirt. Platinum Fashion Mall is known to be the wholesale center, but wholesale price requirement is really lenient, at minimum of 2 pieces? After Platinum Fashion Mall, I really wanted to have waffle ice-cream, but I reckon Mike was feeling a little tired by then, so he wasn’t keen in looking out for the waffle. We went in to Central World which is located beside Siam Paragon, and beside Platinum Fashion Mall (it is really not ‘beside’, but quite a bit of walking distance), thinking that we might find some nice cafe or dessert place in such a huge giant mall.

We went in to Follie Follie soon after we set foot into Central World. Mike suggested that we should just spend all the Thai Baht that we had changed for this trip and nothing more, I completely concur with that. Instead, he bought himself a watch; and got me a pair of shades at Follie Follie! Hah! The sales staff filled up the VAT refund form so that we could claim back 7% refund from the  purchases at the airport.

We didn’t get to sit down and have waffle at Central World eventually. Mike was just too tired, so he wasn’t exactly looking. We ended up walking on the skywalk trying to find a waffle place, and ended up going into Amarin Plaza which is still like a ghost mall, exactly the way we left it 2 years ago. Knowing Mike well enough, I didn’t think we were ever going to find a suitable place, so I proposed to go back to the Asok where our hotel is, and perhaps go to the mall which is just short walking distance from the Asok station.

By the time we reached Asok, I guess Mike just wanted to head back to the hotel. He showed strong disinterest in walking up to the mall near Asok. At that point, I didn’t want to try anymore. I would be perfectly happy with an ice cream from McDonald’s. I managed to satisfy myself with a McFlurry strawberry, the rest is just history.

When we headed out in the morning in the taxi, we saw a small restaurant ‘Beer Garden Sukhumvit 19‘, and planned to try out the Thai dishes there. We went there for dinner today, and were very delighted with the dishes.

We played bejeweled in the room and watched tv for the rest of the night.

bangkok 15 oct 09 – day 2

We woke up at around 8am to get ready to have breakfast at the hotel. It’s a very small boutique hotel, so the breakfast is honestly very limited. We are able to order 3 dishes from the menu, and then get some cold dishes from the buffet line which is really small range.

We only went out at around 11am as we remembered the last time we were in Bangkok, most shops only opened for business after 11am.

The first stop was MBK, and we were eager to locate our favorite restaurant, only to find out that it is now transformed into food court. Not much shopping was done, but Mike managed to get his blackberry’s cover replaced for Bht1000 (which was a ripped off, we found out later).

Lunch was settled at Fuji Restaurant located in Siam Paragon. We did more snack shopping at the giant supermarket at Siam Paragon, and went back to the hotel after that. Mike was feeling a little tired already.

Mike was watching a horror movie while I typed out today’s travel journal on Google Docs- Pulse – and it must be really frightening, because he actually needed to shield his eyes with the pillow on some scenes.

P/S: the photos included in this post were taken on 18 Oct, because I have completely forgotten about camera on 15 Oct until we were already out!

bangkok 14 oct 09 – day 1

After some consideration, I decide to book into SilQ Bangkok Hotel, a lovely boutique hotel. The deciding factor would be the complimentary wireless internet, and for a small fee, we got ourselves breakfast too.

It wasn’t easy to get to the hotel though, since this hotel is very new, many taxi drivers are not familiar with the location, even though we do have the address in Thai language included in the confirmation voucher from Agoda.

I have a habit to pick up as many infosheets and maps I could find at the airport upon arrival, so we had to locate the hotel on the map and point it to the driver. I don’t think we had taken any longer route though, the driver merely slowed down as he turned into Sukhumvit Soi 19 and we looked out for the hotel.

We were greeted by a friendly porter when we alighted at the hotel. Lobby is located at level 2, and checking in was a breeze. We were ‘escorted’ to our room by one of the front desk staff, who tried to chat up with us about Singapore. It was a good effort, especially that she had visited Singapore before.

For some reasons, I prefer non-carpet flooring for the room. If you are ever exposed to the facts of dirt, bacterial, and germs that are trapped in the carpet, you would not prefer carpet too. Unless the carpet is regularly cleaned thoroughly by experts, carpet is really not my favorite flooring. SilQ has just the right flooring to my liking.

It’s a small boutique hotel, but all basics are well provided for, so we were perfectly pleased with it. The thing about boutique hotel is that each hotel try to win guests over with tastefully decorated furnishings. I simply love that!

Mike was already hot on the phone when we in the taxi. Apparently, there was some urgent spill-over work to be done. He logged in to the wireless wifi as soon as we were in our room.

We headed out for lunch after that, and came back after the heavy lunch. Mike could barely keep his eyes wide opened due to the heavy lunch, soon, he dozed off…

I unpacked the luggage and not forgetting to take some vain shots. I honestly believed that if I didn’t try to take some self-portrait off the mirror, it would be one of those trips whereby no one knew I traveled with Mike too!

We stocked up some snacks, which is almost a MUST for us whenever we travel. We snacked-away for dinner. The rest of the evening was spent researching on Perth and Darwin, where we will be visiting next year.