Day 1 at Bangkok

9 AUG 2009 (Sunday)
It's been a long time since I've gone for a trip that is not office outing. During the period of November last year, while I was looking at a promo price for Jetstar, an idea struck me to plan for a shopping trip to bangkok with friends. And, here we are on the 9th August 09 - while people in Singapore are celebrating their 44th National day, arrived at the Bangkok Suvarnabhumi International airport. =)

8:30Am Bangkok Local Time
Although we woke up at 4am in the morning to rush out for the flight at the Singapore airport, we are still energised and looked forward to all the fun that we will have in Bangkok. The journey on the flight was okay, it took about 2 hours to reach bkk airport. The landing wasn't very gentle, so all of us kinda blame the pilot for that. Jetstar doesn't provide food for this trip, may be there really is no food provided for the short trips.

10:15Am Bangkok Local Time
After getting past the immigration, custom, collected the baggage and found the transport that was booked beforehand, we arrived at the Ecotel Hotel. After making payments and gotten our own set of keys, we gave ourselves 15mins to get changed an arranged to met at he lobby to head out for lunch.

10:45Am Bangkok Local Time
We are all ready for lunch and I brought my friends to the 'Tom Yum' local restaurant next door from the hotel. Unfortunately we were too early for the lunch hours. Knowing that we HAVE to go to Chuatuchuk weekends market on Sunday, we are all very charged up to head to the market right after lunch. Jessie, the sweet girl at the Tour Desk at the hotel helped us to check with the restaurant owner to see if they are ready to open the store for lunch. We gave her a few marks for going extra miles giving that service although it's not exactly her job to do so. One thing about Jessie is that, she could speak English fluently with a little bit of her local accent, so, there was no problem communicating with her during the whole trip whereas you can't expect local people to understand you speaking in English. Anyway, back to the lunch topic, we made order for our food even before the store was opened. The girls at the store offered us the menu and we chose 3 set lunches for 6 of us. The food were delicious, my friend N liked the local fried fish cake, I liked the deep fried fish that was so tasty and so crispy that I finished almost the whole fish except for the bones.

1:30pm Bangkok Local Time
There were 6 of us and we had difficulties getting metered cab and making sure that both of the cabs drop us at the exact same place. Some of us are on our roaming, but, getting lost in bkk is nothing like one would experience in Singapore. The exact thing happened to us for the journey to CTC market. We split into 2 groups to get 2 different cabs. The driver of the other cab dropped my friends at the entrance and my stupid driver dropped us at the other end away from entrance. We did try to make one round to look for the other group of friends, but realised that the market was too big to loop. So, in the end, we shopped in our own small groups and head back to hotel. Not forgetting that half of the time in the mkt, we were confused as to which block we have visited. It was just too big. I couldn't cover all the stores due to the limited time and the limited energy of my legs as well. I didn't manage to get a bag for myself which I was planning to get before going to BKK. Things were cheap and water was the most delicious liquid in the world for the hot and humid day at CTC market.

5:00Pm Bangkok Local Time
Back to hotel, felt relaxed and refreshed after a cool shower. We were just too tired to go to another place, so, just decided to try the food at the roadside stalls nearby. We had our noodle near 7-11, papaya salad (that was terrible) and roasted corn (yummy~). After dinner, we strolled towards the Platinum shopping mall which was within quite a walkable distance from hotel. Enjoyed the stretch of roadside food/clothes stalls on the way and ended the night with a drinking session in my fren's P's room.