Bangkok: City of Shopping

Norman:

So after 24 hours in airports and planes, we finally arrived in Bangkok jet lagged, but glad to be here. First thing I noticed about Thailand is how crazy but skilled the drivers are here. Weaving in and out of traffic, with tuk-tuks, motorbikes and pedestrians everywhere, but somehow able to weave and dodge through it all. Pretty amazing to see close other vehicles were to our taxi when we were driving from the airport to the hotel.

Bangkok traffic.. Always colourful

We arrived at the hotel at around 12 local time and given our tired state, we just decided to check out things near our area. We were staying in the Pratunam area, a pretty busy area where a lot of shopping is located. We first decided to recharge by eating at a noodle placed called Wonton noodles close to the hotel. It was a typical no-frills restaurant that delivered amazing flavour. I'm not typically a noodle guy, but these wonton noodles and broth appeared to be infused with pork fat and the bowls were super delicious, especially considering it was only 50 baht per bowl! Afterwards we checked out the Pratunam market quickly and then went to the shopping malls nearby.

Best wonton noodles!

We hit up Platinum Shopping mall first, a really large 7 storey mall filled with kiosks of independent businesses. It reminded me a lot of shopping in Seoul. Mandy and I bought a lot of unique and inexpensive pieces shirts. After that, we walked a short while to a shopping mall called Central World. I'm pretty sure this is the largest shopping mall I have ever stepped foot in. Designer clothing stores, furniture stores, book stores, toy stores, grocery store at the top floor, basically anything that you would want a mall to have. Not to mention the top floors had an extremely diverse (and from what I can tell delicious-looking) restaurants. We were taken aback from the size and scale of the place. Even the Uniqlo was larger than most of the ones I saw in Japan. I picked up a pair of shorts there as well.

The mall is huge!

Hand-made candy. Mandy bought some as souvenirs.

We're in Thailand!

 For dinner, we went to eat at a seafood place. Mandy and I ordered curry crab, shrimp and some pan-fried vegetables with garlic, definitely a great dinner to start off South-East Asia tour. Afterwards, went to sleep early since we could fight the jet lag for only so long.

Biggest menu ever

Best dish of the meal was definitely the curry crab

We woke up the next day around 630 and had an early start to the day. We first went to visit the Wat Arun and Wat Pho temples by taking boats along the river. The Wat Arun was my favourite of the two. It was really cool to climb the steep tower and we went there early enough to dodge most of the tourist rush. The King of Thailand recently had his birthday and at the top of the structure, they had a huge sheet of cloth for visitors to write down their greetings. Wat Pho was the next destination, the main attraction there being a large golden reclining Buddha. It was a little more crowded there, but it was still a pretty interesting thing to see. From then, we hopped back into the boats and went to check out Chinatown in Bangkok. While we were there, we ate lunch at a Chinese food restaurant. Mandy had some dim-sum and I had a bowl of egg noodles with roast duck and wontons. However, this bowl of noodles pales in comparison to the noodles I had the prior day. We walked along the side streets, checked out some of the street vendors and I ate some of the street food there too (not bad).

Climbing up Wat Arun

It's scary - have to use both hands!

View from the top

Mesmerizing 

Wat Pho: Reclining Buddha

Mandy's so tall!

Chinatown

Lunch in Chinatown = meh but Mandy really needed to refuel

Norm grabbing a snack

More food! Spicy deep fried fish

Protest gear

(Mandy's side note: We woke up and 630am and I only had half a granola bar until our lunch at 12pm. Needless to say, I was hangry...)

After a long day of walking, we decided to relax by going to get some massages. First hour, we enjoyed the typical Thai massage. As I blog this, we are enjoying the second hour of foot massages. They must be pretty good - the guy across from me is so relaxed, he fell asleep and is snoring. After this, it's dinner. We were supposed to go check out Khao San Road today, but the protests in Bangkok are in full force so we decided to stay away. We're still deciding what to do tonight - stay tuned and find out what happens later!

Norman out!

Mandy:

For dinner we went to a restaurant called Bank Hun Mae recommended on a blog. Maybe we didn't know what to order because the food wasn't that good. Norm got this curry rice dish and I got the pad kee mao. I learned the hard way that a little spicy in Thailand means it's the spiciest thing I have ever had. My noodles were insanely spicy and of course I couldn't finish it :(. I ordered the mango sticky rice dessert to compensate but I didn't like the sticky rice :( We were still jetlagged so we went home to sleep.

Noodle girl! Can you tell Mandy is exhausted =P