Munmun's Trail : : 敏子の迹: February 2010

Bangkok! Here we come… A group of 6 ladies finally flight off to Bangkok on these dates after a long advance planning, availability checks and rescheduling for years to travel in group.

Day 1
We arrived by different MAS & AK flights, gathered at our hotel, Salil Hotel Sukhumvit - Soi Thonglor 1 and took BTS for a late lunch at Central World. We then walked to Platinum Mall under the rain for our 1st shopping hunt. We spent few hours in the mall yet we still have not enough time to shop all the levels and return to buy, we only managed to hunt as we go once we find the price is reasonable. In general, those shops somehow sell similar product... But you hardly find exact same design that you like in other shops once you left the shop. Most shops in the mall offer warehouse price if you buy more... some already warehouse price and bargain only if you really interested. We had our 1st dinner along the roadside while on the walk way back to Central World for Naraya bags before we took BTS back to the hotel and ended the day. If we were to recall now, we are real daring to have the 1st dinner at the roadside without food poisoning in mind at that time, which may ruin the trip.

Day 2
As planned, we rented a 4WD MPV for Ayutthaya tour since we have a group of 6 ppl @ total B$4000 if not wrongly remembered. It took us almost 2 hours to travel to Ayutthaya and another 2 hours from Ayutthaya back to hotel due to jam. No doubt the place is nice but it's also very hot and tiring. We forgo the initially planned Ladyboy show because most of us watched before and it's about RM80 for the show. Instead, we went for a Thai massage in view of the tiredness followed by dinner and took meter taxi back to hotel for shower before our next program, Sirocco Sky Bar.

Sirocco Sky Bar, the famous sky bar in BKK... High end bar with many mat sallehs hang out that can enjoy huge wind and cooling at the top of Lebua State Tower, a nice bar to visit to amaze the night view of BKK with a compulsory drink per pax. Oya~ Take note on the smart casual & no slipper dress code if you wish to visit the bar... Besides than slipper, Crocs shoes also not allowed because it is made of plastic. Myself + another friend wore Crocs... being rejected to take the lift up to sky bar. Nevertheless, all of us still made it up to the top without buying of shoes. Interested to know how? I can sell you the tricks… : P We took a meter taxi back from Lebua Tower of State to hotel after the hang out, 6 ppl in 1 taxi... You can never have that in MY.

Day 3
Took Mo Chit BTS line to the 7 football field sized Chatuchak on this day and venture the place in pairs with targeted rows because we obviously cannot manage to shop the whole Chatuchak. It is advised to shop as you walk as you can hardly find time / ways to get back to the same stall.

In the afternoon, we took boat transfer along Chao Phraya River to the Grant Palace jetty followed by tuk tuk / meter taxi land transfer to the Grand Palace. There are quite a number of mini palaces within the Grand Palace of which, we only able to visit 2 of those because we were a little late from Chatuchak and the Grand Palace close at 3:30pm.

Then, we took a 3sec boat transfer across the Chao Phraya River from Grand Palace to Wat Arun and climbed the Wat Arun for some shots. We also enjoyed the sunset outside the Wat before we head back for boat transfer along Chao Phraya River. You can also opt to enjoy a better sunset scenic of Chao Phraya River with their luxury boat trip around the cost of RM50 - RM60 per pax.

We then went for dinner and a quick walk at Siam Paragon after we were back from Wat Arun followed by meter taxi from the nearest BTS station to visit the Suan Lum Night Market. Eh… You can also go by BTS with Skytrain transit but we didn't because our gang lead went back to hotel earlier and we were lost half way at BTS station. We didn't manage to cover the whole night market since it was a little too late and a little more expensive than Platinum Mall. But… most importantly is, we ran out of Energizer battery!

Day 4
We rented a van for Damnoen Saduak Floating Market tour @ total B$3400 ( if not wrongly remembered ) include transfer from hotel to airport later in the day. As some of you may aware from Internet travel advises, our van stop at the very 1st "boat jetty" where there are people asking us to start the motor boat journey at expensive cost. Lucky that we have ignored the offer and asked the driver to send us further in to the main "boat jetty" where, the main "boat jetty" is very obvious with signage around and you can start to see some boat stalls parking along the riverside.

There are several boat operators available at the main "boat jetty", we bargained the price and get into a manual boat to embark the journey in a nicer traditional way. We bought things + food to eat along the way and also tried some boat stalls parked along the river at the “main jetty" after disembarkation. We had smooth boat traffic on the way in but were stuck in bad boat traffic jam during our way out due to anti-traffic direction where, most tourists reached and started their journey at the time. Overall, floating market is worth to visit but remember to schedule your time promptly according to boat traffics.

Last, we went to BIG C supermarket to shop for Thai MAMA Brand tom yam maggi mee + junk food etc while on the way back from Dumnoen Saduak and stopped at the a corner Naraya shop nearby our hotel ( 1 / 2 BTS station away ) for bags again before we get packed and depart from hotel to airport for evening return flights. With that, we ended our BKK trip… with 1 bag go 2 bags back at KLIA & LCCT respectively.