President Solitaire Hotel and Spa, situated at Soi 11 Sukhumvit, is a really nice and cozy hotel. The rooms are fantastic, just look at the room they gave me. Entrance hall, followed by king-sized bed and lounge and a huge bathroom. The location is also very good, within walking distance from the NaNa BTS Skytrain station. The hotel also provides free tuk-tuk service to the station and also the Sukhumvit MRT Station next to Terminal 21 shopping mall.
Chatuchak Weekend Market is huge. Viewed from the Skytrain, it spans at least 10 football fields. It is really a must visit when you are in Bangkok for the weekend. Everything you want is most likely to be available there and some. Shoes, clothes, furnishings, titbits, accessories, food and more. Just so exciting and so colourful. You can spend a whole day there if time permits.
Around the Baiyoke Sky Hotel Tower is Pratunam. Here the market is mostly for wholesale. Lots of shop-keepers come here to get their merchandise for sale back in their own shops. While you are in the vicinity, do go up the Baiyoke Tower, for the view and the top-of-the-world feeling.
Taking the skytrain to Saphan Thaksin station, you can take the free ferry service from Central Pier to Asiatique, The Riverfront. Cruising down the river in the cool of the evening, you can see the beautiful lights of the many tall hotels lining the river banks, and also riverside restaurants. Personally, I did not like the shops at Asiatique. I feel they are too touristy and quite expensive. And most of the restaurants are Japanese. But the Christmas lights are nice and the atmosphere by the riverside is very romantic.
Terminal 21 shopping mall is a huge new mall at the junction of Asoke and Sukhumvit Roads. You cannot miss it. Nine stories of shops, each floor featuring a different capital of the world, ranging from London to San Francisco, to Paris and Istanbul. Just walking from one floor to another is enough to make you feel like you are travelling around the world in 80 minutes. A good mix of shops too. Definitely worth a visit.
Travelling around Bangkok is so much easier and faster now, with the skytrain and mrt. This time, I did not feel the traffic jams at all. Even travelling on the public bus was a breeze. Even tried the motorbike, which was really exciting, zipping through traffic without a helmet. And you can buy the one-day BTS pass for 130 bahts which gives unlimited journeys for the whole day.
Along Sukhumvit Soi 11, you will find the Bed restaurant, which is quite famous. You will also find plenty of street stalls selling beef ball noodles, barbecue seafood and meat, mangoes, steamed sweet corn, rosy red pomegranate, and there is a night market along Sukhumvit Road every night where is you get t-shirts, souvenirs, watches and even sex toys.
In most shopping malls, there are also food courts serving a mix of cuisine from Thai to International. The Mango with Glutinous Rice at Platinum Plaza was good, although abit expensive. The mango was sweet and the coconut milk did not overwhelm the slightly salted steamed glutinuous rice.
Bangkok's Chinatown comes alive early in the morning. From 9am shops start to open and the wet market was already doing brisk business. Once we got to Yaowarat Road from the Hua Lamphong mrt station, things got colourful and exciting. So many varieties of food can be found. Teochew biscuits, Chinese sausages, dumplings, barbecue pork, roast pork, dim sum in a showcase, 8-treasure porridge, all kinds of titbits, pork floss in egg rolls, huge slabs of sharks fins, fried dough and even birds nest. How I wish I could try them all.
And this is Chinatown in the morning. I heard there is much more in the night. So I will definitely have to return to Bangkok for several more visits, to explore all the places I have missed this time round.
This is just part of the shopping haul from my 3 days there. I wish I could stay longer. But till the next time, I shall enjoy them first.
