♥ firstlove88 ♥: 03/11/2013 - Bangkok Day 2 (Chatuchak Weekend Market, Black Canyon Coffee, and Snacks of Bangkok!)

Good Morning BKK!

The view from the hotel never fail to impress me everytime I stay in Baiyoke Sky Hotel. :)

We woke up pretty early for hotel buffet breakfast. Probably the best thing during a holiday trip, is to slowly enjoy your breakfast.

Since it's a Sunday, it's Chatuchak Day! It's probably the must-go place for everyone who visits BKK.

Just recently, Chatuchak is also opened on weekend nights too. In the past, it was a day thing. So for those who want to prevent getting tan/sweat a bucket, and feels safe going back to your hotel late at night, you can choose to go Chatuchak at night.

Derp and I try not to reach back the hotel too late because the stretch of road below our hotel is pretty dark, especially when all the street stalls have closed.

Suggested dress code for Chatuchak: Comfortable clothes and take care of your personal belongings. I know I sound very cliché. But I mean it.

We took a train from Chit Lom to Mo Chit. It's the last station of the BTS Skytrain Sukhumvit Line. It took us probably less than 15 minutes or less to reach that station.

While waiting for out BTS...

On the BTS..:)

Directions from Mo Chit to Chatuchak:

1) Once you get out of the BTS gantry, turn right. You'll see where the crowd is heading to so just follow.

2) There will be a stairs/escalator leading you down. You'll start seeing many stalls at the road side. FYI those are not the 'offical' Chatuchak stalls. Chatuchak is somewhere further inside.

3) During this trip, we found a short cut that can avoid the crowd at the main route to Chatuchak weekend market. There's this gate which is open, and inside is a pretty big park. You can cut through Chatuchak Public Park to get to Chatuchak easily. At least, it isn't that crowded.

The direction from Mo Chit BTS Station to Chatuchak via cutting through the park.

After cutting through the Chatuchak Public Park, you should be able to see Chatuchak already. You will need to cross the road and walk a little more to Gate 2. See how I draw the arrows on the above map.

You'll enter via Gate 2 to Chatuchak if you're coming from Mo Chit BTS Station :)

It's always good to have a Chatuchak Map with you when you are there because it can be pretty complicated. Having to go there twice, I'm still quite blur about the whole space. Though signage can be found easily at every Soi/Street, it's still complicated if you have to navigate yourself back to the BTS station.

There's security officer/police standing around to give Chatuchak Map, so if you spot them do take from them! Okay that's all about the tips/directions to getting to Chatuchak! I don't really recommend people to take a cab there or back because the chances of you getting caught in a jam is pretty high.

We reached there pretty early, about 10am local time. There were still stalls that were not opened yet. And it's also not that crowded yet.The crowd came in around lunch time/early afternoon.

I was on the hunt for authentic coconut ice cream, but sad to say before I reached there, I'm dehydrated and really in need of something to cool myself there. #cantstandtheheat. We spotted a few coconut ice cream stalls before we can't stand the heat anymore, so we randomly got our coconut ice cream at 1 of the coconut ice cream stall.

The various type of fillings for your coconut ice cream.

Derp and I prefer it with glutinous rice only. The stall owner allow us to add 2 toppings but we stick to just the glutinous rice. :) Thailand has really nice glutinous rice! Be sure to try that when you are at Chatuchak!

Indulge in it after this shot, it was just way too hot!

Basically, we were standing under the shade to finish this bowl of coconut ice cream. We started our actual shopping after eating this.

Here's a list of what the different sections are selling:

Clothing & Accessories (sections 2-6, 10-26)

Handicrafts (sections 8-11)

Ceramics (sections 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 25)

Furniture & Home Decoration (sections 1,3,4,7,8)

Food & Beverage (sections 2, 3, 4, 23, 24, 26, 27)

Plants & Gardening Tools (sections 3, 4)

Art & Gallery (section 7)

Pets & Pet Accessories (sections 8, 9, 11, 13)

Books (sections 1, 27)

Antiques & Collectibles (sections 1, 26)

Miscellaneous & Used Clothing (sections 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 22, 25, 26)

Credits to trekity

Derp and I actually covered a lot of sections(that include non clothing sections) during this trip to Chatuchak. We were super tempted to bring back some stuffs for our new house but afraid our luggage have no space. Chatuchak sells really pretty and cheap mats! There's also pretty nice cushion sette but we reckon it will be super expensive to ship it back to Singapore. Hence, we gave up having this thought.

Our loots from chatuchak are way below. Infact, we didn't buy a lot of stuff. lol. We were busy finding this particular yummy pork chop but failed to do so.

We saw this particular t-shirt stall which sells really pretty animal print tshirt/singlet. They are of super good quality and the prints are really cute la! They have a rilakkuma singlet lol. I can't help but to get one even though I doubt I will wear it often lol!

If you're wondering where's the authentic ice cream, I've researched it online and found this guuide/map. It's located in between Soi 1 and Section 2. But as you see from the map below, imagine I started walking from gate 2, it's super duper far away from the authentic coconut ice cream. (I rather run 10km than to walk under the hot sorching sun for 1-2km). Now you know why we gave up finding it. lol.

There's also the yummy pork chop at soi 4 section 22, but we can't find it. It looks really good but maybe they have shifted? I've no idea. If you manage to find it do let me know okay? :)

Credits to chinchaijiak

For more information of Chatuchak, you can go to their website here.

We head back to take a train back to our hotel around 1++pm local time. I went for a massage just below Baiyoke Sky Hotel while Derp went back to hotel to put our loots and wait for me. The massage palour I chose to go is call Chan Traditional Thai Massage. The previous time I also visited this massage palour. I find them not bad and the it's not expensive.

I took the legs and shoulder massage for 60 mins. It costs 200baht. Reason I went there is because it's near to my hotel and the service was good enough.

Picture taken from Google Map. Right at the far end is Baiyoke Sky and that's Chan traditional Thai Massage just 2 blocks away :)

Derp came to fetch me after my massage and we proceed to find the fried chicken wing which was highly rated by Lester and also I saw it on Ladyironchef's instagram. I know I have to try this.

We couldn't find the famous one and only to realise it that it was closed on Sunday. #emodieme.

No wonder we couldn't lcoate it. But we managed to find another fried chicken stall further down the small road. This stall is managed by a thai guy and we couldn't resist it but to buy 2 to try for our supper :)

We also passed by a stall selling mango sticky rice, it's so tempting and hard to resist. In the end, we bought it. Street food of bangkok rocks! How not to do planks everyday when I'm at there with all this nice food around!

The map below is the directions from Baiyoke Sky to the fried chicken wing stall. I draw the road in Blue. That's where you can find the chicken wing be it authentic or not authentic.

I hope you'll find this map useful. You can also use your gps to locate them by searching Citin Pratunam Hotel :) We managed to find the highly rated chicken wings on our 3rd day and I'll blog more about it then.

Anyway, we headed to Indra (Less than 5 minutes walk from Baiyoke Sky) to have our early dinner.

Initally, we wanted to dine in at the McDonalds but we can't really find it. So we chose to have our dinner at Black Canyon Coffee.We tried their coffee before but not their mains.

They do offer authentic thai food and the price is affordable.

Their signature Chai Iced Tea. It's actually thai milktea. Yummy!

Both of us ordered the pad thai.

Mandatory shot.

The portion was really huge and I couldn't finish it. The texture of the phad thai noodles are thicker than those I ate in Singapore before. No idea if the phad thai in Thailand are all like this. But it was pretty not bad with the generous amounts of prawns. Our meal costs less than $20 sgd. :)

We continue to search for their McDonalds because we were thinking of ta bao-ing the pork burger back to our hotel for supper. FYI, we were hunting for mcpork burger from Taiwan till Thailand. We really thought Taiwan would have it, but no they don't.

The McDonalds at Indra is situated at 1 corner. We managed to locate it after asking the friendly thai people around.

Samurai Pork Burger!

Samurai Pork Burger with egg!

Enjoying the sunset and that's our hotel taken while walking back to our hotel from Indra.

We went back pretty early that day. Originally we wanted to go out to Pratunam(below our hotel) to patronize the night market, but we were pretty lazy. And I suffered from a very serious headache that night. Guess it's due to the heat from Chatuchak that have burned my brain. No worries, my headache was gone when I woke up the next day :)

The food we brought back to hotel for supper as below:

It was really yummy!

The mango with glutinous rice. The mango was really sweet but the glutinous rice was so-so.

The chicken wing that we randomly bought because we couldn't find the highly rated stall. We actually preferred this over the highly rated one. This has more taste than the highly rated chicken wing. There's actually many fried chicken wings stall that you will chance upon when you are walking along pratunam market. I will head back to find this particular stall the next time I go back there :)

Ending BKK Day 2 entry with our loots..

The Fred Perry are all from Pratunam market and everything above is from Chatuchak :) We have some sort become an expert in buying Fred Perry polo tee lol.

Did you spot our travel buddy? Lol!