25-26/09/2016 BKK 2016 - Day 3 and Day 4 (Big C Supermarket, Platinum Mall Foodcourt, Joke Perd Mho Paradise (โจ๊กเปิดหม้อ สาขาพาราไดซ์ ศรีนครินทร์), After You @ Central World)

This post shall be the last installment of my BKK 2016 trip. 

As mentioned in the previous posts, I won't be writing much on places that I've been to before during my previous BKK trips so as to minimize repeat information. 

Day 3 started with breakfast once again. Nothing much to say about it because the food  selection were more or less the same as the previous day.  

The buffet area

Fuel for the 2nd last day in BKK

We went to Big C straight after our breakfast to 'sweep' all the local yummy snacks back to Singapore. It's a have-to do thing for every BKK trip haha!  

Bought this highly rated chio looking Matcha Espresso from the starbucks located just directly below our hotel. Saw way too many people trying back in Singapore. The starbucks price in BKK was not really any much cheaper as compare to in Singapore but slightly cheaper? :)  

The taste of this blend suits my taste bud because it's not sweet at all and I can have my favorite matcha and coffee all in a cup.  

Full length window call for a #OOTD shot

Enough said, I'm in love with Glow Pratunam Hotel :)  Shall book that for my future stays! No more Baiyoke Sky lol. 

All the loots from Big C for ourselves and our friends/colis. 

Regret not buying more of the Matcha Pocky even though it can be easily found in Singapore too but definitely cheaper in BKK! 

Since it's the last full day in BKK, time to roam the big Platinum Mall for shopping (never really shopped there since we landed in BKK)  and spend the rest of our money away lol.

We had lunch in the foodcourt located at the highest level of Platinum Mall. I remember years back Derp and I dined in there before but can't really remember we have anything nice except in the comfort of having our meals in a air conditioned area. 

After doing some research online, there's actually 'not bad' food found in the food court so we decide to give it a try. 

We were totally spoiled for choices because there were way too much stalls at the food court.

Probably after 15 minutes of walking around, decide on ordering the Tom Yum Noodles with Shrimp/Boiled Egg. 

I had to admit we just order what's on the picture haha! It sort of looks like their signature dish so gave it a try then. 

This is how it look like. Slightly different from the picture but the prawn is really very huge in real life haha. 

However, I felt there's nothing nice about this noodles.The portion is really very small, especially the amount of noodles which can be easily finished within a few mouths. Quite pathetic eh given that the cost of this bowl of noodles is not cheap at all!

Ordered this fried oysters to share among us. Highly rated online too and indeed this is very yummy.

 I've never tasted such crispy texture of egg before which is a major plus point for this dish :)  

As usual, desserts is a must. Nothing new/special because we ordered the Mango Sticky Rice and Thai Milk Tea. It's yummy! 

Btw, there's a few stalls selling mango sticky rice but we just anyhow choose simply because they all look the same. Same goes for the price. This food is hard to go wrong because till date I've not tasted a not-nice mango sticky rice lol. 

It was more shopping at Platinum Mall after our lunch. Managed to grab some good deals for my friends who were asking me to look out for specific fashion items and I also managed to grab some good and value for money clothes hehe! 

Back to the hotel to rest for an hour or so before we head out for dinner. This time round, we flagged a cab to go back to where we supposed to go on the 2nd day of the trip (We fall into a scam, you can read all about it here) and we were lucky enough not to meet anymore scam taxi drivers. 

So after the failed attempt to locate this place, we are finally here at Joke Perd Mho Paradise (โจ๊กเปิดหม้อ สาขาพาราไดซ์ ศรีนครินทร์). This was highly recommended by my brother-in-law who went to BKK just few months before our trip. It was so good that he had to go back to eat it again for this trip. 

Yes this is a restaurant which sells claypot porridge! Hence you can easily spot many claypots around.  

The restaurant allows you to customize what you would like to have in your porridge so it's all up to you to decide and the price will be calculated base on what you choose. 

This is what Derp has ordered. 

His porridge cost 204 Baht which is roughly SGD $8. 

Look at the gigantic prawn! For SGD $8, it's pretty worth it. 

This is my tom yum porridge. All my favorite in a bowl :) My porridge cost 115 Baht which works up to $5 SGD. Super worth it because there's lots of ingredients. 

Here's me looking very happy with my porridge. 

Look very gluey right and not very appealing. But don't get mistaken it, it taste very yummy and not expensive at all. 

Do take note of the opening hours before heading down as it only opens in the evening time till late night.  

JOKE PERD MHO PARADISE (โจ๊กเปิดหม้อ สาขาพาราไดซ์ ศรีนครินทร์)

Address: between Soi Srinagarindra 40 and Soi Srinagarindra 42 (opposite Paradise Park shopping mall), Srinagarindra road, Bangkok, Thailand

Opening Hours: 4pm to 12am daily

We took a cab back to Central World for our desserts before we call it a day.

Yea to no queue at the BAKE branch at Central World. 

Because it's the last night in BKK, we decide to pack them back to Singapore since it cost around 50 cents(per tart) cheaper in BKK haha!

This is actually my first time buying and trying BAKE haha! Because the queue for it in Singapore is way too long so I'm too lazy to buy it back then.

Hello SJK! :)

Spotted him while waiting for a seat in After You cafe for our desserts. Buay pai seh to take a photo with him haha! He's the ambassador for the dessert cafe though. 

Mandatory dessert place since the last trip haha! 

#welfie while waiting for our queue number to be called. 

The interior of the cafe. I don't think it changed much since the last time I visit.

The menu.

I think the price of their items has went up slightly as compared to my previous visit.

Ordered this matcha toast to try. Everything matcha is yummy :) 

After our desserts, it's time to head back to our hotel to rest and get ready to head back to Singapore the very next day.

Our last day in BKK flew past very fast in the blink of an eye.

Making full use of the natural day lights shining into the room to take the best ever #selfie. No filter needed at all! 

Last breakfast in BKK! This is our only meal before heading to the airport. 

Right after breakfast, Derp and I went for some last minute shopping at Platinum Mall (since it's just opposite our hotel, super convenient!) before going back to the hotel to pack the remaining stuff and get ready to go to the airport.

All our luggage into a big cab! 

Shot taken before we check in our luggage haha! 

Can tell we did bought quite a number of stuff back to our homeland. 

Last meal and #welfie in BKK before heading back. 

Love their pizza the most because it taste really good but super sinful as it's too oily haha! 

It has become our mandatory food before we board the plane (even though we will be served food once again on the plane haha!).

Had our dinner on plane. I ran out of shows to watch so I re-watched DOTS. 

The dessert given to us was this cheesecake. Taste very yummy! 

Witnessing the sunset on plane. 

Goodbye Bangkok! It have been a great trip as usual!  I hope to see you again soon in this year :)

24/09/2016 BKK 2016 - Day 2 (Chatuchak Weekend Market, Somboondee Seafood Restaurant Scam, Rod Fai Night Market)

I'm back to update BKK 2016 Day 2. Just 2 posts back was on BKK 2016 Day 1 (blog about it few weeks ago, you may click here for it) and I hope I can keep up with it. 

Day 2 started with hotel breakfast served by Glow Pratunam Hotel. As mentioned before, it was my first time staying at Glow Pratunam Hotel (previous trips stay was at Baiyoke Sky). So this is the first time trying out this hotel's breakfast and the reviews online seems good. 

We were lazy to go out hunt for food as shops in BKK doesn't operate that early so hotel breakfast seems to be a better choice. 

Quite a wide and delish spread of food served for breakfast...

Fuel to kick start the day...

And this was only round 1 of what I took.

Scramble egg cooked by the chef. This is a must have for every hotel's breakfast.

There were other types of eggs being served too and we get to try all of them by the end of our trip.

We went back to our room to get ready to head out to Chatuchak Weekend Market. It's been awhile since I've been there because we feel that it's not a must-go place for our BKK trips in recent years. 

However, our BIL and SIL have not been there before so we slot in the trip to Chatuchak as part of the itinerary. 

As mentioned in Day 1 of the trip, we purchased our customize hat and had it delivered to our hotel. We went to enquire with the reception counter the night before and they told us there weren't any caps for us. 

I had to resort to whatsapp-ing the HolyCaps's person in charge. The person was kind enough to help me check the status and confirmed that the caps were delivered to the hotel receptionist.

After resting for the night, Derp and I went to the hotel receptionist after our breakfast once again to asked whether are there any parcels for us. And this time round, they took out the 'parcel' for us. They were all wrapped up so one can't tell there's caps inside.

At the very least, I do expect the hotel receptionist to have them deliver and place it in our room but nope they didn't do it when they received the parcel. No idea why too? 

For a moment we thought our caps were gone for good (we had paid the cost of the caps in full) and should have just collected the caps ourselves to prevent such miscommunication. We were glad to finally get our caps in the end. A huge sigh of relive because they aren't cheap at all and we really look forward to receiving them. 

Our customized caps :) 

I love the font I chose for my caps! 

Initially, I didn't know what to choose because there were too many options until Derp pointed out to me this heart shape looking font. I love anything heart shape so I went for it without giving it a 2nd thought.

#selfie with the cap. 

Love the natural room lighting in the hotel room. Best for taking selfie :)

After settling our caps (like finally), it's time to head to Chatuchak weekend market! Since there were 4 of us, we took a cab there instead of public transport. 

If you will like to know how to get to Chatuchak via public transport, you may refer to this blogpost which I've written years back :)

Finally here after a good 20 mins or so taxi ride. There was slight jam but it wasn't that bad. 

We reached Chatuchak  around 11+am and there were quite a number of shops that weren't opened yet.

We start walking around lane by lane and we went to the extend of covering those shops which sell household/antique decoration items for the house.

And while shopping around, we passed by those handphone accessories shop and decide to take a look. We decide to each buy the fish eye lens because it's really cheap (around few sg dollars) and starting taking photos with it lol. We were quite amazed by its ability to take wide angle photos haha! It makes taking welfie much more easier.

Us at Chatuchak!

:)

We start to feel famished after 2pm and proceed to find food then. 

We walked around Chatuchak but didn't have any idea on what to eat. We only wanted a place to sit down and rest our legs to have our food instead of standing around under the hot sun. 

In the end, we settle down at this street stall. Quite a big stall as they do have quite a number of seats for tourists there. 

There weren't much food option but it was good enough for us. 

BIL ordered this fried chicken for us to share.

Can't really make up what the sauces were but if I never remember wrongly, botlh are spicy sauces. 

Btw, they do taste really yummy! :) 

Our mains. 

All of us ordered the same mains because there weren't much option. And we have no idea why do they sell this Vietnam pho noodles in Chatuchak haha!

After our lunch, we went to hunt for our dessert. Actually, there's not a need to hunt for them because coconut ice cream can be found anywhere in Chatuchak lol. We didn't explicitly went all out to find the original one because most/all of the stalls there claimed they were the original coconut ice cream.

Favourite coconut ice cream from Chatuchak :) A must have especially under the hot sun! 

With the coconut ice cream before digging in! 

Making full use of the wide lens camera once again haha! 

So after we were done with the coocnut ice cream, we took cab back to our hotel to rest before dinner time. 

Placing all our caps together for a 'group pic' 

All my loots from Chatuchak. 

Comparing this to many years back when I first went Chatuchak, these were less than half of the total things I bought from there haha!

Derp and my loots..

 And the carrot soft toy actually belong to Day 1's loots though haha! 

We rested for an hour plus or so before heading out for our dinner. And that's when we fall into the famous Sombondee Seafood Restuarant Scam.

We simply flagged a cab (from below our hotel) to Rod Fai Night Market as we were going nearby that area for claypot tom yum porridge. After we got into the cab and told the cab driver about it, he started telling us there will be massive jam to the night market. It will probably take us 1 hour or so to reach that place. And also the night market doesn't start operating at such a early hour.

None of us have been to that night market before so we somehow believed him. 

Eventually, BIL told him we were heading there for tom yum porridge first before going to the night market. The cab driver then said he have better recommendation about this seafood restaurant which sells the best tom yum soup and also crab in BKK. 

After some debate, we eventually just proceed to go where he's bringing us too. I remember mentioning getting down to shop around at the malls first and this cab driver hop in to say everywhere is closing soon when obviously it's not. 

Upon reaching, I have a really bad feeling about the place after seeing the signboard written Sombondee Seafood Restaurant. I remember back then when I was searching for Sombom Seafood, they have warned tourist of fake restaurants using their name out there. 

Once we were seated, they gave us wet towels, peanut and etc. I was busy on the phone searching on my phone regarding this restaurant and hardwarezone even have a thread talking about it (somehow forums always provide the best information). I'm quite sure it was a scam after quickly reading through the stories posted on the forum.

Before we order anything, we quickly returned the wet towel and etc to them because there's bound to be unreasonable charges for them. 

We looked through the menu and came to consensus that we will only order the 'cheaper' food  solve there because we do not want to get overcharged too badly. 

So here's what we ordered at the scam restaurant..

Pineapple Fried Rice and Mussels..

This was our only carbo dish that night. The pineapple fried rice was tasteless. 

And we also ordered this asparagus with prawns. The texture of the asparagus was very hard which made it very difficult to bite and swallow.

No picture of the tom yum soup because they helped us to serve e into 4 portions once it was served to us. I suddenly remember we ordered 2 types of seafood tom yum soup, 1 clear tom yum soup and 1 normal tom yum soup. Should have just stick to 1 will do because they really taste not nice at all!

The food served there were below average and they charged us way too expensive.

This meal costs us around $80SGD for just 3 dishes and 2 soups. After viewing the bill, we noticed they add on additional cost (for no reason) like a few hundred baht on top the total bill. Btw, we purposely didn't order any crab because there weren't any fixed price written on the menu. They will probably overcharge us to the max if we were to order crab.

We didn't wish to accuse them for overcharging us because afterall, we are in a foreign country so we are at a losing end. We quickly pay the bill and left this scam place.

Took a cab who is station just right outside the restaurant and he charge us 100 baht for bringing us to Rod Fai Night Market. By right it shouldn't cost that much but oh well, that's how all these cab drivers earned from bringing customers to and fro this scam restaurant.

We went back to do some research and came to realize the night market which we initially wanted to go (because of the nearby claypot tom yum porridge) is called the New Rod Fai Night Market/ Rod Fai Night Market 2. IKR, it's really complicated and easy to mix them up!

Upon reaching Rod Fai Night Market, we started to walk around the various stalls. It's not a big night market (unlike Chatuchak) and you can easily cover it within few hours the most.

The stuff sold there were more or less similar to those from Chatuchak but at a higher price. There were many repeated stalls too so we got bored after an hour or walking or so.

We started to get some snacks/drinks to eat and drink while walking around..

Cute cupcakes sold at the night market.

We packed this back to our hotel because it's the first time we see colorful mango sticky rice haha.

Rod Fai Night Market

Thailand, ถนน ศรีนครินทร์ - Srinagarindra 51 Alley, Nong Bon, Prawet, Bangkok 10250, Thailand

I do hope that by writing my experience down, more people will be aware of the Somboondee Seafood Restaurant Scam and not fall for them like we do. By all means insist to go to the place you wish to go instead of following the cab drivers recommendation will be a safer choice at all times! If not, just request to get down the cab then since he refused to drive you to your destination. 

Alright, that's all for Day 2 of BKK 2016. 

Be back soon to update more :)