BKK Day 3 Part 1 - Big C Supermarket, Santa Fe Steak @ CentralWorld,Chan Traditional Thai Massage

BKK Day 3 started off by taking a big ass selfie! Just a tip, hotel rooms have the best natural lighting and they will turn out to look really good. No filter needed *wink* 

#selfie before heading out

Time flies and it's the 2nd last full day in BKK. It's the last full day to do our last minute shopping and run our errands. But first, we had a hearty hotel breakfast to start our day with.

It's our first time eating the poached egg from the hotel breakfast and it taste good. I do prefer poached egg these days and will tend to order that when I'm cafe hopping because I don't really know how to cook it haha. 

After our breakfast, it's time for us to do our shopping! We went to a street stall outside Platinum Mall to get the remaining souvenirs done. Not forgetting to customize a passport holder for ourselves. 

We've been busy making souvenirs for our friends/colis but could not find a appropriate one for ourselves. We chance upon this shop outside Platinum Mall which sells good quality passport holders so we went ahead and customize our passport holders there. They need to take sometime to finish making our orders, so we went to shop around Platinum Mall first.  

A #welfie on our 2nd last day :)

It's the first time during this trip that we step inside Platinum Mall to shop. During all our previous trips, we will go Platinum Mall everyday for shopping. However. this shopping mall has become a low priority place to visit nowadays.

I find the quality/standard of the clothes drop and the variety is just so-so. Maybe I've aged so the fashion sense doesn't seems to appeal to me that much as before. #signsofageing

Feeling happy because this is the first dress I bought after spending 2 days in BKK. 

We went back to the street stall to collect the souvenirs after probably half an hour and head to Big C Supermarket! It's time to stock up and bring back yummy snacks to Singapore. A must-do for all our BKK trips.

#OOTD taken outside Big C.

We can easily spend an hour or more in Big C Supermarket. The supermarket is easily many times bigger than our NTUC Extra and there's a very wide variety of snacks being sold. 

Lots of pocky at a really cheap price. 

We had a hard time choosing which flavour of pocky to bring back due to the limited space in our luggage.  

In the past, I don't remember they have such baskets for us to pull around. Can't help but to take a photo of it. 

My turn to drag the basket around lol.  

We also spotted this chilli which was used during our cooking lesson. I regret not buying it back to Singapore though so as to add flavour to our homemade tom yum soup. 

It's time for lunch after our snacks shopping. We cross the overbridge back to Central World to have our lunch. Didn't plan what to eat beforehand so we walked around to see what we crave for instead. 

In the end, we settled on western food lol. After 2 days of non-stop thai food for every meal, we decide to eat something different this time round.

Santa Fe Steak @ Central World

They have this combo which seems to be a good deal. Around SGD 10 bucks for a steak meal. Sounds not bad right? However when the food arrived, I was quite disappointed.  

This is Derp's combo.

And this is mine. Why the portion so pathetic one? There's no salad being served too :(

Oh well, we get what we pay. Seems like it's still a safer choice to stick to having Thai food when in BKK. 

We passed by a department stall in Central World and I was attracted to the Rilakkuma soft toys in there. Even though the variety of Rilakkuma items on sales cannot be compared to items at Ookii Ookii Village, but I can conclude Rilakkuma is popular in BKK all these years :)

Love the background but due to the lighting, I can't get a proper pic taken. This is one of the nicer picture. 

We left Central World and walked back to Amari Watergate to visit Alex Fashion once again. This time round it was for collection. However, the custom made clothes were not ready yet. Part of the reason was they do not know what color of the buttons to use for each of the formal shirt, hence it wasn't ready yet. So the boss quickly told the factory over the phone our decision and they sew it on the spot and delivered over. We were told to come back 1 hour later.

I decide to take this chance to go for a quick massage while Derp brings the barang barang back to the hotel. Yay to cheap massages and I finally have the time to do it after 2.5 days in BKK.

I went back to the trusted Thai Massage which I've always patronize. It's just a short distance away from Baiyoke Sky hotel which explains why I love to patronize them. 

My masseur who is really good.

I chose to do the legs,arms and shoulder massage for 1 hour. Kind of regret not taking the 1.5 hour massage as I almost fall asleep when the time is up. Total costs is less than 10sgd . 

Derp came to meet me after I'm done and we walk to Alex Fashion again. This time round, the clothes have arrived from the factory. Derp tried his clothes while I waited for him.

It's best to try your custom made clothes during the collection so they can quickly alter it. If not you will have to alter it yourself/wait for them to come Singapore. It's much more troublesome that way. We've learned our lesson so we make it a point to try during collection.

Previously, we were in a rush to catch our flights. Anyway. only 1 pants need to be further altered so we brought back the rest of the custom made clothes back to our hotel. We will need to go back there on the last day to collect the pants again.

While on the way back to the hotel, we decide to drop by my favourite chicken wings stall to get some fried chicken wings for tea break! You may find directions to the chicken wing stall here :)

Our sinful tea break that day. We can have the wings everyday because they are so affordable and yummy lol. 

Ending off this post with this photo..

All the snacks we bought from Big C! If only we can buy more...

It will just be another 2 entries to end my BKK 2015 travelogue. I'll finish it up really soon! Stay tuned :) 

You may read other post of my BKK2015 trip here:

http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2015/08/bangkok-2015-day-1-part-1-singapore-bkk.html
http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2015/08/bkk-day-1-part-2-after-you-dessert-cafe.html
http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2015/08/bkk-day-2-part-1-coffman-by-friends.html
http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2015/09/bkk-day-2-part-2-silom-thai-cooking.html
http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2015/09/bkk-day-2-part-3-ookii-ookii-village.html
http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2015/11/bkk-day-3-part-2-som-tam-nua-siam.html
http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2016/01/bkk-day-4-back-to-singapore.html

Brunch @ Whisk & Paddle

During the Jubliee long weekend, the first appointment I scheduled was to have a catch up session with highness. It's time for a good brunch session since we haven't met for quite sometime. Long weekends are best for catching up with friends :) 

This time round, we decide to go to a brunch venue somewhere so near to home! It's none other than Whisk & Paddle located at Punggol. 

There's straight bus from my place to the brunch venue but we met at Sengkang MRT station and took a train there instead even though it's just 1 MRT stop away. We then took the LRT and alighted at Riveria LRT station. I only came to know about the straight bus once I alighted at the LRT Station.

We took a slow walk to Tebing Lane. It's my first time there even though I've stayed in the north eastern part of Singapore for a year plus. There's other restaurants/eateries located there too. One of the more famous ones has got to be Uncle Leong seafood restaurant . I've heard sooo much about it but no chance to try it yet. Maybe soon! 

Even though it was a public holiday, the crowd at that area do surprise me despite being very way off on the Singapore map. There were actually many cyclists/families stopping by for their brunch/lunch. 

Easily spotted with their big signage 

The interior of the cafe. 

The cafe is overlooking my favorite park. A view that is nothing new but always beautiful to me.

There was a queue so we left our names and telephone numbers down while waiting for the seats to be ready. We went to take some photos and within 15 minutes, we got our seats. Time to help each other take #OOTD to kill some time. 

#OOTD taken with the signage. 

After we were seated inside the cafe, I spotted the kids corner. This cafe is kids friendly and makes it easier for the parents to enjoy their meal/catch up with friends. There were cyclists parking their bikes outside the cafe too while they have dine in the cafe. 

The menu 

While waiting for our seats, we have some sort decided on what to have for brunch so we ordered our food within 5 minutes after sitting down.

Our drinks! That's my Iced Latte (if I never remember wrongly) and highness's Iced Tea. 

As for my mains. I ordered the Eggs Benedict with Smoked Salmon - $13

This is the very first time I ate Eggs Benedict on a waffle and also smoked salmon to goes with it. It actually goes really well with it. The waffles are of the right texture and everything taste good! 

#flatlay of our brunch

Highness ordered the Eggs Benedict with Streaky Bacon which also costs $13. There are other choices like honey baked ham and sauteed mushrooms.  

Some photos we took before we start eating..

Love the fish eye lens that Highness always brings with her :) Definitely face no problem capturing all the details inside 1 photo.  Maybe I should consider investing in one too lol. 

Last photo of the day and I love this pic of us! 

This cafe has make it to one of my top choice to revisit again to have brunch or perhaps lunch/dinner soon since it's so near and convenient for me. The price is pretty reasonable for brunch but slightly on the pricey side for their mains for lunch/dinner. 

I hope that there will be more cafes/eateries popping out in the north eastern area in time to come :) 

Whisk & Paddle

Address: 10 Tebing Lane, #01-01, Singapore 828836

Phone: +65 6242 4617

Fax: +65 6242 4634

Website: http://whiskandpaddle.com.sg/

Homemade Snowskin Mooncakes

The Mid Autumn Festival is just around the corner and to be exact happening in less than a week time! Just weeks back (on the night of Singapore's General Election), I tried making snowskin mooncakes. 

Many baking enthusiasts have started making mooncakes, be it traditional type or snowskin type few months ago. Practice makes perfect :) 

After seeing so many homemade mooncakes post on the Facebook baking group, it sparked my curiosity. Hence, I went to find out how to make snowskin mooncake because everyone seemed to be doing it. It wasn't as difficult as I thought it will be because the ingredients are simple as it requires just a few items.

I even saw people making Hello Kitty shape snowskin mooncake and sharing it on Facebook. It looks just like those Hello Kitty mooncake that Breadtalk is selling(price near to $60 for 4 Hello Kitty moon cakes), totally not worth to buy it! Why not make it yourself? :) 

To be honest, the ingredients for mooncake are quite affordable and it can be used to make lots and lots of mooncake (especially the filling). 

It was a last minute decision to make snowskin mooncakes together with my BIL and SIL. They were already coming over for dinner on GE night and decided on cooking Army Stew for dinner (will blog about that some other time). Making mooncakes have been added to the itinerary since the mooncake mould came earlier than expected!

This is the mooncake mould which I've waited excitedly for :) 

The mould can be bought from here. They may not sell the mould at the cheapest price on Qoo10, but the delivery is really fast and the quality of the mould is as promised. No regrets paying slightly more for the fast delivery.

Hereby introducing you the ingredients we have used to make Snowskin Mooncake :)

Ingredients for Snowskin Mooncake:

1) Sugar Free Green Bean Paste

2) Sugar Free Red Bean Paste

3) Snowskin Premix

4) Shortening(the one in the tupperware)

5) Green Pandan and Purple Yam flavour coloring. 

All these can be bought from Phoon Huat. You may visit their website as they have lots of branches around Singapore. We decided to make 2 different flavors of mooncake hence that explains the 2 different coloring and 2 different paste. 

Phoon Huat has this snowskin premix which helps save time. If you do not wish to use the premix, you can actually substitute with Kao Fen( Glutinous Rice Flour) and Icing Sugar. The advantage of not using the premix will be you can adjust the amount of icing sugar to your own liking :) You can google for the quantity of each ingredient if you will like to. 

This is the quantity that we used for the mooncakes (Yields around 20 mini mooncakes, I can't remember exactly the quantity):

1) Snowskin Premix 290 gram

2) Shortening 56 gram (Can used slightly lesser as this is fats! But not too little if not the whole dough will be too dry )

3) Desired Coloring 10 gram.

4) Water 140ml.

The instructions is pretty simple and is as follow:

1) Pour out the snowskin premix into a bowl.

2) Mix coloring and water together.

3) Get ready the shortening while letting the dough to rest for 15mins.
4) Mix snowskin premix with coloring.
5) Add in shortening.
6) Prepare paste and divide into 24 gram each (we used 20gram each because we doesn't have a digital weighing scale).
7) Divide dough into 20 gram each.
8) Flatten the dough and wrap the filling in it.
9) Freeze it for roughly half and hour.

This is the video from Phoon Huat teaching you how to make snowskin mooncake. So for better illustration, you can watch it! :) 

After typing so much, here are some of the photos from behind the scene! We lay baking sheets all over the dining table to prevent dirtying it. We did all this while waiting for the announcement of GE results till the results are announced. The ingredients that we bought were enough for us to make lots of mooncake.

We took turns to knead the dough but frankly speaking, it requires some strength to do it. Not as easy as it seems on the video lol.I couldn't even out the coloring so I passed on to the next person to do it. So yea, you can imagine the dough went through quite a few of our hands lol!

Starting it was quite dry and we thought something went wrong. I remember at some point of time we added a little more shortening to reduce the dryness just so to get the smooth dough. 

The dough seems much better now. 

The only behind the scene photo. Our hands are all too oily! They may not look oily at all but it's actually very oily. In short, mooncakes are really sinful especially snowskin mooncakes! 

Our first batch. 

We didn't make the mooncakes that fast because there's only 1 mooncake mould so we took turns. 

And here comes the GE inspired mooncakes by the 2 guys lol. Seems like they got bored using the cute kind of mould.

No prize for guessing which political parties are those. :)

Another familiar looking political party logo.

The 2nd batch of mooncakes with a different coloring being used. 

More political parties' logo appearing lol. 

All the GE inspired mooncakes made that night. #GE2015

We did tried a few mooncakes that we have made and they tast better that what we expect (even though the appearance may not seems to be right lol). 

I gave it out to some friends who came to our house the very next day for wedding-related stuff and they praise that it was well made.

It seems that the mooncake making session was successful. Perhaps next year we should learn how to make durian snowksin mooncake instead because that will really save us lots of money then! 

That's all for my homemade mooncake entry and Happy Mid Autumn in advance! 

BKK Day 2 Part 3 - Ookii Ookii Village @ Siam Paragon, Night Market @ Central World

After our trip to Silom Thai Cooking School, it's back to shopping time. We went to take the BTS back to our hotel area. It was during the peak period so the BTS station were quite crowded especially at Siam (it's the interchange for passengers to change to different route).  

We headed to Siam Paragon to pay Ookii Ookkii Village a visit. Even though I came out empty handed, this place have become a must-visit place every time we go BKK. 

Back here again after 2 years :) 

Yay the huge Rilakkuma is still around! 

Very pretty Rilakkuma watches on sales :)

For directions on how to go there, you may refer to my BKK 2013 post. I highly recommend this place for all the Rilakkuma fans when they visit Bangkok even though one may not have the intention to buy anything from there because it's really expensive.

We didn't eat our dinner that night because we were really full from eating all the food that we cooked at Silom Thai Cooking School. Our main objective that night was to visit the night market outside Central World to get souvenirs for our colis and friends.

Way before we depart for our trip, we have already planned to get souvenirs for our 'brothers' and 'sisters' from BKK. We came across this pretty apt gift for them which can be bought in BKK. I went around to ask where to get and most of them replied street stalls outside Platinum Mall and Central World. On the first night in BKK, we have already came across these stalls and there were many of them along the road side.

We shortlisted 1 stall (directly outside Central World) which sells the thick leather kind of passport holder (instead of the thin type) and the stall owners are really friendly! We asked them about their opening time and they only opened at night from 7pm onwards.

They allow us to take photos for reference and we had to do some 'homework' on our first night in BKK. The 1st night when we were back in our hotel room, we have already started writing down the names, color of the leather for the person and also the 'charm'. So that it will save us some time rather than deciding on the spot because we are customizing for quite a number of people.

We went back to find them and they were surprise and happy to see us because we kept to our promise to go back to find them the very next day :)

The young chap making our orders. 

Many Singaporeans came over to look for customized souvenirs too! 

Oh well, we went back to the shop on every night of our Bangkok trip. lol. We find ourselves missing out some people now and then hence we have to go back. We also went to other shops to patronize as different stalls have different colors and charms.

We also walked around the pasar malam outside Central World. They are not always there because for the past few times when we went to BKK, there wasn't any pasar malam but rather, there's some fashion show/concert going on.  

Many many food sold at the pasar malam just like our local pasar malam. 

I once ate this yummy grilled pork at Chatuchak. Now they are often seen at street stalls outside Platinum Mall and Central World.  

Many other stalls selling the customized leather products. All these can be customize with your name on it! 

We made our way back to our hotel after walking through the night market and street stalls. Just before we cross the road from outside Platinum Mall back to Pratunam, we spotted this shop selling really cute edible buns.

So cute aren't they? :)

It was really late (like close to 11pm Singapore time) so they were closing soon. I bought one back to try and it's really not expensive (not out to 'tok' tourists). If I never remember wrongly, it's around SGD1 for 1 bun :) They even sell in boxes of 6 which look really exquisite and can be kept up to 1 month if you placed it in the freezer.

As we didn't have any dinner, we randomly bought tom yum cup noodles from the mini mart located conveniently at our hotel lobby. This is one of the must-eat when we go BKK for holiday.

Our supper that night. We can have mango sticky rice every night in BKK! :) 

The bun that I bought. They don't sell bun which is Rilakkuma-inspired so I bought this. Kiiroitori is one of the character from Rilakkuma's family and friends.  

The filling inside is custard paste. Surprisingly, they are of the correct sweetness and the texture and everything is just like those bun found locally.

Ending my post with the customized leather passport cover for the 'brothers' and 'sisters'.

We also made these for our close friends and key holder for our colis. We bought all the souvenirs from more than 1 stalls but all of them were located at the same place. Do look out for those thick leather material kind because they are more lasting and looks nicer for a gift. 

Will share the picture of it in my next few travelogue blogposts :) That's all for now! Till the next BKK post then. 

You may read other post of my BKK2015 trip here:

http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2015/08/bangkok-2015-day-1-part-1-singapore-bkk.html
http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2015/08/bkk-day-1-part-2-after-you-dessert-cafe.html
http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2015/08/bkk-day-2-part-1-coffman-by-friends.html
http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2015/09/bkk-day-2-part-2-silom-thai-cooking.html
http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2015/10/bkk-day-3-part-1-big-c-supermarket.html
http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2015/11/bkk-day-3-part-2-som-tam-nua-siam.html
http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2016/01/bkk-day-4-back-to-singapore.html