Of lemongrass n dusit

Another is a very random post. Last night, before I go to bed, I slather on the body lotion that I took from the hotel on my feet last night,

Do you know if u put lotion on your feet and then wear socks to sleep, u will have smooth heels the next day? It prevents you from having this ugly, hideous crack heels and u can wear those fancy shoes,

Anyways, the smell of lemongrass from the lotion reminds me of dusit thani, the place that I always stay in Bangkok. The friendly welcome “sawasdee” from the entrance of the lobby smells of lemongrass, the 5-star service that I’ve been spoilt of, the variety of western and eastern breakfast when you open your eyes, the endless room service that I can call…
Now Bangkok is just not that save to travel and I have been bumming a lot at home….

I forgot how to make my sheets when I wake up,

I forgot to boil water because I need it for coffee,

I forgot to do my laundry and forgot to sent them,

I forgot that newspaper does not deliver to my room,

I forgot that I need to buy juices to stock up my fridge,

I forgot that I need to on the heater and that there are no new fresh towels in my shower,

I forgot so many stuff,

I forgot that I am back at home…

Being back at home, I didn’t realize how much I been taking for granted of the services that I had in the hotel, now it seems that doing all this tiny little stuff takes quite some of my time , but then again all this errands that I’ve done makes me realize that the services provided are equally important and doing it myself, I learn to appreciate the tiny stuff that my mum have always done for me and everyone back at home . Everything was also washed, cleaned and put back into the place so we children could easily find them. My mum did not have housekeeping department or room service; she was the chef, the cleaner, the designer, the baker, the driver, the HOME MAKER.

Coming bac home, it’s like being in dusit,your mum does everything for, home is where the heart is and it will certainly smell of lemongrass too,well ..because slathering on lotion from dusit is going to last for quite some time too..

sawadee.....

Sawasdee..... is what u greet people when u see people here in bangkok, unlike the Malaysian style "sudah makan? " we say sawadee here..ends with kaa if your are girl or kup if your are a guy, krup if you are neither..... being a part of bangkokians is not much fun at all, especially when everyone walks a lot. there is no point taking a freaking tuk-tuk or catching a cab when the speed is an average or 25km per hour,

Might as well walk to the BTS station and then walk some more again back to your hotel... i manage to bring my brother go sight-seeing while he was having a school break back in Malaysia. this is my bro amazed by the traffic jam every minute in bangkok, we were taking the other direction, it was too congested to go thru sukhvumit road...(sukhumit road is the longest and busiest street everyday , something like jalan sultan ismail, jalan p.ramlee back in kuala lumpur)

i brought him shopping of course, in the heart of the city, Yaowarat!!! ..means chinatown in bangkok, its near to hua lam phong station...or u can take a mrt there...but i reckon u that anyone should take a cab to Chinatown from the mrt, its a loooooong walk from there... when i say long , it means at least 20mins walk....unless you can really walk but malaysian will opt to take tuk -tuk or cab...cost not more than 50B or RM 5..anything more means you've been taken for a ride.....

my bro was amazed not only by the amount of stuff sold in chinatown , but also the smells the he pick up evry now and then, the are local thais selling main dishes with sweet and sour aroma and the opposite you have chinese -thai selling fish maws,with dried squid... now put the smell together and learn to distinguish which is aroma and which is smelly...i really have no idea at all....but here are some pics for you to see...

# one of the shop in chinatown selling fish maws.. the fish stomach here are pretty cheap compare to those back home in malaysia, or sabah or china...one packet is about RM 12 and its about 500G... fried one i mean...but mostly are fried...

u can also get shitake mushrooms here which is very cheap.... the chinatown in bangkok is much bigger than the one in kuala lumpur, say at least 10 times bigger, and the road 2 times smaller,very narrow.... everything congested in the bustling life instead of chinatown...the end of chinatown actually sells more accessories and jeweleries one can imagine....

# the width of the road in chinatown itself, only motorsai are accessible via this lane, if the cab driver choose to drops you off, then jus let them drop you off at the main street , the main street would look a little bit like hong kong, mong kok street... if you dun know how mong kok in hong kong would looks like then go figure :P

chinatown is a must see when visiting bangkok. of course you can also go see pat pong , then again people like me would have no interest in pat pong or you could go to the flaoting market but its about 1.5 hours drive from bangkok itself..we spend almost half a day in bangkok,chinatown. there is a lot to see and also a lot to eat if you like bird nest and shark fin, along some corners u may find food vendors selling fish stomach with bamboo shoots, try it!

at the end of chinatown would be thieves market, you may see a lot of Nepal and Pakistani in the street there..its not called thieves market if you think people there look like thives, or occasionally one or two may look like one :P , the nepal and pakistanis mainly sell cloth...you may be suprise that they actually speak fluent thai and english... they sell cloth in bulk...they are also sisha but the stuff are sent to pattaya or other tourist attraction places in the coast of thailand...

our journey ended around 4pm local time.... we were very tired when we reached the hotel. also exhausted from all the walking...

thats all for chinatown , more photos later!!!

Bangkok - Part 2

As promised, this is the second part of Bangkok, the first day was basically random shopping at chak tu chak, didn’t buy much stuff thou, but it was a great eye opener to see everything under the sun being sold at one specific place.

The second day of bangkok trip,we hit off to the floating market, it is said that there are only few very famous floating market in the world!!!

The most famous would be Bangkok…Duh~

And of course another one is in Vietnam..

The Damnoen Saduak Floating Market in Thailand is located about 105 kms from Bangkok. It took us about an hour and half from Bangkok to actually reach to the floating market. It’s because of Bangkok jam…. The stretch of the floating market is about 32 km. so we chartered a boat and rent for an approximately an hour or so….

If you wanna know more about the floating market in Thailand, then google it k? cause I’m not a Thai/ local and I’m jus briefly describing my trip which is less than 2 hours there. One should go to the floating market in the morning ….. cause it’s a market la…. cause nobody goes to the market after twelve… anyways please find photos for self-explanatory …

#one of the many stuff sold in the market, they were so many to choose from and you will be spolit for choices.... this boat here sells food, well, roasted pork actually...yummy licious...

# the candid shot where my fren cindy was too busy eating coconuts...

she said something like : i'm not happy if i jus drink it , i must finish everything....

very kiasu type wan...anyway, she did finish the coconut, the water and everything that is in it.....

Later after the floating market, we headed to somewhat place in between Bangkok city and floating market to have seafood. I’m bad a remembering names, so I totally forget the name of the place that we went and ate seafood….the route to the place where we had seafood were such in a total mess, there was no tar road, everywhere was muddy and people were driving like no direction wan.....

we felt that the taxi driver was taking us for a ride of our life....... we soon found out that the place is famous and the seafood is damn tasty and we had all this “kung kung stuff “ which is prawn in thai words…..

We had "Tom yam kung" seafood platter, sweet n sour fish, crabs, thai salad, steam fish....and i dun even know what else la its called... but there was so much food all for less than RM 150…. For the six of us.... cause we belanja the taxi driver also la, kesian la, he bring us go eat seafood then have to see us eat all this yummy food and he jus eat nasi pattaya meh?

of course we are not that stingy la, since he recommended the place, so we also belanja him to join us for lunch la...

if that was not enough, we went to china town and had bird nest too.... and some weird delicacies in chinatown itself...

Despite being tired cause we woke up at 7 to head to the floating market, we were still very enthusiastic to go for a walk in the night market which was very popular in Chinatown.

However, we soon found out that Bangkok local authorities had a regulations that they forbid to have any night market on Mondays, even vendors were not allowed to sell food at the street on Monday unless the authorities stated otherwise. So no luck for us, which only means that we should go home and sleep to charge out battery so that we can have a full day shopping trip the next day……

we woke up as early as 8.am the following day to go shopping......after breakfast we took a "tuk-tuk" to shopping heaven called "pratunam"

Pratunam is different from your local mid-valley or retail store because you get to buy your clothes, shoes and jeweleries for wholesale price. The rule is simple:

buy more than 3 clothes,

each design can vary from each other,

it could be a mix and match.. meaning:

jus buy more than 3 baju and the rest is history....

so within 2 hours of shopping, i have burn almost RM 800 for 40 clothes..

that's about RM 20 per dress,so damn cheap rite???

dun believe me??? well ...believe it!!

there are more than 15K shops around this area, if you have time, you can slowly go check out.....

Warning : the shops around Pratunam are relatively small so be courages and be ready to walk.....i've walk for more than 4 hours and you are strongly recommended to have strong arms.......well to carry your shopping stuff that you bought la..abuthen??

besides dresses, there were also many shops selling accessories vintage type which is my favourite and those of the odd types which are chunky and many more...


# jackie, ( aka colleague) is posing with the costume jeweleries in one of d shop.. with so much choices in jus one shop, my eyes also a bit blur blur....

imagine that we were in this street where they sell jus costume jeweleries every shop and each is different...

can die .. !!

the main problem about shopping here in pratunam... is that i didn't have enough luggage to keep all the stuff that i bought, even thou i have bought yet another luggage bag, there were too many stuff to get and i wanted to buy almost everything...

Luckily, i was accompanied by jackie ( picture above wearing red), she stopped me every time i go crazy.....

lesson learn: bring a big-huge empty luggage bag the next time u wanna go shopping.

Well, that all folks.. i hope you enjoyed reading about bangkok as much as i have enjoyed writing about it....if you have never been to pratunam ,bangkok! ( btw, thanx vic for yr camera, all picture were take using vic's canon powershot)

Go book a ticket now, with Airasia... ( now everyone can fly!!!)

bangkok jam!

The title already speak for itself, this trip was a crazy trip..

Did you get that..

I said it again… “CRAZY TRIP”

It was a suppose to be a solely shopping trip,

But somehow we ended up in floating market..jus look and the pictures and enjoy k?

We boarded a 7.50 am flight and reach Bangkok around 10.05 am ,and since Bangkok was slower by an hour, it was only 9 a.m plus… what else can one do? we took a bus to bangkok instead of a cab, konon la wanna save some money.....We took thai breakfast when we reached bangkok city, please dun ask me what I had because I myself was also confused, it was somewhat sausage wrapped in wafer…mixed of salty and sweet ….. sorry ..no photo..lupa la….

In bangkok,

the taxi drivers and bus drivers always refer to this victory monument …

somewhat like our kl central…..

meaning that if you would like to go to chak tu chak market, they will tell that it is 15 mins from victory monument

or if you would like to go to Chinatown , then it would be 40 mins from victory monument,

their victory monument looks like this….

[VICTORY MONUMENT]

Lol, u must have thought I was somewhat glamour…..well, sorry to disappoint you , its not, but the roundabout is rather a very very big one...much bigger than your usual shah alam roundabout or the batu caves roundabout.......

but I was rather impressed with their overhead bridge which was about 1 km long,

if you notice carefully behind my beautiful face, you could actually see that I’m on top of the pedestrian bridge…..

[HEADING TO CHAK TU CHAK] via mrt...

Our first stop was chak tu chak market,this market is one of the very famous market in bangkok... the market is only opened during the weekend, Saturday & Sunday, and every piece of items you can think of is sold here,

Seriously, they were shoes, bags, clothes, plates, furniture’s, pets, foods, shrines, antics, accessories and blah.. blah blah….the many items that were sold, it was crazy….let me give u a brief imagination,

the shops were merely 6 x 6 foot,

the inner path was not wider than 4 feet; well except for the main road, and they were more than 30,000 shops..hello…30,000 shops…….

See for yourself….

t-shirts were selling cheap cheap....but seriously not all stuff can be bought here cause this market is basically our jonker street in melaka....

they only entertain tourist and most of them can actually speak english, which means ...~ duh~
toursit spot la....
if you must know, thai people dun speak english and the only language they speak is...well.. yeah...thai........and if you dun understand thai language, dun worry...jus say "mai kau jai"..... no serious...it means to say that you dun understand........

they were other items selling in the market like bowls and sushi plates and stuff that you can only find in ikea only way way tonnes cheaper......

the ceramics bowls and plates comes in different sizes,colour and texture.. and some were really cute.....i wanted to buy some but then i worried if it was possible to actually carry back everything to malaysia......but stil..... i was tempted to buy..but i was stopped by my fellow colleague who pleaded me to be rational.....

Fine! fine! who can be rational when everything is freaking cheap la......and did i mentioned that the strawberries were selling like any ordinary fruits vendor you find in malaysia..for only 20baht you could actually enjoy such yummylicious fruits.....ok ok , i know some of u guys dun really fancy strawberries....

but they were also jackfruit, mangoes, and pineapple...

they were super sweet and super cheap.....i think i had about 4 pineapples for a freaking 2days....

and i know what pineapples are ok....? so please dun ask why i had so much...if some of you know why girls shouldn't have too much pineapple..well....go figure........

these are the animals prints bolster, cushion cover, handbags and all sort of animals prints cover ... the shops itself looks like a safari.....

the market were also selling really really cute pet..for Less than 1000 baht, you could actually get one......




they were so damn freaking cute..check out the video here....
i'm not very good at uploading video, so please bear with me.....if it takes too long too load

we spent about 4-5 hours touring the market, we also knew that we have missed out many many shops, but out legs were tired, and our eyes were getting blurry from all the things we saw in the market, we were very hungry too and we almost passed out due to the heat and we could only save ourselves by catching a cab to the hotel....



[to be continued......................]