Quick get away to Bangkok have never been so nice before. Of course, its about travelling with her!.

Itinery:8/10 shopping focus trip
Flight: 7/10 Budget Airline, decent for 2-3hours Flight
Hotel stay: 9/10 Value for money, 3 stars Hotel, located very near to skytrain station, very good buffet breakfast!

Day 1 - Arriving In Bangkok
Paying for a cheap budget airfare mean arriving at Bangkok very early in the morning, about 9.30am local time. With shops not opening yet, and hotel checkin timing still some hours away, we took our breakfast at the new subvarnkumit airport.

Chinese food is pretty good and delicious especially tasty when added with chilli powder. After our breakfast, we decided to try out luck to checkin to our hotel and took a taxi from the airport to our hotel in sukuvmit road.

 

 

 

Remember, probably safer to take a taxi via airport Public Taxi stand. Taxi trip should not be more than 350baht. 50 baht being the airport surcharge and the rest is by meter. Insist Meters at all time. We booked a 3-stars Swiss park hotel via www.asiatravel.com, after reviewing the hotel at www.agoda.com. In addition it also come with a nice daily breakfast. The best part is, we are paying a mere 5100baht for a 3nights stay and we got a hotel that is so near to the sky train (2min walk) and at the middle of bangkok shopping belt.

We decided to explore the bangkok main shopping belt, mainly the expensive places like, Central World, Zen, Siam paragon,Siam Center, Siam Discovery Ctrs and the legendary MBK. We took our first sky train trip, locally call BTS, from our Nana station to Chitlom station.

The main shopping belt, best sum up, is like our Orchard Road or Paragon, where branded goods abundant and pretty expensive. MBK should be the must visit place as it have lot of bargains, like electronics stuffs, clothings,shoes, bags and so on. Prices here is cheap comparing to those Siam shopping Centres. We decided to end our first day shopping by having our dinner at Bangkok Hardrock cafe, that is located in the middle of Siam Square. Hardrock food serving is pretty large and service there is fanstatic as well.

Day 2 - Chatuchak and Platinam Fashion Mall

Day 2, we head straight to the legendary Weekend Market, chatuchak after our breakfast. From our Nana station, we took BTS all the way to Mo Chit, the northern last station. As it is a Sunday, the place is very crowded. Chatuchak is open from 8am, and probably reaching there around 10am will be just nice for which most shops should be opened by then. We bought alot of stuffs, from printed Tees to Weaved bags. Inside Chatuchak, we did not have any photo to show for, as we were simply busy shopping!

 We did not manage to explore the whole place as it is very crowded and the place is simply too big. After like 4 hours of shopping, we decided to head back to our hotel to put those stuffs and get lunch.

After our rest, we went for a late late lunch and get it done at Subway. From there, we head to Platinam Fashion Mall. Going to Platinam is abit tricky, as we did not want to take taxi. And there is no direct BTS or MRt to the Mall. The route we figured out is to take BTS to Ratchathewi Station, and from there, we walk to Fashion Mall. The distance is about 15min from the station. Platinum Fashion mall is located beside Pantip Mall (selling IT and PCs) and opposite of Pratunam Complex.

With limited time, we could only explore Platinam Fashion Mall. The mall is HUGE! Housing about 1300 shops. Again, we got no photo here, as we were really busy shopping for bargains. The place is like Chatuchak, but a more urban enviroment and of course, air-conditioned! We reached there at 5pm, after researching online that the mall closes at 9pm. THIS IS NOT TRUE! The mall closes at 730pm!!! I simply love this place as it has many shop selling local designs. Managed to buy some bags and sandals here. After being force to leave the mall when it closed at 730pm, we returned to our hotel with some street foods and ended day 2.

Day 3 - Wat Po and Sharkfins & Birdnest

 We planned our Day 3 to eat Sharkfins and Birdnest. For that, we had to visit Chinatown. There is no direct transportation to Chinatown, no BTS,no MRT. We did not want to take a taxi either. Finally, we decided to opt for Boat along Chao Praya River. To take a boat, we had to go to Central Pier, which is reachable by BTS, the last southern station, Saphan Taksin.

We decided to drop by Wat Po, to visit the Declining Buddha. We boarded into a Express Boat. The Boat come with a guide where he guide you on the various attractions along the river. We disembarked on Tha Thien Pier. Caution, near the pier, there are alot of conman and conwoman. They will tell you not to go to the temple and recommend elsewhere. Very often, these recommendation often ended up in some unknown temples or Fake Germ Store. We met one that day, but we just walked straight to the temple ignoring her.

 Going to Wat Po Temple need to pay 50baht per entry fee. You have to take off your shoes when entering to see the declining Buddha. For ladies, it would be better to wear sleeves tee out of respect.

After Wat Po, we embarked from Tha Thien to go Ratchawong Pier, where we will then walk to Yaowarat Road, ChinaTown area. From Ratchawong Pier, we walked along Ratchawong Road and before reaching Yaowarat Road, we found a street market (not sure the name, but you will need to pass through before reaching chinatown) which sells alot of wholesale toys, bags and accessories. If you are a fan of cute toys, you would definitely find good bargains in Doraemon, Hello Kitty, Crayon SimChang and so on.

At Chinatown, there is nothing much to shop, except looking for sharkfins and birdnest. We decided to dine at one chinese restaurant. The sharkfins and birdnest werent so cheap as before, nevertheless, still affordable. We ordered different type of sharkfin claypots, and also different type of birdnests. Add on with some dishes, we had our late lunch fixed. We headed back to Ratchawong Pier and took the boat back to Central Pier where we supposed to meet up with a friend in Siam area.

After the meeting up with friend, we headed to A&W for dinner. Yes!, the fast food restaurant that we misses so much since they closed down in Singapore couple of years back. The A&W outlet is located in Siam Square, very easy to find. We ordered our Waffles fix, Root bear float and of course Curly fries!!! Finally we ended our Day 3 adventure.

Day 4 - Thai Massage and Departure

Day of fun somewhat have to end…its our last day in bangkok, we decided to reward our aching body and legs a good massage.  Our departure time was 850pm local time, so we got plenty of time to spare. We checked out of our hotel early and leave our barangs with the conceige, then we went for our thai massage.

Healthland Spa and Massage (www.healthlandspa.com) is a MUST GO massage parlour and its healthy! They got a couple of branches. The nearest one near our Nana station is the one at ekramai. However its not near to ekramai BTS, rather out of the way. We took a cab there and it took 10min to reach there.

The parlour is rather posh, and a very Zen like environment. After viewing the menu and enquiry, I decided to take up foot reflexology and ayuremic. My girl opted for foot and thai massage. Foot Massage cost 250 baht, ayeremic massage cost 300baht and thai massage cost 450 baht.

Foot Massage was very good, and very much different from those in China. It really can made one go to sleep easily! Do you know the reason why I opted out of Thai Massage???!!! The answer is in the photo below!!!

My Ayeremic massage is not bad either. It is good for those that have chronic pain in some area and this type of thai massage is targetted at those affected area. We felt really great after the massage, the feeling is like after a 20laps Swim! and probably more than that!

After massage, we went back to Siam area, to pray at Erawan Shrine. The famous 4 face Buddha. Its been reported that many Hk Stars will definitely stop by this Shrine whenever they are in Thailand. Hearsay that one can pray for good luck in money,business,wealth,health and so on.

Need not buy the offering set at the roadside, just walk into the shrine and offer any amount of donation and get a basic offering set from the shrine.

After prayer we went to MBK to have our late lunch before our flight. 5th floor of MBK have a large foodcourt call THE FIFTH, offering many different type of cuisines like Thai,Japs,Indians,Seafood and so on. They operate like Mache, with a checkin card and a spending limit of 1000baht. Pretty cosy place and much better than our food court.

We had a very good and satisfied meals, and spend our last hour in MBK shopping for goodies. Eventually, we headed back to our hotel to claim our Barangs before departing to airport as early as 5pm just to anticipate a heavy peak hour traffic. The return airport trip cost us 400baht and with that, we ended our 4days 3nites holiday!.

RESOURCE

If we will to go again, our ITinery will be:

Day1(Sat): Platinum, Pratunam, Pantips

Day2(Sun):Chatuchak, Siam Areas, MBK

Day3:Chinatown, Sightseeing Chao Prayo river

Day4:HealthLand Spa & Massage, Erawan Shrine

www.jetstar.com.sg www.asiatravel.com www.agoda.com www.healthlandspa.com
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