Monday, August 5, 2024

NotSoSolo Trip Bangkok (June 2024) - First Day in Bangkok


It started out as a planned solo trip, visiting my friend while I was there, but we also have some common friends, I decided to ask out of politeness whether they would like to join too. One of them decided to join, and so it became a girls trip to Bangkok! But I made it clear that no matter what, I have to achieve my bucket list while I was on this trip, and that was to visit Ayutthaya and the Grand Palace.  I also asked my Thai friend if she wanted to go anywhere for a short trip outside of Bangkok, and she picked Hua Hin by train! The advantage of not working, is that we are free to travel anywhere anytime! And so, I booked the cheapest flight from Penang to Bangkok, and it was surprisingly not Air Asia! I actually took  Firefly, on a morning early 925am flight!


And above is part of the reason (aside from the price of course), free snacks! Yes, although it's a budget airline, they provide snacks on your flight! And the other best part was, they gave 10kg check-in luggage free, on top of the 7kg carry on. That was more than enough for me! Later when I came back did I realise that Firefly is owned by MAS..... (nervous laughter). I've only ever took MAS once in my life before. Their track record isn't actually great is it? But Firefly gets a 5 star from me! Super value for money!


I met my other girlfriend in Bangkok Airport itself. She flew in from Singapore. Our Thai friend was meeting us there to bring us to town. Since the shuttle bus to the bus terminal would be a 1hour wait, we decided to have lunch first. Burger King was not my first pick, but.... it has bacon! 


Our first stop was to my friend's house to say "Hi" to her parents, and also to Pad Pad, or Pad Khao (Fried Rice), her pet rabbit. After saying our greetings and handing over our gift, we drove to the nearest BigC Supermarket for some shopping, and then to a seafood buffet at Mungkorn.


We arrived around 5pm for dinner. It cost around 500baht a person, around 18gd? Super value for money. There were insane amount and varieties of seafood on the menu for your picking!


Me and my Thai friend super love prawns, so that was what we mainly ate. I do not know why I always find it hard to buy prawns from the market because of the price, but whenever I go to a buffet and there are prawns there, I would just eat it non-stop. I also love that they had bamboo clams! I love those too! Basically I just stuffed myself with these two ingredients.


They have a table just for raw seafood, thai styled too! And I really wanted to try them, but I had a 4 hour train ride the next day and didn't want to risk it. I would definitely want to come back here again and try them one day! They looked absolutely mouth watering!


After stuffing myself silly with the bbq seafood, I did managed to try a plate of thai food. I love the thai curry with noodles, and the bbq corn was super delicious! It saves me the trouble of finding the corn from the night market and paying separately to try them. I'm quite a sucker for corns. 


I also tried a bowl of durian penget with sticky rice. It was nice because they put a lot of sugar in it. 


After dinner, and dropping most of our luggage at someone else's home, we finally checked into our hotel around 8pm. The hotel was near Terminal21 riverside, but we never did got a chance to visit it cause we were only staying one night, and leaving early next morning to catch our train. 


The hotel was beautiful with old elegance. Everything was super huge here, with multiple storeys at the main lobby. It was almost a pity that we were only staying a night. It was quite cheap though, around 60sgd a night. I was sharing it with my friend, so it was only 30sgd a night per person. Totally within my budget for such a luxury stay!


The room was large and spacious!


And so was the bathroom! It had a bath that I didn't manage to use. I started to wonder why I've been staying in so many hotels with bath  recently but not having the time to really enjoy them? Travelling with people is always so rush! Perhaps I should plan a slow trip for myself, to the land of onsen? Or just pray that I get to enjoy at least two nights of onsen in my upcoming trip to Hiroshima :)


The view from our room, night scene of Chao Phraya River. We actually went down to the garden by the river and spend the night chatting before heading up to wash up and sleep. It was a nice chat up with my friend one-on-one. Although we did went on a trip to South Korea in April, we didn't really talked much as we were in a group and my husband was also with me. In this trip, we were going to be stuck together :P

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