Hi everyone! It's been forever since I've updated my blog so I figured that it was about time to put up a post so long overdue. As you may have guessed from the title, I traveled to Bangkok for the second time during the September holidays! (It's the December holidays now and I finally gotten around to finishing the post sigh) My first visit there was when I was still young, around 11 years old when I haven't appreciated the true beauty of shopping.

IMPORTANT NOTE: My photos were mostly taken with my phone at that time (Xiaomi Redmi) so that explains why the quality of the photos are not at the best standard. This was supposed to be a huge and detailed Photo Diary like the one I did for my Japan trip (link here) but just yesterday my mini SD card got corrupted and all my precious precious pictures were gone! After painstakingly using many many different softwares, manually clicking more than 2000 times, I managed to get back only some pictures and the rest are gone for good :(

We left Singapore on the 7th of September on Thai Airways. It was my second time riding Thai Airways too and the facilities were alright, it looked new, the staff were friendly although their service was slightly slow. The seats and pillow were comfortable, the blanket is VERY soft and there was a TV with reasonable choices of movies to watch (there was only a limited variety of music tracks though). The food however, was not all that fantastic. It was edible and tasted right but it was just... Lacking compared to Singapore Airlines.

We stayed in Novotel Hotel Bangkok for the next 4 days. I've stayed there previously and it looked exactly the same, the lobby and lifts were not yet rundown but it looked old. However, the hotel rooms looked relatively new and they gave us free apples that were incredibly juicy. House keeping even gave us more apples when we ate them all! Another wonderful thing about Novotel is that the staff are always very nice, making us feel welcomed. They do their job just like every other bellboy in hotels do but they do it with a smile :)

After all, Thailand is knows as the land of a thousand smiles and they really do live up to their name unlike Singapore with our garden city when really we would be trash without all the cleaners. I went to Hong Kong before and when you look at their goods and ask them questions yet change your mind and decide to leave, they scold you in Cantonese or give you the dirty face even when you say thank you. In Bangkok, everything is so much more different! We can see that they learnt some basic English to communicate with us and they are always polite and greets us with smiles when we don't buy from them. The way they speak is also more gentle and they are also more willing to give us discounts especially if we buy more. Out of all the countries I've been to, I'll choose to settle down in Bangkok, Thailand if I had to choose. Everything is cheaper, people are nicer, life is not so fast paced! Only bad parts are that the drains are smelly, drivers don't particularly look out for pedestrians and compared to Singapore (which is an incredible high standard), it is quite unclean.

We went to Thailand's tallest building, the Baiyoke Sky Tower (309 metres tall) and ate at Bangkok Sky Restaurant which was an all-you-can-eat buffet that served really good food and had a nice view of the city. I was spoiled for choices and just kept stuffing food in myself even when I was full because all of the food looked and tasted so delicious! It was also rather expensive to dine there so I wanted to make the money spent worthwhile. I actually felt bad for eating so much when there are people in the world starving... We ate for 2 hours and went to the Observation Deck on the 77th floor to take lots of pictures (all accidentally deleted argh). 

Photos from the Internet:

Finally, we went up to the 83th floor, climbed 2 stories up to the roof top and it was so cool! There were army soldiers guarding the entrance and the circular platform that we were standing was spinning 360° and we got to see the brightly lighted city in the dark with cool wind blowing at us. After a while it started to drizzle and my sister wasn't feeling well so we left :(

The Ring Of Fire

After we had our breakfast buffet at Novotel Hotel, we walked all the way to the outdoor temple to pray. I've heard that many people who prayed there got their wishes granted and it was very popular. It was really sunny and wasn't even afternoon time yet A LOT of people came to pay their respects to the Four-faced Buddha. Basically you buy 4 flowers, a candle and 12 joss sticks and pray to each face of the Buddha starting from the one facing the door and moving to the left. My mum said I may ask for any wishes as long as it is not more than 4. After that, we can wash our hands/body and drink from the holy water.

My breakfast usually revolves around these limited dishes, toast and porridge

Next we went to The Platinum Mall which is basically shopping heaven and is a MUST-GO for all tourists! There is EVERYTHING and it's all at dirt cheap prices! (okay not dirt cheap but really cheap) It's a wholesale mall so you can get discounts when you buy more in most shops. 4 huge levels of Women's and Men's clothes and 1 entire level of children's clothes + accessories. There are so many shops, I got lost and confused about which way to go. I spent nearly all of my allowance, 2000 baht (Singapore $80) at Platinum Mall and I bought so so so many clothes I was so happy haha! Sadly when I had my lunch, I realised that the food at the food court was quite limited (or maybe I'm just a fussy eater) and it rained really heavily after that.

Since most shoppers were stuck indoors due to the heavy rain, there were actually policemen stationed at the main exit of the shopping complex that carried huge umbrellas (like the ones on the $1.50 ice cream motorcycle) and helped transport shoppers without umbrellas back and forth to this temporary huge umbrella taxi stand. He was so kind and nice, he seriously deserves to be applauded. Someone actually cut our queue and the police man saw and told the person to go to the back. There was a taxi driver that said he would drive us back to the hotel for 200 bahts but told us to go all the way to the overhead bridge in front where there is shelter and the policeman even took us there in the huge umbrella! He didn't have to do that as it wasn't his job and he himself got slightly drenched in the process! My family and I were really thankful :)

Because it was raining heavily, we saw that the queue for the Hello Kitty House shortened when passing by Siam Square Mall to the hotel and we quickly went downstairs to queue after we dried off in our hotel room.

The Hello Kitty House is SO pretty and cute and omg there's Hello Kitty everywhere! There's 3 levels, the basement is the shop and spa which I did not go :( The first level is the cafe and the second level are more seats for the cafe. Everything was pastel pink! My family and I spent about half an hour to take all the many pictures. (My mum is a hardcore hello kitty fan)

Everyone's taking selfies haha

I think this is the first unedited selfie I've ever posted online lolol

The Basement where they sell Hello Kitty merchandise at exorbitant prizes

Didn't go for the Hello Kitty Spa :(

These Hello Kitty stuff toys were so cute but unfortunately not for sale :(

They only served cupcakes, cakes and beverages and it was all really expensive. My family and I ordered Strawberry Shortcake, Oreo Cupcake and Soft Chocolate cake together with Bubble Milk Tea, Ice Chocolate, Coffee and Strawberry milk. All that was about SG$40 (If I remembered correctly) but the food was very very yummy so it was worth it!

Cookies and Cream cupcake, Strawberry Shortcake and Brownie (no nuts and it tastes like heaven)

Ice chocolate, Bubble Tea, Strawberry Milk (which was extremely sweet)

How can you bear to drink the coffee and destroy the Hello Kitty?!

15 minutes spent on taking the perfect pictures before finally eating!

My father said he still wanted to have a proper dinner and I nearly fainted because I was so full already but we eventually went to my family's favourite Thai Restaurant Ban Khun Mae (It means Mother's cooking) which was opposite the Hello Kitty Cafe. Like always, the food was delicious and the ambience was great. It had a very rustic feeling.

We went to MBK Centre, Siam Square 1, Siam Paragon and Bonanza Mall for even more shopping! They are just normal shopping centres that sell things mostly for tourists and the goods are slightly more expensive than in Platinum Mall. Siam Paragon is kind of like the Paragon in Orchard Road where all the shops sell branded goods, interesting thing is that I met some famous singer/celebrity at the mall and took some pictures of him haha I didn't even know who he was.

(Disclaimer: The pictures of the interior and exterior of the shopping malls below belong to their respective owners, I've only put them up so that the readers can get a clearer idea of the places I went, no copyright intended.) 

The last shopping stop and my favourite, most-anticipated one of all, Siam Night Market! We actually wanted to come on the second day but it was closed on Monday. In a more Singaporean context, it is like a Pasar Malam full of clothes, accessories and shoes with some handphone gadgets along the way. Kind of like a never-ending stretch of table stalls, it's one way so you can definitely find something you like when you go all the way from the start to the end and back! Be careful though, it is very crowded so you will get bumped into. Just in case, it's best to put your valuables somewhere safe or carry your bag in front to prevent pick pockets from targeting you.

After a long day of shopping again, our bodies were so sore we went to Chang Foot Massage again. My mum and sister (she's 7 omg) did the leg and shoulders message, while my father and I tried the shoulder and back massage. Ah so relaxing~

My parents surprised me by dropping my sister and I off at Kidzania at Siam Paragon and left to have some alone time. We were so confused because I've never heard of it before and the outside looked like the departure hall of an airport. When we finally realised that it was like an amusement park for kids my sister and I went wild haha!




In Kidzania land you can do many jobs like working in the police force, being a vet and even being a banker! I told my sister to focus on earning kidzania money first before spending it by playing games but unfortunately we didn't have enough time as we had to catch our flight back to Singapore :(

We pretended to put out a fire, it wasn't very not age appropriate haha

Radio Station

There were only real fishes, everything else were stuff toys haha

This was quite fun as we got to push the noisy cart around Kidzania and collect boxes (parcels) from different shops

My sister and I did a liver transplant for a mannequin here haha

The Police Station

We were in the same team as a few Thai students but we managed to break the language barrier and 'arrested' the right culprit!

Luckily I wore shorts underneath but it was still embarrassing...

This 'Secret Agent' mission is kind of like rock climbing!

If I remember correctly, I think it was Kidzania's 1 year anniversary so there was a fair!

Although it was kind of childish for a teenager I just had fun accompanying my sister :P I took home a few cards that were given to us after we completed our jobs and I received a fake Honda driving license haha! I think the 'Driving Test' excited me the most. In the end we bought Singapore dollars $100 worth of photos for memory's sake and they gave us free CDs filled with high quality photos by the canon photographers who ran around taking pictures of the kids "working".  Only sad thing is that we were left with lots of Kidzania money and we couldn't spend it anymore due to lack of time :(


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Here are all my loots that I bought with about 3500 baht (SG $140) during the 4 days trip! I think the most expensive item hat I bought was the Hello Kitty shirt from Hello Kitty Cafe. (it was 550 baht but my mum helped me pay half as it was too cute to resist) My best buy is probably the holographic ballet slippers with the transparent plastic at the side. Although it is actually quite stiff and hurts after a while but in Singapore it can sell up to $45 but I only bought it for 290 baht which is only around $15!

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Thank you so much for reading my blog post about my 4 days 3 nights Bangkok trip during the September holidays! I finally finished it after my end of year exams and lots of procrastination! 


Would you like to go or have you been to Bangkok before, are there any places for shopping or entertainment that you think I should check out the next time I visit Bangkok again? Also, what do you think about this blog post after me being inactive for so long? Please give me some constructive criticism! Tell me everything in the comment box down below :) There's an option to post anonymously if you're shy or don't have a gmail account :) 

Quality and quantity of photos are usually not this bad and will definitely improve in the future, don't worry.

❤,

Jermaine x