Day 4 (part 1)

GREETINGS FROM THE BANGKOK AIRPORT! :)

Leaving Thailand in 30 minutes, going back to Hong Kong for a few days and then coming back to Vancouver! Nothing much to say right now since we didn't do much until the airport except for eating breakfast, shop and eating lunch :)

I'll be back in a few hours!

BANGKOK : DAY 3

SAWATDEE KAA!!!!

Greetings from Bangkok Thailand :)
Yes, all the Ronald McDonald figures in Thailand look like that... I was kinda scared standing beside 'him', 'it'.... whatever. The third day in Thailand! We ate breakfast at the hotel and headed to the first tourist location via rent a car+driver.

First location, the Grand Palace *oooooooh*
The "Grand Palace" is basically the palace that the king of Thailand lives in. Only, he actually lives in maybe 1/10th of the entire property because the rest of the palace are all temples that have been made open to the public with the fee of 500b/person (around $9-10 CDN). There were mini troops of soldiers marching around the king's legit palace (which was basically barricaded and fenced off from the public), however the soldiers were all looking pretty bored and was some were staring at them female tourists (not me, of course... LOLSADBUTTRUE)

Anyways, it was 25+ degrees today and the palace had really strict rules on their dress code.  From our understanding, sleeveless shirts, open toed shoes and bottoms that were ended above the knees were prohibited. So, we dressed accordingly... but nope. When we arrived  at the palace, leggings (what I wore) and 3/4 length pants were prohibited as well. And boy, were they strict, they have two people checking each person's attire. One of them was at the entrance of the property, though he let a lot of people through and a lot of people (including us) snuck past his beady eyes (okay, first level passed). However it was the second person that deferred me and my mom (I wore leggings and my mother wore capris), we weren't the only ones that were deferred (there were people who violated everything on the list...*pft, tourists...LOLJK) And to solve that dress code issue is by depositing 200b/item at their "borrow station", which is basically renting out skirts, shirts and pants for people (like me). It was basically an extra 20 minute wait in line for the clothing (wehweh). 
My reaction the entire time:

The whole palace was meh, the dress attire and the heat got me kinda grumpy; but it was one of those tourist attractions that you only need to go once and once is all you need. We went to a temple afterwards, and even though we were only there for half an hour it was a LOT more interesting than the "Grand Palace"... why is that? For one, they weren't strict about the attire (which is weird, considering it was a temple-temple) and two: THEY HAD A GIANT GOLD BUDDHA LYING DOWN. Literally... the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw the buddha's post was...

"Hey there..."



Continuing on... 

We went to eat (another fail food story), hoping to eat a recommended/authentic Hainese chicken rice, when we got to the store and sat down they told us that they were sold out. They had the second 'famous' dish of fishballs and noodles; so the adults stayed and the kids (me, my sister, Joey and my cousin) went to eat at a nearby mall (Thai food nomnomnom). We were going to go for a Thai massage but the wait was two hours (nope, no patience and time for that) so we went back to the hotel and chilled at the outdoor pool until dinner time :)

Joey's aunt and uncle brought us out for dinner again, tonight's dinner place was at the Greyhound Cafe. I've seen Greyhound Cafes around Hong Kong before too, but obviously this one was Thai style with some Western dishes as well. 

After dinner we went to Bangkok's most popular dessert shop called After You. A lot of their  desserts were sold out by the time we got there, so we got the chocolate lava cake with vanilla, and a honey toast with vanilla ice cream. I got myself an Earl Grey milk tea, SO YUMMY :) I love Earl Grey tea, it was iced and not too sweet <3

After dessert at After You, we went to Joey's uncle's restaurant for more dessert (yep...). Sticky rice with fresh mango, chopped yellow beans and coconut sauce, an authentic Thai dessert highly recommended by Joey's uncle (who got it for take-out on our way to his restaurant because it was closing soon). By then I was pretty full, but I still tried some. It was interesting but yummy :) 


THAT WAS A LONG POST. BUT I'm done now, it's late but I really wanted to finish this post so I can finally catch up on keeping you posted on my trip :) Didn't fall asleep this time, aha. I'm leaving tomorrow night back to Hong Kong! Even though I'm really glad I went on this trip (in general, including HK), I kind of want to go back to school... I'm missing the first week (long story short, we booked these flight tickets really early in the year; I didn't know when school started, don't judge me!!!). Ugh...I'm feeling antsy already!

Anyways...
Bye for now :)

BANGKOK : Day 2

I'M STILL SICK. Ugh... at least my ears have stopped throbbing but still.

Woke up early this morning to go to church at 8 am, the church was quite nice, very 'Thai' style... Jesus was gold. Literally.

Went back to the hotel for breakfast (it was complimentary) and it was a buffet breakfast. Nomnomnomnom :) and started the day at the mall. I forgot what it was called but apparently it's the second biggest mall in Asia. Yet again, not my favorite because many of the stores they have, we have in Canada as well, it costs more in Thailand too.

Today was a tiring day, I'm actually falling asleep as I'm typing this post. We shopped for an extremely long time, maybe 5 hours straight. I spotted 3 trannies, one of them was a salesperson who was selling me a skirt (that I did end up buying). Hmm.. I bought a pair of sandals for 300 baht (CDN, around $10) because my feet were dying from wearing flats all day.

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Okay so I legit fell asleep while writing the post above because now it's the next day...
Continuing on (though, there's not much left to say)
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We went back to the hotel to rest before dinner.. a dinner that failed twice. Why failed twice? The first restaurant that my sister's boyfriend found was open, but not in the location that was posted online. They didn't speak English so that was a no. The second restaurant was found by my dad was... M.I.A. Legit, we used the GPS and we couldn't find even though the arrow was pointing us to some dark looking building. Another no. That took up a good hour, hour and a half; by then everyone was getting a little frustrated, especially (let me emphasize this) ESPECIALLY my grandma. Holy, that woman can rant... but she's old so we couldn't do much about it... love dat bbg. :3 :3 :3

We ended up going to the Paragon Mall to eat in a Thai restaurant... it was pretty good actually. Just not the authentic type restaurants that we hoped for. There was a dish that was Tom Yum soup with mushrooms... the mushrooms didn't have a stub and the insides were ... mushy.. it was called "puff ball" mushroom. It was kind of a horrifying experience, imagine having the intentions of biting into a soft mushroom, but instead have a chewy shell-y texture and mushy insides (idkwtf that is).

BANGKOK : DAY 1 (part 2)

So... I hope all of your countdowns were nothing like mine because I didn't even have a countdown HAHA. You're probably thinking "dude you were in Thailand, you didn't party it up?" No, I didn't. In fact my sister, my cousin and I celebrated the end of 2012 and the start of 2013 in a 7-11 a block down from our hotel.

We went back to the hotel after dinner to rest, not really having any plans for the countdown.Everyone was pretty tired, I was sick with the flu, my sister wasn't feeling well. It wasn't until 11:30 when my sister woke up from her nap that we (me, my sister and my cousin Dominic, but not my sister's boyfriend who slept through the night) decided to find something to do for New Years Eve. We walked around the hotel, there were two event going on, one at the bar and the other in the hotel restaurant but it didn't really intrigue us enough to pay  around 1600 baht for. Sooooo... we decided to go out to the streets to check things out, and ended up going to 7-11 to buy drinks and snacks for countdown (at that time it was already 11:45...)

We were at the cashier at 11:55, were we going to make it to the hotel in time for countdown? Nope.... at the rate that the cashier was working and the number of people budging, my cousin ran out the 7-11 while my sister and I was still paying (he really didn't want to spend New Years in 7-11 LOL). When we got back to the hotel we could hear fireworks going off and some glimpse of light but other than that nothing extraordinary happened.

And that was how I spent my New Years Eve everybody. I hope you guys had a much better and much more memorable night than I did. Although, I did spend it with my loved ones; I'm pretty happy with the night.

Oh, little facts: we're staying at the Amari Atrium Hotel, I'm sharing the room with my sister and the double bed can literally sleep up to four people and the the snack and drink "bar" that the hotel displays also has Playboy condoms for 130 baht. We thought it was some kind of New Years 'special' product, but nope... its just casually laying there under the bags of chips. 

I'll probably post a New Years Resolution list up soon, gotta make some changes in my life for 2013!
:)

BANGKOK : DAY 1 (part 1)

GREETINGS FROM BANGKOK!

That’s right! If you haven’t seen my check-in on Facebook already, I am in Bangkok, Thailand for the family trip and countdown to New Year’s. The flight to Bangkok was okay, we were on one of the biggest airplanes apparently (the only double-deck planes). But because we checked in late or something, most of us were separated (seating-wise). I ended up sitting beside this young-ish Hong Kong couple; the girl beside me had pink and green hair… ANYWAYS, when they first sat down the guy openly stated he needed to take a dump (okay there…) and when the plane landed they both wore their sunglasses… while still on the plane… (okay.) …ANYWAYS, I watched “People Like Us”, a movie that I’ve wanted to watch when it was in theatres but it didn’t work out (*ahem, Charlotte). It was really good, maybe because I like the whole cast (Michelle Pheiffer, Elizabeth Banks, Olivia Wilde, -); I highly recommend this movie

Arrived in Bangkok around 3:45pm, with painful muffled(?) ears from the landing. As I’m typing write now, my inside of my right ear is still throbbing a little and still “muffled” and endless tissue wontons (yuck). Joey (my sister’s boyfriend)’s uncle and aunt picked us up from the airport and after checking-in the hotel we went to the uncle’s restaurant (called “Hong Kong Mandarin”) for dinner. As you can tell from the restaurant name, we ate Chinese food but they specially made a Thai noodle dish for us.  Joey’s uncle and aunt were extremely hospitable, so throughout the whole dinner there were compliments and “it is my pleasure”, “please help yourself”, “you’re making me feel bad” (from our side, because they had a late lunch so they didn’t eat much of dinner) and of course “you’re much too kind’s” flying across the table.

Dinner was nomnom good, even though it wasn’t Thai; I’m sure I’ll be having plenty of that for the rest of the trip  I’m at the hotel right now, currently 10:40 with no plans whatsoever for the countdown. Everyone’s pretty tired from today, my sister and I are both sick and my grandma’s really not the type to party it out at the Siam Square for New Years. I’d be down to go out for countdown but I don’t think that’s going to happen tonight, howeverrrrrrrr… I’m okay with just staying at the hotel too. I just took a shower and I’m in bed already (wehweh, lazy people problems).

And I’m going to leave it at that! HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYBODY! HAVE A SAFE AND AWESOME COUNTDOWN WITH YOUR LOVED ONES. GOOD BYE 2012, HELLO 2013! :D