Thursday 22 August 2013

Bangkok 2013- Day 1

Sawadekrup! Dear and I went on a R&R trip in Bangkok lat month. I felt like I ran a lot of errands on the 5D4N trip: tailoring work clothes, shopping for casual wear and work clothes, and accompany Dear for the Chelsea Asia Tour.


First up, here are the trip logisitcs:

Air Asia flight: $282 per pax with insurance
Bangkok Inter Place Hotel: $92.29 in total for one night
Acardia Suites Bangkok: $242.40 in total for three nights
Exchange rate: 24.1
Chelsea match tickets: 3040 bhat

I stayed overnight at Dear's place the night we were supposed to fly because our flight was in the early morning. So the vacation started early by going for a nice dinner at Tonkatsu before playing mahjong at Dear's place and retiring for the night.

We woke up and went to the airport for breakfast the next day. I thought it will be nice to have a local breakfast like nasi lemak and tried Papa Mia which looked like quite famous. Maybe I was misled by the name into thinking it is a brand brought in from Malaysia. The food was bad and expensive. A nasi lemak and toast set costs us about $17. Pui!

Putting behind the bad start, we soon boarded our plane. Excitement building up!


After reaching Bangkok, we took a cab to the Bangkok Interplace hotel where we will be staying for the night. It is only a few minutes walk from the Rajamangala Stadium that Chelsea will be playing at that night for their Asia Tour. Bangkok was the second stop of the tour.

Dear did a good job of find a pretty nice place near the stadium. Applause for him. *Clap Clap Clap*


The picture is little dark, but the room is spacious and the decor is pretty nice.


My main peeve with the room is the toilet which is a little too narrow. Nonetheless it was clean and I guess big enough for a night's stay.

After putting down our stuff, we took a cab to the nearest shopping centre to have lunch and explore the neighbourhood. 

Street shots from the taxi ride

The mall and streets.


One thing we learnt on this trip is that buffets are popular in Bangkok now. We saw a lot of new restaurants offering steamboat buffets, BBQ buffets or Jap buffets. 

So we also tried one of the, haha : ) 

The price of the lunch we had was about $15. Pretty decent price for the quality of the food. 

Unlike Singapore, the restaurants there use charcoal for the BBQ. The food tastes so much nicer even though the cuts may not be good becuase of the smoky flavours.

Besides meats on the conveyor belt, side dishes are also available in the buffet.



Grilling our meats.We sat there til about 3pm when I dragged my butt out for a walk around the neighbourhood to maximise our time before going for the match.

To be honest, there wasn't much in the neighbourhood even though I had read that there were cheap buys in the shopping area. But those shops along the streets were either expensive (not cheap enough) or just not interesting enough for me. Heh.

So we got done with walking around the neighbourhood pretty soon and took a breather in the hotel room before heading out to collect the match tickets.

At the stadium where a carnival was set up to entertain the fans. As we walked in, there were police officers stationed to take care of security. One of them stopped Dear and flashed out tickets from his pockets to ask Dear if he wants to buy! @_@

Lots of food and drinks vendors setting up shop as well. 





There was even a tze char stall being set up.

Game stalls were also available to add in the fun.


After collecting our tickets, we went to our section to get the best seats. We bought the free seating tickets. 

This enthusiastic fan was loud and passionate. He was the favourite of many photographers that day. 

Of course, we must help our travelling friend take a picture!

Match is starting!


Not-so-cute mascots to entertain the crowd.

Chelsea won the game 1-0. The rest of their Asia Tour games had more goals. : ( But nonethless, welcome back Mourinho~!

Or is that Barney? *o*

Anyways, we walked back to our hotel room after picking up some sushi and cup noodles on the way for a super late dinner. Lucky we had a late buffet lunch. Teehee. 

So we chilled and ate before we hit the sacks to get some rest. Day 1 was over just like that.

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