After P's mishap in the toilet, I was totally awakened and I washed up, updated my blog till 5am. Therefore, we really slept in today and had a really late start, even later than the previous day, think we were really out of our room only at 1pm+. We stopped at one of the stalls outside our hotel and tried our first street food, the fried chicken wing! It is quite yummy though not exceptional, maybe other stalls around Bangkok have tastier chicken wings as it is always recommended on blogs.
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| Tasty fried chicken wing |
The best thing about staying near Asok BTS is that it's connected to the Sukhumvit MRT station (they call it subway here and the BTS is above ground while MRT is underground) and it is the most convenient when we travel to Chatuchak Weekend market. Chatuchak is a must-go whenever I am in Bangkok, the first time being in 2002. And for my previous trips there, I alighted at the Mo Chit BTS, went through the very crowded overhead bridge and squeezed through the crowd, feeling quite tired before I even reach Chatuchak. The plus point about using the MRT was that it stopped right in the middle of the weekend market at Kamphaeng Phet and we found the famous coconut ice cream immediately!
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| Chatuchak, here we come! |
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| The original coconut ice cream |
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| Yum yum! |
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| Choices for toppings |
I read from many blog posts that the coconut ice cream is one of the stuff we have to try at Chatuchak, and after leaving the stall later, we saw that many other stalls are also selling the same thing. So how did we know that we were at the right stall? There was a long queue (about 5min queueing time and 6-8 people in front) and there is a good variety of toppings to choose from. The stall was also bigger (with about 5 staff) and that's the tell-tale sign that they have good business every weekend. The coconut ice cream basically consist of half a husk of a young coconut with the meat already scraped out, topped with coconut ice cream, each customer can also choose 3 toppings to go with it. They do not waste the coconut water, they actually bottled it and sell it as well. While we were queueing, they also offer us a cup of the coconut water for tasting, nice! The three toppings I choose was the yellow seeds of the green bean (like tau suan), corn and nata de coco. The coconut ice cream was really good and we were happy to start our weekend trip at chatuchak with that. The stretch just outside the MRT station were full of food stalls so we were busy browsing the food stuff as we did not have breakfast or lunch yet. Next, we spotted the stick bbq stall and ordered some of those bacon and sausage stuff, I had one with bacon wrapped around enoki mushroom and it was really good.
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| These are really good |
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| Yummy but sinful |
The weather was quite hot at some point but I must say it is already better than the previous time when we came in March. We did not want to head straight into the different sections where the shops are all lined up in cramped space straightaway, as it will be warmer there. For a start, we merely walked on the main road dividing the area into different sections as that was the stretch where the food stalls were. I've always wanted to try sticky mango rice in Bangkok and I saw many street stalls selling that on the previous day, but I did not get as I was not hungry enough. At the row of cooked food/ zi char section, I came across this young lady making the sticky mango rice pack on the spot (it is mostly pre-packed) so I decided to get a small box from her. P also got a spiral potato chip thingy from the stall next to her so we sat down at one of the tables to finish up our snacks.
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| Potato chip thingy |
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| Sweet young lady selling the bkk specialty |
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| Finally tried mango sticky rice |
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| A small portion is enough for my craving |
After we were done, we were feeling quite full and ready to take a look at the stores inside. Both P and I were not really into shopping, so places like Bangkok appeal to many others who can go crazy shopping but for us, we were merely walking through and browsing the stuff they had. I used to be really into shopping at knock off places like these but these years, I just feel that I outgrown the phase of wearing cheap clothes and streetwear. It was also quite hot inside, occasionally we come across a store fitted with air-con but the rest were just filled with warm air. I always wonder how the shopkeepers can stay around in that condition. A Chatuchak experience is always one with sweaty faces and clothes, I get frustrated with the warm weather and my tired feet but it is part of the experience. There were also quite a number of massage service available, so some shoppers chose to get their rest at these places with cheap foot and back massage.
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| These shops are lined against this very old building |
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| Found my birthday mug but did not buy it |
We only wandered into the stores for less than hour, we walked through rows and rows of those cramped shops but nothing really appealed to us. I think we only went through a small fraction of the shops and we were walking down random aisles in haphazard manner, several times we turned up at the same places we had visited. After awhile, I had decided that I need a rest from all the walking, so we emerged into the main street outside again. We decided to look for a stall with the banana prata as we had yet to try the snack for this trip, we found the same lady and the same stall from which we bought the snack two years ago and we rested at her stall. P also went to get the pomegranate juice for me as I mentioned that I really want to try it, it is more expensive at Chatuchak (50 THB for a small bottle) but the juice was pure and slightly bitter as they did not add sweetener. The other juice stalls were also selling the orange juice at a higher price and the 20THB we had paid the previous night could only get us a small bottle. The banana prata is not as nice as the one we always had in Pratunum previously, I remember the previous time it also fell short of expectations but we had no choice as this is the only stall selling that in Chatuchak. After our short break, it was already 5pm and we felt that we were pretty much done, we decided to head back to hotel for a rest before dinner and our only loot from the weekend market was few magnets and two herbal compress thingy used for massage (much cheaper than the ones sold at tempat senang but probably not very durable).
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| A procession for rallying against human trafficking |
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| We visited the same stall two years ago |
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| The famous orange juice is more expensive here |
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| The only banana prata we had |
My only qualms about taking the MRT was the long queues for getting the tickets, there are only two ticket machines that break down really easily and two other ticket counters. We were in the snaking long queue when the other machine became 'out of service', the people in the queue dispersed with looks of exasperation on their face. Earlier on, similar incident happened at Sukhumvit station and I saw that the people maintained the queue while getting help, so I asked P to stay around as the machine seemed to be revived easily. True enough, the staff come and the machine was working again within minutes, P was second in line then and we got our tickets quickly. It was still worth the queueing as the station was only the second one on the MRT line so the train came pretty much empty and we got our seats easily.
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| Medinii dinner menu |
I took a nap after we got back to our hotel and woke up at 7pm. We had a booking for dinner at Medinii at 8pm, so I showered and woke P up when it was almost time. We've decided to go back to Medinii again as we had a really good experience during lunch the previous day, I was actually craving for the pasta again. The cost of the dinner was 999THB++ but we reckon it is still quite worth it as there is a main course included. When we reached the restaurant, it was already 8.40pm, but i realised again that booking was not really needed as the place was not full. We saw the friendly manager who came to talk to us during lunch and he gave us a choice of sitting by the window or a more private area with limited view. We chose the private area initially, but they have a big swinging seat there which was not really suitable for having dinner, so we requested to change to the window seat instead.
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| Lamb shank (too dark to see under candlelight) |
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| Squid ink aglio olio pasta |
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| Tequila and magarita |
We were quite disappointed when we wanted to check out the buffet line, thinking that it will be similar to lunch, but there was actually no buffet line for dinner. They still have unlimited pasta and pizza in a different menu, and even unlimited cocktail drinks that we can order, but there were no free flow cooked food, salad bar and dessert. We looked at the menu, P chose wagyu beef steak and I choose lamb shank for the main course, the quality of food was good so we felt slightly better after the initial disappointment. We also ordered one pasta each with the main course, and that was all we could eat. Honestly, the taste of the pasta and pizza was mediocre, so we decided to skip the pizza and just have our pasta. The night view of the city from our seat and the whole candlelit ambience of the restaurant was different from the daytime, therefore the overall experience was not too bad. I had two cocktails in total, I guess the price is considered not too bad for people who love to drink. Unfortunately, P does not drink so he could not take advantage of that. But for the real good deal we will still recommend people to go for the lunch buffet instead.
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| The view from our seat |
With our stomach filled, we ventured to Terminal 21 to catch a movie. It was almost 10.30pm and except for the cinema, most of the shops were closed. There were still many people streaming to the cinema level, we saw that there were two movies screening that could fit our timing, Fantastic 4 and Mission Impossible. We chose Fantastic 4 and went to look for our seat. The last row of seats in the cinema was huge and comfortable with big armrest, we could even lean back to recline the seats. I've heard reviews about the movie so I found the content quite okay, P was quite disappointed as the movie was considered boring for Marvel standard.
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| Nice cinema at Terminal 21 |
After the movie, we picked up some snacks from 7-11 and walked back to our hotel.
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