Friday, December 23, 2005
Okay I give you BEST price...
We stayed at the Asia Hotel, which is probably where half of all Singaporeans stay when going to Bangkok. Pretty good, really, because it's as convenient as you could wish! Reasonably central, and with a BST (the over-ground MRT) station at its 2nd floor. Our 1st day was really just getting a feel of things, and we trooped off to MBK for dinner and a little walkaround before getting prepared for the next day's activities.
Well our trip was primarily a shopping trip so obviously we spent much of our time at markets! Some were abysmal, some were pretty decent. And some weren't really markets but made for good shopping anyway, like Siam Square. I must say though, the Thais have the cutest and most obedient dogs! Tiny would really be put to shame lah. The shopkeepers have dogs around much of the time and they'd just hang around the area, not needing to be leashed or caged. And they're always really, really cute.
This lil' one though looked a little bit abused. Pink and purple and blue hair!? Poor fella was left on a tiny pedestal, too.
This one was ultra cute. For sale, but not that we could have bought him. I didn't take many other photos of the dogs around, but you'll have to take my word for it!
Apart from the markets, we also took time to visit some of the shopping centres, and none of them impressed as much as Siam Paragon did. The place is huge, more than twice the size of Ngee Ann City, and certainly much much grander. The shops in there are super posh, and there's an entire car showroom on the 2nd floor! Throw in the weird floor numbering system, and the showroom's effectively on the 4th floor (M, G, 1, 2)! And it wasn't no ordinary showroom, they dealt in supercars and superluxury cars. They had a mini-exhibition on the ground floor, and I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw this:
A friggin' Ferrari Enzo! Only 399 built and one of them was right in front of me!
Lloyd couldn't believe his eyes either.
A real thing of beauty.
There were other supercars and not-so-supercars like Lambos, and other Ferraris and Maseratis and Beemers, but I'll just post up a few photos I took. These totally own the cars you saw, Da!
Murcielago. Not in picture: Baby brother Gallardo.
Cool blue Maserati Coupe. There was a Quattroporte lurking somewhere around too.
Paragon also had really cool Xmas decorations, and there was this fountain outside which was pretty cool too!
Ok lah it's not that special, just a nice photo!
Ok, on to the markets!
One of the nice lanterny shops around in Patpong.
Random photo.
Poor Sue!
Among the markets, most definitely the best one we went to was Suan Lum Night Bazaar, which is just a little bit off Patpong, and across the road from Lumphini Park. It's a little more expensive than Chatuchak, but the place is clean, not as crowded, and waaaaay cooler.
On the way to Suan Lum, on the MRT.
Suan Lum.
Erm. A disturbing sight we saw outside the market.
Anyway, back to the market. It's full of cool stores, and though half of them you'd find anywhere in any other market, the other half of the stores are unique, totally cool, and set up by people with taste. So in other words, no mass produced rubbish for goods! The stores were also designed really tastefully, and it took lots of willpower not to empty my wallet there!
There also happened to be a display of cars fully modded and loaded to the brim with ICE (them audio-visual equipment)!
Just to add to the cool-factor of the place, there were not 1, but 2 beer gardens in the place. HUGE ones. One by Tiger, with the customary dual mega screens showing soccer, and the other one where all the other beers came together, with a live performance going on seemingly always.
The longest foosball table I've ever seen, in the Tiger beer garden.
And well, Bangkok wouldn't quite be complete without Patpong (so says the dirty old man), and we did pay a trip or three down to the place, though we didn't go watch them "ping pong banana" shows. We did however go and watch a 'clean' muay thai fight in one of the bars, The Pink Panther. Well yeah it was clean but other than the not-so-high-standard fight, it was really just another go-go-girl bar!
This guy was hilarious. Never seen anyone so on about boxing before. At first he was just yelling at the boxers and doing his own boxing actions ringside. But later on he couldn't take it and when one of the rounds was over he jumped into the ring, grabbed the bottle of water from the pseudo trainer and started massaging the boxer on his thighs and chest and giving him instructions.
Yup, a traditional Thai diet.
Before leaving the hotel.
The present I bought back for Tiny!
- - - - - - - - - -
I want to upload all the photos, but I can't decide which web client to use! I tire of webshots, any recommendations on what's good? I know of flickr and the lot, but which one's reaaaaaaaally good and easy to upload with?
And Pet, give me a call! I'm free nowadays, most of the time. Well after the post-Xmas party season anyways.
To the rest, I'm available to supper again.
To the IIC, I've got icewine!
Oh yeah, and I'll blog about Y Camp soon!
10:20 PM
