We’ve always been game to try out street food (please choose wisely!). So on our second night in Bangkok, we chanced upon a hidden alley near our hotel (a really dodgey area in Pratunam) that has a whole row of stalls selling street food.

So we decided to get a bit of everything to bring back to the hotel for an indoor picnic.

Some shots from the alley:

Pad thai, being stir fried, right there and then. I could never resist a good pad thai, can you?

This was at a stall that was selling tom yam. You can choose if you want shrimp, squid and/or fish in your tom yam in whatever combination you want. I went for squid and shrimp!

Freshly made tom yam bubbling away…

The uncle who was manning this stall was a friendly person who sings and chats and take photos with his customers. It was entertaining to watch him prepare your food.

We also bought mango salad (an absolute must!), chicken, oyster omelette and fried rice from the same street. This was our spread for the evening:

And this amounted to… SGD11. This is why I will be obese if I stay in Thailand for too long. Now that I think about it, the pad thai was bought on a separate evening (as it’s not in the above photo).

One drink that we saw a lot on the streets for the 4 days we were there were these bottled orange drinks. It was the green peeled oranges. We finally caved in to it on our last day in Bangkok. And let’s just say one bottle wasn’t enough.

I’ve already told my mum to buy these green oranges if she sees them anywhere, best orange juice ever.

So here comes the part that all of you have been waiting for – the insect eating part! We went to Khao San Road specifically just to look for insects (talk about courting trouble). We walked all over Khao San but didn’t see a single insect stall. But just as we were going to give up and head back to the hotel (almost giving out a sigh of relieve to have escaped it), there it was in front of us.

Sorry have to use a screengrab from the bangkok montage video for this one:

The aunty manning this store didn’t even give us a chance to choose what we want. We pointed asking her what’s this? what’s that? and she scooped them all.

But what we actually asked for were crickets and grasshoppers. Why grasshoppers? I don’t know, they looked harmless. So this was our bag of insects.

Our bag of insects:

And here, my friends is the video of me eating ONE cricket. Please ignore the tired face and disheveled hair. I’ve been walking and shopping so much for three days by this time. Beyond exhausted, I’m only human. Ok here goes:

Sorry about the background noise from the TV, totally forgot to turn it off in our anxiety. Like I said in the video, the cricket is actually not too bad. Would have gone for a grasshopper but somehow when I reach into the bag to want to grab a grasshopper, I saw their dead faces staring at me and I just stopped, I couldn’t.

But a cricket was enough adventure for a day anyway!

This plate of spicy seafood noodles was my first meal in Bangkok, at Platinum Mall’s food court. Between me and FP, our lunch amounted to a total of SGD3.50. Amazing. And these noodles were delicious and true to its word – it’s incredibly spicy.

We were really curious when we saw these and asked what they are. They are, sweetened (to the max) egg white in a crispy pancake topped with coconut flakes. Of course we tried it. And while it was so very yummy, it was also very, very sweet. So one is enough.

Been craving for coconut ice cream since I last had it in Phuket last October, so I was so excited when I saw a stall in Chatuchak selling it. This time, the ice cream is served in a coconut shell and had toppings! This was mine with pineapples on it. FP’s coconut ice cream had glutinous rice and atap seeds. Freaking glorious, if I should say so myself.

I’ve never had these before till this trip. So obviously, the sight of these colourful lovelies that look like toy miniatures brightened up my day. I am attracted to bright and colourful things you see. Got like 10 of them and snacked on them while shopping, yummy! Oh they are called “Royal Fruit” by the way.

This is a heart attack waiting to happen. Just because they are mini sized doesn’t mean they have lesser cholesterol. One quail egg has the same cholesterol of a normal sized egg. But hey you only live once (YOLO ya’ll!), lol.

We had these eggs together with this plate of sticky mango rice:

Precisely why I cannot live in Bangkok if I want to stay petite.

So somewhere in the middle of Chatuchak, we came across this small eatery that sells extremely yummy pad thai. So we ordered one each, not knowing that they are huge servings (they are served on trays, not plates – 2 people can share one plate!). The photo below does not do justice to the size of the plate (tray), but it looks so yummy doesn’t it?

Each of us also ordered our usual of thai milk tea. Again, we didn’t know it was going to be a gigantic serving of milk tea. Get this – it came in FISHBOWL. So each of us had to finish a FISHBOWL worth of milk tea. Never had that much milk tea in a single seating in my life. Goodness.

While we are on the subject of milk tea, I was told (prior to the trip) to look out for this bubble tea chain called Dakasi. Spotted it on our first day in Bangkok, and of course tried it. It was so delicious.

We also tried a strawberry pudding drink, that tasted like strawberry pocky. What’s not to like?!

At one of the malls we were at (I think it was Siam Paragon), we chanced upon these drinks that had herbal jelly in them.

We had the milk tea, and the ovaltine ones respectively. Of course it was good, but just one complaint about drinks in Bangkok – there’s always too much ice in them.

Speaking of desserts, we also had Ice Monster on one of the days because our legs were begging for mercy from all the shopping. It’s just fruits of your choice with shaved ice and condensed milk. Very nice on warm day (and Bangkok is very, very warm). But I also like how pretty it is in this photo:

One more dessert photo before I end this. These ice lollys were spotted at Chatuchak market. There were other flavours but we chose lime, because it was the most thirst quenching – I guess (or we just needed something cold because it was so hot). It was very refreshing but melted too fast. But given the heat on that day, I don’t blame the lolly.

Okay, that’s it for now. This post is getting too long! Tonight I’ll post part 2 of it – all about street food!

Been wanting to try out Epicurious and last weekend we finally did. Upon arrival (close to 1 pm), we asked if the all-day breakfast was still available – and were told yes, everything is available except the pancakes and eggs benedict.

Alrighty then.

So we looked through the menu and decided on these:

This was my Ratatouille Omelette, which is basically two omelettes with vegetable (I think it was zucchini and tomatoes) filling with some kind of sauce, with baked potatoes (hidden under the slices of bread and a slice of water melon on the side.

It was a really random choice. I only chose it because of the word “Ratatouille” – I really loved that movie. That being said, it was just okay. Looks pretty, such a safe choice for a breakfast meal. I should have gone with my instinct and ordered the Vietnamese pasta (but who has pasta at an all-day breakfast restaurant?!)

This was boyfriend’s Full Monty breakfast, which according to him was really filling and absolutely yummy. It looks yummy alright. This came with an orange juice and a coffee/tea. We replaced the coffee/tea with another OJ, so that I’d have one too.

Freshly squeezed.

Oh and one more thing, we ordered this!

It’s the choco-nana sandwich! It’s basically toast with Nutella, with bananas, strawberries and powdered sugar to top it all off. I really love pretty looking food, and this was as delicious as it looks (though there’s no way you can go wrong with Nutella)

In conclusion

It was nice having a lovely meal outdoors by the river, looking at families walking by, kids running around, pets being walked. Very therapeutic way to spend a Sunday afternoon. We didn’t have to wait long to be seated, though the food took awhile to be ready (and we were so starving because we didn’t even have breakfast). All in all, the restaurant had a nice vibe to it and I’ll definitely come back to try the rest of the menu!

The address for the Quayside outlet is:

#01-02 The Quayside, Robertson Quay
Tel: 6734-7720

The full breakfast menu is available on Weekends from 9 am onwards (until they run out), and during the work week, the all-day breakfast is made available during lunch (perfect for a brunch meeting!)

I give this..

No coverage on the expo itself because my main aim was to get there, collect the race packs and leave (mainly because while I occasionally run, I don’t swim and certainly do NOT cycle).

So here are the contents of the race pack!

Let’s go through them part by part. Starting with the race bib:

I especially like my bib because as you can see, I chose “shanobyl” as the name to be displayed. I’m such a sucker for cheap thrills, but if you don’t make things special for yourself, nobody will.

Then there’s of course the race top.

See the light bulb sticker on the top? It says it’s reflective. No idea what this means. Anyone?

Then there are of course product samples, mainly from Loreal and Garnier. Just one problem, these samples are for MEN. Not sure if this was a human error, or did they give all participants – male and female – the same samples.

The Electrotabs thing in the silver packet is a dissolvable tablet for energy. You know, like those vitamins you dissolve in water.

There are also sports vouchers. I’ll probably give this away to someone who needs them, because I normally get my stuff from Nike/Adidas.

And finally brochures and pamphlets for very fit people. I mean, with the exception of the Lasik flyer, the rest of the pamphlets will only be relevant to people who are very fit and workout often.

I just wish they had a towel in the race pack though, because that would be so useful during the run. But I’m just saying, because I’ll probably bring along the pink one from the Nike Run race pack.

So now I have exactly two weeks to prep for the run. No idea how I’m gonna get through the run, but I’m sure I’ll survive.

See you at the run!

We didn’t choose this hotel. It was part of a travel deal for Bangkok that we bought and we had no choice but to go along with it. If you’ve read my other hotel reviews, you’d know this is something we would not have chosen in a million years.

Ok moving on with this post, so here we are in a dodgy street in Bangkok – and there’s our hotel.

We arrived at the hotel late morning, and not surprisingly our room wasn’t ready. So we were told to wait in the waiting area for 30 minutes. Of course being a digital media addict with no access to the internet all morning, I just had to ask for the lobby wifi password. I remembered checking on Agoda that wireless and LAN connection in rooms are chargeable, but they didnt say anything about public areas.

Ladies and gents, it’s chargeable too. By the hour. Pfft.

So we waited and waited for 30 minutes, browsing Japanese fashion magazines for men and getting bored real fast (both of us have short attention span)

And then we were told there’s a room available, but there’s no windows – and if we’d like to take a look. If we don’t like it, there’s another room coming up in 10 minutes (with windows). Perhaps because we just needed something to do, we went to take a look at the windowless room. It was mightily depressing and so we turned it down, went down to the lobby and waited out another 10 minutes.

Are you getting the feeling that I’m showing all the pleasant photos of the lobby to delay showing photos of the room itself? It’s okay, you’re right. Plus I did think the lobby was quite presentable. White is so my colour. The above photo was the breakfast area.

And then our room was finally ready. I always hate putting up ugly things, but we need to do this review. So here we go.

First of all, even though there’s a window, there’s no view. Second of all, for some reason this room with the window is bigger and less cramped than the windowless one earlier. But it was still depressing. Never have we wanted to get out of a hotel room so badly (this was a record breaker, because we’d normally faun and awe and take 30 minutes taking photos of a beautiful room). But this is what it is.

The sink is outside the bathroom. And this was practically the first thing we saw when we came in. Mood killer, to be honest.

They did however provide toiletries, which was quite a surprise but before you get too happy – please bring your own toothpaste. Funny how there’s a toothbrush, shampoo, shower gel but no toothpaste!

The bed was probably the most depressing part of the room. It’s actually made up of 2 beds put together, and at the very front of the bed it was really hard and felt odd where the two beds meet. It wasn’t exactly a comfortable bed (as you can imagine) and while there’s big water marks on the entire left wall from the bed (near the phone), on our last night there, the aircon leaked and wet one side of the bed!

Huff, huff.

Well the bed faces the dressing table and a tv that was on the wall. Sorry, really wasn’t in the mood to take photos. And one more thing, look what I found on the dresser!

Never have I been in a hotel room that has condoms in it, and they are not FREE either. Oh god, the room couldn’t feel anymore sleazy than it did at that moment. I think that was the last straw in pushing us out of the room and into the madness of shopping.

I think this would be our last time purchasing a travel deal. We enjoy the process of choosing hotels, seriously. I think that’s our favourite part of planning a holiday. And though we did have a really good time in Bangkok and actually made the best of the room, somewhere in the back of our minds, we know we could have gotten a decent hotel at a decent price – if we had the choice.

But if you are the sort that goes for value and don’t bother about aesthetics, this hotel is for you. Breakfast is provided, not fantastic but still something. You can check out more details on this hotel here.

My Hotel Address:
70,70/1-4 soi Petchburi
15 Petchburi RD.
Phayathai, Pratunam, Bangkok,
Thailand 10400