Bangkok Holiday Trip (June 2017) - Day 1 of 6

***The following is the account of the first-person-view from Edwin Ang.***

Woke up at 8am to do some final packing. Promptly left house at 9am. Was gonna go and change some more SGD to THB but the money changers were out of stock? So it's fate; I'm going with 7000 baht. Hope I can survive!!!

Reached Changi Airport T1 at 11am because I took my own sweet time. Sat down at the viewing gallery and devoured a bag of chips so I wouldn't eat so much for lunch. Then Fenhui and John arrived.

We went to T2 to eat cos T1 got nothing. I ate mee siam for lunch. Then Yutong arrived. We promptly checked in our luggage at 1pm before making our way in. Boarding time was 2pm and we were on time.

The flight was quite smooth. Because we took AirAsia, which is a budget airline, there was no in flight entertainment, no in flight meals, no everything. Ok, it's a 2 hours flight so tahan abit.

Reached DMK airport at 4pm Bangkok time (Bangkok is 1 hour behind Singapore). Everything from here on will be in Bangkok time and currency. The airport is huge mess. The immigration queue was super duper long, as expected from the oldest airport in Bangkok.

We almost got scammed by a taxi company that offers to take us to the main city for 700 baht. We were smart enough to walk further on and found a ride that costed us 420 baht (50 baht Airport charge and 70 baht toll fee). The taxi ride from DMK airport to Bangkok main city should cost 300 baht.

The Budacco hotel was really nice. Hot towels and drinks were served upon arrival. We put down our luggage and quickly regrouped to find food. We managed to grab a few small bites near our hotel, which is great because it's street food. Then we visited nearby malls to find a cinema but couldn't find one.

Small bites on the streets. Oily but dirt cheap!!!

It was getting late and we still haven't eaten. I don't know why, but we hopped onto a Tuk Tuk which led us to some weird ulu seafood restuarant. We got scammed. That ride was only 30 baht so it was still okay. Sadly, every Tuk Tuk that offered a ride back to the same starting point will cost at least 100 baht. Stupid scammers.

So we walked back instead. We somehow got lost in the darkness and don't even know where we are heading. So I finally switched on my Google Maps and led the way back to Pratunam (Pratunam is the name of the district Budacco hotel is in).

Along the way, there was a night market called Talad Neon Night Market, a few blocks beside our district. We ate dinner there. Dinner was awful because the roasted pork I ordered was largely raw. After dinner, we checked out the market. I bought some scarfs for my family and Yutong bought a few toy cars for her little brother.

We finally reached our district and decided to Google a cinema. Surprisingly there was one right next to our district (CentralWorld SFV Cinema). And it is a world class cinema too. We booked Transformers 5 at the 10pm slot. Tickets were at 220 baht each. Went to the supermarket to stock up some water and beer. The beer is amazingly cheap. Change beer 660ml costs 50 baht, which is SGD$2. Wow.

We also bought 6 bottles of 1.5L water for our own replenishment needs. Then we went to watch the movie. The pissing off part is, we wait 1 hour till 11pm for the movie to start. There were so many ads that we were about to rage quit. TF5 was awesome. The amount of comedy and screen play was excellent. The movie ended at 2am. 2 freaking am.

We somehow exited from the main mall into the car park below and got lost again. The main gates were closed so we had to use the car park to get out. The underground car park is so lousy that we couldn't find our way out. After trying for a bit, we found the exit. We then slowly walked back to our hotel, exhausted and beat.

What a great start to the trip!

Click here for Day 2!