Monday 14 March 2016

Memorable trip to Bangkok and Pattaya





Bangkok Day1:
We took Jet star flight at 7.10am and reached Bangkok Suvarnabhumi airport by 9.30am BKK time. We like the Jet star flight...it is always good.

Visa on arrival - This is very easy and quick process. Fee is 1000 bhat per person. I had forgotten to carry my passport size photo which is required for visa on arrival. However, there is instant photo booth available (200 bhat for 6 photos).

Sim card : We purchased True sim card for 299 bhat, 1.5 gb data and 100 bhat calling time. This lasted us for our 6 days of stay. I used this to call India numbers.

Public taxi: We took public taxi (metered yellow green) from Level 1. There is no need for pre-paid taxi.They charged us 600 bhat from airport to our hotel Berkeley.

Hotel Berkeley:
This is quite nice and well maintained hotel. We stayed in the Luxury main tower on the 28th floor. Rooms are big, spacious, clean and well equipped with all necessary things. The bath had a big wooden window opening into bedroom. We found this little strange and uncomfortable. We closed all the windows throughout our stay. The buffet breakfast spread is very nice.

Berkeley Hotel - Deluxe Room
We checked into our hotel by 12.30pm. Before that we visited Platinum mall (5mins walking) and had breakfast at McD and visited nearby shrine area. Shrine was very beautiful. You can see such shrines in every street. The whole area has lots of small shops and street side shopping.

At around 2pm we took a Tuk tuk for "Chatuchak weekend market" for 150 bhat and it took 30mins. It is a very huge market with so many different streets full of goodies. You can do some bargaining too here.
After doing some souvenir shopping we took Tuk tuk for Siam Paragon mall for 200bhat. The tuk tuk dropped us at Siam centre instead. We had lunch at the food court (not good) and then went to Siam paragon. This was really classy and well decorated for Chinese new year. We had coffee here and took some nice photos near the fountain. We took return tuk tuk for 150 bhat to our hotel.

For dinner we went to nearby Indian restaurant Bombay Palace (10mins walking). The food was not that great..it was just ok. It serves both Indian veg and non veg food.
The entire street till our hotel had night market with streets full of small shops selling clothes, bags, souvenirs etc.

Bangkok Sight Seeing - Day2:
After having our yummy buffet breakfast at our hotel, we booked a full day taxi for 1200 bhats (11am to 7pm) from taxi counter just outside our hotel. Our taxi person gave us some discount as he asked us to visit some Gems shop on the way so that he will get free gasoline and we readily agreed :)
We first went to The Grand Palace. This palace and temple is really huge and has many beautiful temples and beautiful architecture. It was very very crowded since it was Chinese New Year day and too many tourists all around. You need to be appropriatley dressed to enter the temple. Both men and women ,if not wearing full length trousers or jeans, will have to rent out sarong type of cloth.  Entrance fee was 500 bhat per person. Since the queue for sarong/shawl was too long, we didnt visit inside the temple. We took a lot of snaps outside the temple area on the green beautiful parks and with chinese new year decoration.

Next we went to Wat Pho - temple of reclining Buddha - this was my fav one! It is very close to the Grand Palace. Entrance fee is 100 bhat per person. Queue was normal and moving fast. We had to take out shoes in a bag. This is such a BIG golden statue of reclining Buddha..its just awesome..we clicked a lottt of photos again :)
Wat Pho

After roaming around the remaining part of this beautiful temple we had delicious sweet Thai coconut water -very refreshing and roamed the street opp the temple. It has lots of shops and small eateries. We had thai food for lunch - Spicy chicken with cashew chilli paste with rice and Tom Yum curry ..which was ok.

From there 5 mins walking is the river ferry point which takes you to Wat Arun. Ferry charges are 2.5 bhat per person one way. Its only 5min ride. It gives you a quick feel of Chao Phraya river ride.
Wat Arun is also very bful and typical Thai temple.
Back from Wat Arun, our taxi took us to MBK mall. This is really very huge and meant for shoppers who want less expensive non-branded stuff. We had coffee and cheesecake in The coffee bean and tea leaf - good!

We were back to our hotel by 7pm.

Tip: You can take tuk tuk to go to Grand palace and then cover all the 3 temples on foot as they are very close by.

We went to Soi Cowboy street at around 9pm..we took a tuk tuk for 150 bhat. The street is very very small and we felt it lacked all the action that we saw in Phuket bangla road :(
We just took a quick 15min walk and crossed the road to  visit Terminal 21 mall. Its huge and very good. We checked some on-going cinemas at SF cinema but didn't opt for it.

From there we took the skytrain from Asok to Phoen Clang for 25baht per person.
It was a fun ride to experience their skytrain...very similar and user friendly as in Singapore!

We later took a taxi and went to Sanjha Chulha Indian restuarant at Indra regent. This serves really tasty and authentic Indian food..we just loved it! We walked back to our hotel visiting the night market on the way and buying some souvenirs :))

Travel to Pattaya - Day3
By morning 11am we took a taxi from our friend for 1500bhat for pattaya. It took us only 2hrs to reach Pattaya. It was such a amazing sight to enter Pattaya city with beautiful beach..it just looked sooo lovely.We checked into Holiday Inn at beach road.

Holiday Inn - The entrance and Reception looks very modern and classy, very well kept.
Even after repeated requests we were given room at 9th floor :(
But the room was very nice, clean, well kept and beach facing...so it was niceeee :)



 
After check-in, we roamed around the beach road and went to Shahi Indian restaurant for lunch. Food was nice and price was nominal although its a small place.
You have many Indian eateries on Beach road and lanes next to it but food is not great.

After lunch we roamed around different lanes and saw the venue for Alcazar show which was 15mins walking from our hotel. We also booked a private car for our next day for full day trip for 800 bhat(cheapest we could find!)


 
Alcazar show

In the evening, we had coffee at nearby restaurant on beach road..it was nice. Then we went for the Alcazar show. There was a lot of crowd from many tourist buses for this show. Show started at 8pm and we had got a good seating. We had booked tickets through hotels2thailand.com and got cheap rates.The show is a cabaret with different musical performances by ladyboys. The overall presentation, sets, costumes, performances were very remarkable! My partner didn't like it as there was no introduction of the overall concept for the audience.


We had dinner at Crown of India, near alcazar street. Food was good.
We then got into tuk tuk to walking street. Every journey is 10bhat per person.
We walked the entire Walking Street. It was the full of neon lit shops with scantily clad girls and guys asking customers to see some adult shows. We sat in I bar club for sometime and had soft drinks and enjoyed the time.


Pattaya Sight seeing Day 4:
After a nice n heavy buffet breakfast at Holiday inn...we took our private car for full day sight seeing trip.
We 1st halted at Pattaya view point...a hill from where we could see the entire beach area and view of pattaya. From there we visited Big Buddha...wat khao phra yai. It was a very beautiful and big idol of Buddha ...on a elevation of stairs wt golden dragons. It was very sunny and we had used umbrella.
Then we headed to Nong nooch garden. We bought ticket for garden+thai show+elephant show for 800 bhat per person.
Garden is very very big and beautiful wt carved green trees...animal structures...etc.French garden is very picturesque so please do visit that spot.

Thai cultural show was good. Elephant show was just ok and more for kids.
From there we went to Floating Market which was just 20mins drive. Entrance fee without boat ride was 200 bhat. We fidnt take the boat ride. Water is very muddy. Area has lotts of shops. We clicked lott of pictures.

We were very tired by end of floating markrt and came bk to hotel to relax.
In the evening we visited Central Festival mall in pattaya beach road. We took tuk tuk for 10bhat per person. We had coffee there in Black canyon coffee shop..it was nice. We roamed around that mall and had indian dinner at Shahi Indian resruarant.


 Pattaya Koh Larn Trip Day5:
We started at 9.30am and were picked up in taxi by our friend Mr. Vilat and taken near by for Koh Larn island tour ferry point.
We took the speed boat and there were 20 people. The speedboat first took us to Parasailing pier. This was just 5 mins away from pattaya beach. We were very excited as my partner was trying this for the first time and was little nervous too :)
The team there was very effective and quickly made us wear the belt with hooks, life jacket and set us one by one for our parasailing ride. It was a nice breezy ride high above ..being pulled by a speed boat.Thankfully our speed boat operator dint make us dip in the water..so we were back to pier all dry and happpyy:))
The next stop of our speed boat was at a small beach side island 10 mins away for snorkelling, jet ski and banana boat. We had not taken these options so we roamed around that beach and took some pics and did some swimming.


After this we were taken in speed boat to different pier for Under water Sea walking. We were trying this for the first time and were very excited. We were asked to climb down ladder at the edge of pier and dip ourselves till neck in the sea. Then our head was covered with a glass bowl helmet with attached oxygen pipe and we were pulled slowly into deep water by a scuba diver. This was a scary part for us. The scuba diver then passed us to another scuba diver who held us and took  us to the under water site where we were made to sit on the sand in kneel down position.

There were lotts of fishes swimming all around us and some coral rocks..we were being given bread by scuba divers to feed the fishes. There were so many scuba divers all around us that I really felt very safe. We were there for 10mins and enjoyed the entire experience. They also clicked our under water photos n video :) Even 10year old kids were doing sea walking and its not scary..so go for it for sure!

After this we were taken to the Koh Karn island. Lunch was provided by our travels group. They served plain fried rice with egg, Thai local fish fry, Oyster in shells, fish cutlets, thai veg curry. The island was very crowded and little congested with lots of shacks. The beach was good and clean and we were in the beach for almost an hour. We returned back by 4pm to pattaya and were given free CD of photos/video by our travel group (this is included in tour price).
In the evening we had delicious Thai dinner at Gullivers on beach road and then watched late night show of "The Revenant" at SF cinema in Central Festival mall.

Return to BKK & SG - Day6:
This was a relax and back to Bangkok day. Had a nice, relaxed, long breakfast at our hotel, checked out by 12pm and deposited our luggage in the hotel cloak room. We then relaxed at the hotel pool side, roamed around at beach road, had thai lunch at Red Steps and were back to hotel by 4pm. We took taxi from our friend for 900 bhat till Bangkok airport.
All in all one more enjoyable and adventurous trip ticked 'completed' in our holiday list :))


Tips & Help Pointers:
  • Carry 3 passport sized photos per person
  • Ensure that all the travellers have travel insurance policy
  • Check weather forecast before you start your journey
  • You can take tuk tuk to go to Grand palace (Pattaya) and then cover all the 3 temples (Wat Pho and Wat Arun) on foot as they are very close by.
  • For visit to Grand palace, carry your own shawl/wrap skirt if you are wearing shorts, so that you can skip the queue for collecting shawl
  • While at Bangkok, you can contact Mr. Hong (Bangkok mobile: 0870001799) for all your day tours. Mr Hong is a sincere, non-fussy guy.
  • While at Pattaya, Contact Mr. Vilat at local Pattaya number (0854335744). He is the nicest travel agent and honest one too. You can contact him for all the day tours to local places of interest, island tours and taxi service to return to Bangkok. He will give you the most economical packages of all. His agency name is "V V Services" and its address is: 436/1, Moo 9 beach road, North Pattaya Banglamung, Chonburi 20150.