Showing posts with label hotel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hotel. Show all posts

Saturday, January 16, 2016

Bangkok 2016

Flying out of the country again, just a day into the second week of the new year. I always plan my holidays way ahead of the actual travelling period, but this time, it was on the spur of the moment. He bought the tickets and I booked the accommodation just 2 weeks before. It's something out of the ordinary and I don't think I can do this last-minute thing without getting stressed out in the process. 

But well, yes, it's time for me to venture out to Bangkok with my boyfriend. He has a work thing the week after in Bangkok, so it's good that we're spending some time together first. 



I finally adorned (yeah just let me use this word lah, my skin is in a terrible state now) my face with this pair of shades from Cotton On. Got it for only S$4 during an online sale a long time ago! Whilst digging up this pair, I realised there were many other pairs that were stuck in shades box and never made their way out of my house. I think that's reminiscent of many other such "boxes" in my room. For example, my nailpolish box - I don't even wear nailpolish anymore! I need to start up my nailpolish engine man. How about my exploding wardrobe? I have tried to put aside some items that I want to sell on Carousell, but that's where they have been all this while - on the side. Bah what's wrong with me??

Okay, I will take photos and sell some on Carousell after this post!!

I think the shades looks good on me, no? A good dosage of mei tu xiu xiu was also used to get this photo looking good. What to do~


I bought myself a giant purple donut/doughnut (whichever's your party) cushion. It was S$14 and expensive by Bangkok's standards, but hey it has been very functional, especially when I'm trying to watch Netflix on my phone. So yes to a good buy!


In all the times I've been to Bangkok, I've never dared to eat at the zhi-char stalls by the roadside near Central World. Call me pretentious, but I didn't want to risk a diarrhea on the FIRST night of my vacation. Also, every time I go back to Indonesia and turn into a glutton, I always get tummy problems. I don't blame the food from the roadside stalls, I blame the rabbit food diet that I force myself into in Singapore, making my digestive organs pompous and clean-freaks.

But when Kengyang told me to have dinner there, I just went, "okay, let's go". My brain works strangely sometimes.

He took this photo of me. Very nice right?


And to return the favour, I took this blurry photo of him. I feel very bad, even till now. Taking blurry photos is a no-no and a huge sin in my books and I actually committed the sin. ZZZ.

Luckily he's okay with it. I chose a great great man. :')


Verdict: DAMN SCRUMPTIOUS. Servings were huge and we couldn't finish the tom yum soup. I paid for this dinner (I think it was 700 baht, that's almost 30 dollars!) and I think the girl added some extra bahts into the bill. But whatever lah, the food was good so I was okay with paying a little bit more that stated in the menu.


We lunched at Platinum Mall's food court and it was okay. Good enough to fill our hungry tummies.


This bowl of beef noodle though. It was fire in a bowl. I thought I could eat spicy stuff. I thought wrong. This was just too much. Kengyang didn't know that the actual broth was already freaking spicy, so he added another heap of dried seasoned chilli. Fireworks!



Off to Chatuchak we go! We also went to Union Mall for a good hour (it was one MRT stop away from Chatuchak Park MRT station). I'm officially way too old for these places. I only bought 2 bags for myself. That's all. I should be happy because I didn't spend much, but I wasn't happy because I was there to spend some moolah!

Kengyang had a smashing time though. I think this shopping trip was more fruitful for him. He even got himself a damn good pair of leather Onitsukas! Triple grade A replica of course, but for 750baht?? Great buy indeed and he looked good in them.

I didn't have any luck with footwear though. Not even a pair of slippers to replace my dying Rubi ones.


At least I got to eat my coconut ice cream!

This was also the day I experienced the mighty drying powers of roaccutane. I had layers of concealer and powder on my face, but when I was back in the hotel room (a good 11-12 hours later), I was not oily AT ALL. My gosh.

I'm going to write another post regarding my accutane update when I hit the one-month mark. It's day 16 today and so far the initial breakouts have slowed down and my face is slowly turning into a desert. Flaky skin galore! Not complaining though~


Dinner was at Somtam Nua and it was a great experience, as always. This was my third time dining here and the standard has always been very up there. I hope that persists!




Can you believe that I've never been to the Victory Monument?

So I went!

But that was more of a convenient stopover because the goal was to find this boat noodles shop near the Victory Monument.


We found it and we had SO MANY BOWLS of tiny servings of noodles and fried stuff.


Each bowl was only 12baht, and according to Kengyang, he could finish one bowl in one gulp, so no need to feel guilty about the next photo.

Okay.


What do you do after eating so much noodles?

You eat some more!!

We wanted to just walk around Siam, but I had a sudden recollection that there was an After You cafe in one of the Siam shopping malls, and yeah we ate again. But this was dessert, and you know the thing people say about having separate stomach for desserts? It's a fact.



My boyfriend with a pikachu visor they handed out at the mall's entrance.

Apparently, a Thai cable channel is going to broadcast the latest season of pokemon soon? Or something like that lah, I'm always misinformed about such things.


We went to the train night market on the last night!

This was a funny story.

The group that opened the original train night market opened another branch nearer to the city centre. but I read online that it was a smaller one. So, naturally I wanted to go to the larger one and I've been there before and I liked it. I asked the hotel frontdesk about the taxi situation in getting us to the further, original market, and she said no taxis would start their meter for that and they would quote at least 300 baht because it was so far away.

I was disappointed but we decided to go ahead with our plans. So, we got a taxi just outside of Pratunam market and the taxi driver quoted us 150 baht. Wow? We were pleasantly surprised and got on the taxi.

The taxi driver drove for a good 10-12 minutes and then stopped by the roadside and said we have reached. Both Kengyang and I stared at each other and we thought of the same thing - we have been conned. Some more this taxi driver so aggressive one. When I asked him if this is the train night market location, he kept saying yes and after that he told me very fiercely to get out and that he would show me the way. I got scared already lah, so I just got out and followed him.

Actually, he did bring us to the train night market, but it was the newer branch. LOL.

And to be honest, I really did enjoy my time there! The atmosphere was amazing and the shopping was great too. So, it turned out to be a great night.

Sorry taxi uncle for doubting you!







Getting back to the hotel was also a problem. No taxi wants to go to the Pratunam area for less than 200baht. ZZZ.

A taxi pulled up and it was a woman driver. I told Kengyang that this taxi confirm will bring us back to Pratunam, and I was right. She even started her meter! What a great lady.

Was that a sexist paragraph? Hmmmmm. But she was a really nice lady. She chatted with us (mostly with Kengyang lah because I was really tired and dozing off) and showed us a photo of her son.

That was the end of our vacation. The next day, we headed out to Kengyang's business hotel and then I left for Singapore. Sad face emoji.


Last meal in Bangkok! It was in a cafe near the hotel (called "Buttercup" I think) and wow the food was good. The toast dessert was surprisingly delicious - on par with After You!



For those who are looking for an affordable boutique hotel in Bangkok, you can try Budacco Hotel. We stayed there for 3 nights and we loved it. Not a lush hotel, but the room had everything that we needed and it was very clean. The service was top-notch too!

A great trip with my pikachu-loving boyfriend. Till the next one! :)

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Cosmopolitan Hotel, Hong Kong

For my extremely swift 3D2N work trip in Hong Kong, my colleague and I stayed in Cosmopolitan Hotel, which is located in the Wan Chai area. 

It's certainly an above average hotel with quite exquisite pre-stay service. After you make your reservation, the hotel will send you an email on the weather conditions during your stay and some suggestions on how you can make your Hong Kong trip more fruitful. Direction from the airport to the hotel was also given and they even provided us with the choice of using a hotel shuttle bus from the airport. 

My colleague and I used the airport express to Hong Kong station (24 minutes only!) and we took a taxi to the hotel. On the way back to the airport, we took the hotel shuttle bus to Hong Kong station and took the airport express again. 

The hotel room itself was magnificent. Both our rooms got upgraded and we had the breathtaking city view. Before checking-in, it's worth asking for either a "city-view" room or a "racecourse-view" room, because if you're unfortunate (or fortunate if you like those kinds of things), you will get assigned a room facing the cemetery. Don't get me wrong, the cemetery itself is majestic and if you have no problem with the superstitious stuff, then all's good for you! However, I'm a coward (excessive horror movie intake) and I was very relieved when we had the city-view rooms. 

It was a very comfortable 2 nights and the wifi is really fast!! :D That's the most important factor right? 

Photos!!

This was outside every room. It's a hotel located opposite the Happy Valley Racecourse so this decor is very appropriate.

The huge king-size bed!

I'm too short to be able to each the other end of the bed diagonally.

The view outside my room!

Morning view.


Cosmopolitan Hotel
 387-397 Queen's Road East
Wan Chai, Hong Kong
Tel : +852 3552 1111
Email : generalmanager@cosmopolitanhotel.com.hk

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Staycation at Studio M Hotel (30th Monthsary + Valentine's + Mr Chung's Birthday)

I'm back! I know, it's silly of me to abandon my blog when I'm feeling lost, but sometimes not writing anything or not finding ideas to write about takes some burden off my stressed mind. 

The main reason why I'm so ... muddled and in disarray is because my soul mate is leaving my side for a good 6 months. In the past, I used to scoff at girls who said they didn't know what to do when their partners were overseas for student exchange or other programmes that separated both of them for a long period of time. But now that it's happening to me, I start to get it. 

Kengyang is frankly the only person who can tolerate my ridiculous outrages and listen to me crying like a siao char bo on the phone. 

How now? I need to distract myself with activities and MORE BLOG POSTS. 

Friends have been telling me that 6 months will pass extremely quickly. I know lah, but currently I talk to him almost every single day?! SO HOW TO TAHAN 6 MONTHS.

Ok. Need to stop whining. #dealwithit moment. 

Anyway, last Saturday was our 30th month together. We went to Food For Thought for a good brunch and after that proceeded to Studio M for a VERY comfortable 2-day-1-night staycation. Kengyang's birthday is on the 27th and he will be in Shanghai by then, so last Saturday was a triple-combo celebration - 30th month, Valentine's and his 24th birthday! 

Food For Thought is mega awesome, so I don't have to go into details. PHOTOS. 

My MUST-ORDER every time I dine at FFT - Scrambled eggs and garlic mushrooms. 

Kengyang ordered the Trio of Sliders. It was ok lor, but quite expensive ah. S$5 for one mini burger. O.o 

Of course must order the pancakes also. Mixed Berries Pancakes was DIVINE. 

Studio M Hotel was amazing. Very attentive and friendly staff. We arrived at the hotel at around 3pm and there was a long queue for checking in. However, the queue was cleared quite quickly because they opened a lot of counters for check-in and they even had staff to direct us to the counters (sometimes people don't pay attention and they don't proceed to the counter even though it's their turn, so may clog up the line). We only queued for maybe 5-10 minutes?

I still remember the name of the staff who helped us with our check-in. Hi Francis!! He was very professional and extremely quick in the check-in process. Confirmation and payment were done within 5 minutes and we were then directed to our room. Oh! We were also upgraded to Executive Loft. Yay, thanks Francis! :)



All rooms in Studio M Hotel are duplex style studios (two floors) and the main highlight of the hotel is the WINDOWS.

Being in Executive Loft means getting assigned a corner room (some very pantang and hate corner rooms, but trust me in Studio M Hotel, you WANT to get a corner room), and you have full-height bay front windows. It's quite an experience!

Our bed was on the second floor and it was a really comfortable bed. Nothing beats Glow Hotel Bangkok's beds though haha.



Sneak preview of the amazing windows.


The only downside of Studio M Hotel is how minuscule the toilet was? It's a huge negative point for me, but the windows made everything better, so okay lor.

They don't provide toothbrushes/toothpaste/combs/shower caps etc as well. Or maybe we didn't search hard enough. HAHA.


We went out for dinner and when we came back we had other complimentary snacks (not in picture). Thanks Studio M Hotel!

We bought McDonald's and potato chips as well, so we were snacking like pigs.


One other negative point - we were only given one bathrobe? Play scissors paper stone and decide who wear meh? Luckily we didn't really mind, so we just kept quiet about it then.


WINDOWS! Sadly we were on the 3rd floor, so we couldn't really see the skyline.

What I noticed was that the neighbourhood Studio M Hotel was located in was really quiet and ... aristocratic (LOL)? Super atas and super expensive with lots of branded cars around. It's really like you're overseas because I've never seen Singapore so quiet and empty before.


The windows are really stellar. Tiny toilets? NEVERMIND, THEY HAVE GIGANTIC WINDOWS!


The swimming pool.





Most comfortable sofa EVER. 
We walked all the way to Liang Court for dinner and we tried Pecori Japanese Egg Restaurant. It was an okay meal, but we should have tried the curry rice!!



Studio M Hotel also provided complimentary breakfast and I was surprised that they had a good variety of breakfast items.

The scrambled eggs - TO DIE FOR.




In all I spent slightly over S$220 (taxes all included) for a 2-day-1-night stay at Studio M Hotel, with a free upgrade to Executive Loft. For a triple celebration, it's quite worth it. The toilet was a big disappointment, but all is forgiven because of the 3-metre height bay windows.

No. 3 Nanson Road
Singapore, 238910
Singapore
T. +65 6808 8888
F. +65 6808 8899
Reservation email: Reservations.SMH@millenniumhotels.com
Contact them at: http://www.millenniumhotels.com.sg/studiomhotelsingapore/utilities/contact-us.html
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Have a great week guys! More beauty reviews coming up soon!!