Showing posts with label accomodation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label accomodation. 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! :)

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

#FitrinaTravels: Bangkok 2014 - Airbnb Experience

I wanted to go back to GLOW Pratunam for this trip, but after browsing Airbnb, aiyah no harm trying, so after confirming with dorabanana, we booked an apartment for our Bangkok trip! 

To be really honest, I wasn't completely sure about booking this apartment. Really a bit scared things wouldn't look like the photos provided by the host. But wow, the apartment turned out to be amazing and it looked EXACTLY like the provided photos. 


The only downside is, the apartment was quite a distance away from the city centre. 12 BTS stations away from Siam. However, the journey took us less than 30 minutes and the Udom Suk BTS Station was a couple of minutes away from the condominium. So not that bad lah. But don't take taxi from Siam area though, most of the taxi drivers won't go by the meter and they will quote you high prices. We only took taxi home from Siam once and we were quoted 300baht (WHAT?!), but it was already quite late at night so we decided to just go ahead. 


A very comfortable studio - just the right size to accommodate two people. 

The check-in procedure was very smooth - the host's dad waited for us at the condo lobby and since we bought prepaid SIM cards, we were able to communicate with him through sms. According to the host, if you don't have a SIM card, you can contact him via LINE too! 

Almost everything was provided - hairdryer, plates, utensils, cups, cooking oil, travel guide, a lot of toilet paper, towels, DVD player, microwave, toiletries, etc. We only had to buy water and personal toiletries. 



The rooftop pool was INSANE. Super gorgeous. 



This was the view from our living room. 


Also, there was a night food market around our condominium and I found this stall that sold a really strangely delicious curry noodles. It's like a marriage of curry and mee siam. So sourish and shiok!



I'm missing the shiok noodles now. :( Aiyah can't wait to go back to Bangkok again. Till next time!!

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Hong Kong August 2014: Airbnb Experience

For my recent Hong Kong trip, I didn't want to stay in a typical hotel, so I opted for an Airbnb apartment. Actually, I was hoping that I could stay where the locals would stay - small studio rooms in high-rise apartment buildings. I found one that's extremely near 3 MTR stations and the decor looked nice on the Airbnb listing site, so I booked while crossing my fingers. 

Fortunately, the photos on the Airbnb site were a 100% match to what we saw in reality. I enjoyed my stay in the studio thoroughly and I'm now more confident in using Airbnb for my holidays! 

Here's the link to the studio that we stayed in for 4 nights: https://www.airbnb.com.sg/rooms/692723

How the studio looked like.
The sky bridge right in front of the apartment building. This sky bridge links to Austin MTR Exit B5 and Kowloon MTR. 
The best part about this studio is its location - it's very walkable from Kowloon MTR station which means you can simply take the Airport Express to Kowloon station and walk to the apartment building. Super convenient! It's also very near Austin MTR! 

The room was clean and basic necessities were provided. The air-con was damn strong so it was a blessing to us because the weather was super hot and humid when we visited. The only problem we had was the very cranky toilet flushing system. But aiyah no problem for me at all because of the engineer I was staying with. Got toilet flushing problems, send out the engineer boyfriend and no more problems liao. HAHA. But I have told the host about this problem; hopefully he will do something about it. 

My next Airbnb experience will be for my Bangkok trip with Lirong. The apartment that we shortlisted is freaking swanky. Got infinity pool some more. The best thing is, it's freaking cheap oh my gosh?! Airbnb HUAT AH! 

Have a great day ahead guys! :)

Friday, January 3, 2014

Touring Taiwan (December 2013) with Chan Brothers - Accommodation

It's only the 3rd day of 2014 and I'm already feeling miserable because of this terrible headache. So I thought to myself, let's blog to distract the excruciating pain? Great idea right?

This post is about all the 5 hotels that I stayed in during my trip to Taiwan. Yes, 7-day-6-night trip and FIVE hotels.

What do I think of the many hotels?

I DON'T LOVE IT. I can't really say I hate it because some of the hotels were really really excellent.

  • I have to pack my luggage every single morning. That will be alright if we had a later gathering time. Nope, our morning calls averaged at 645am. My goodness. Also, I'm not the type of person who can throw everything into the luggage and just pray that it will zip up. I need to fold/roll everything and fit them nicely, if not I will feel utterly miserable. So basically, I woke up 1 hour before the morning calls almost every morning and by the time I was on the bus, I was snoring away. 
  • I wasn't able to really appreciate the beauty of some hotels We were so excited about our own personal hot-spring in our hotel at Taitung, but since we reached the hotel late, we were only able to soak once/twice and then we just slept because we were so tired. I wished we had two nights in that beautiful hotel! 
  • Some hotels were freaking scary. One thing I hate about travelling is staying in a freaky hotel room. I'm born a Catholic and my mom always told me (more like snapped at me LOL) to ignore hotel superstitions. She can do it, BUT I CANNOT. Every single time I opened the door to a new hotel room, I will knock first. It has become a habit. Better safe than sorry right?? Anyway, some freaky stuff happened on the first night at Nantou - I couldn't fall asleep because of a really bad tummyache so I just closed my eyes and I prayed that the pain would go away. Then all of a sudden, I heard water droplets coming out of the tap in the toilet? "Tuk....tuk...tuk...tuk..tuk.." WTF I FREAKED OUT and just froze. I thought I was just imagining it all, so I just brushed it off. But the frequency got quicker and finally it stopped entirely. Then I decided to check what time it was (So stupid seriously). I grabbed my phone and as I pressed the home button, the clock turned from 259am to 3am. WTF. I immediately just turned to kengyang and prayed and PRAYED. So yes, freakish hotel rooms SUCK.
This is the first hotel that we stayed in. Our hotel room was very spacious and looked just like the photo provided on the website. We had a huge window too but lol, our view was the carpark and not Sun Moon Lake. SIAN.

1. Nantou Einhan Resorts

(Source: X)
We spent our second night in Kaohsiung and it was not a luxurious hotel. I"m guessing it's because we were staying in a city, instead of the suburbs, so the hotel rooms naturally were smaller and more cramped.

2. Kaohsiung Metropolitan Hotel 

(Source: X)
My favourite hotel of the lot. We had our own hot spring in the toilet and the room was HUMONGOUS. I really wished we had more nights in this beautiful hotel!

3. Taitung Royal Chihpen Spa


Our hotel room looked exactly like the photo provided on the website. AMAZING HOTEL!

(Source: X)
Our hotel in Hualien was also very comfortable and luxurious. The breakfast buffet was super delicious as well!!

4. Hualien Fullon Hotel

(Source: X)
We spent the last 2 nights in Taipei and I didn't really like the hotel that we stayed in. It was really cramped and the beds were tiny. I refused to sleep on one of the beds because it directly faced a mirror wtf. What kind of a hotel will do that?! It's hotel taboo! (The myth is your soul may get sucked into the mirror when you sleep and there's a possibility that your soul cannot get back into your body). I don't swear by hotel superstitions but it's really better safe than sorry lah. You know may have problem already, then you sleep on it for what right??

This hotel was really really old too and some of our drawers were damaged. BOO.

5. Taipei Fullerton East Hotel (changed from Taipei Imperial Hotel)

(Source: X)
So that's it! All the 5 hotels that I stayed in during my 7-day-6-night trip to Taiwan. I don't think I'll be joining a tour group for my future Taiwan trips. I'd rather stick to one/two hotels and explore each city more in a 7-day period. Or stay in an airbnb house! I love airbnb!!

My next trip will be from 27Feb to 2Mar for a company getaway. The location is still unknown though. The rumour is we're going to a Scandinavia country! YAY!

After that, I'll be going to Japan in August! I haven't really planned anything but I really want to spend summer in Japan! :) It's going to be blistering hot and freaking humid, but aiyoh, what's new when you live in Singapore?

Have a great Friday guys, YAY WEEKEND IS HERE! :)

Friday, November 1, 2013

Glow Pratunam Hotel, Bangkok

I'm back from Bangkok and the 5d4n trip was an awesome one. Great company, great hotel, great food, meh shopping (but whatever the food still rocks) and great taxi & tuktuk adventures.

For this trip, we booked 4 nights at Glow Pratunam Hotel via Expedia and it was the best decision we have ever made.

After this post, if you decide to stay at Glow too (I urge you to do so!! It's AMAZINGLY COMFORTABLE), book it either through Expedia or the website itself:

Expedia: http://www.expedia.com.sg/Bangkok-Hotels-Glow-Pratunam.h5248530.Hotel-Information?&rm1=a2&semcid=gog_sg&kword=glow_pratunam!e.ZzZz.100001284989.0.28816376397.glow%20pratunam.glow_pratunam&gclid=CPmZhJm_wroCFQxBpgodJjkAcA

Glow Pratunam website: http://www.zinchospitality.com/glowbyzinc/pratunam

Booking through Expedia was fuss-free and everything was confirmed within the first hour. It was so fuss-free that I started to doubt the authenticity of my booking. But no, my worries were unnecessary, everything was fine and dandy! Each of us paid around S$50 per night (S$200 total, BARGAIN for such an amazing hotel) and we all genuinely miss the fluffy and comfortable bed now. :(


When we arrived, the counter staff asked for our passports and we were then directed to the sitting area for a welcome drink. So fancy ah this sitting area. We were given a pandan-flavoured drink (I highly suspected it's bird's nest but I was the only one who thought so hahahahaha) and after that filling up a simple form, one of our rooms was ready! We had one room with a king size bed and one room with twin beds.



The room is SUPER comfortable and extremely clean. I was so shocked because it looked like the usual high-end hotels! Even the toilets were clean and we had almost everything provided in the toilet - toothbrush, toothpaste, huge containers of soap and shampoo, bathrobes, etc. etc. etc. 

On the first day, I didn't know where the hairdryer was but when I found it, I was amazed because they provided a really good quality hairdryer! Not those old and about-to-electrocute-you kind, but a brand new and multi-functional one! LOVELY. 

Glow Pratunam Hotel staff members were very friendly and they could all speak English quite well. No complaints there! Thanks to them, we had a great stay and we had bottles and bottles of water stocked up constantly. When we didn't want to make up our room, they even called to ask if we needed more water! So nice right?? :) 


The best part of the hotel room definitely was the beds. So comfortable and so fluffy that I wanted to stay in mine all day. 


Very clean toilets!!


We had quite a view too! 




Location-wise, Glow Pratunam Hotel is fantastic for shopaholics. The hotel is just located opposite of Platinum Mall and it's built on top of Shibuya 19. Central World is just around the corner (give it a maximum 10-minute walk?) and there you have it - shopping from bargain wholesale stalls and shopping from the usual high street shops! 

The nearest train station, Ratchathewi BTS station (N1) is not very near, but still walkable, it's around 5-6 blocks away. 

This area is notorious for the traffic jams. I guess that's the only negative thing about the hotel - the traffic jams. But hey, the hotel can't really control that right? So I'm still giving Glow Pratunam a full 10 out of 10. 

If you are visiting Bangkok, do give Glow Pratunam Hotel a try! Not expensive and very very comfortable rooms. After a long day of shopping under the hot sun, coming back to such an excellent room is simply comforting. :) 

Glow Pratunam Hotel
919 Petchburi Road, Kwang Thanon Phayathai, 
Rajdhevi Bangkok 10400
Tel: +66 2 257 3999  
Fax: +66 2 257 3977