#CarmenVentures: Bangkok

My first time in Bangkok, and I loved it! The sights, the sounds; the hustle and bustle - very busy city with great malls. Initially, I went there mostly for the food but quickly realized that the priority of finding good Thai food had to be shared with the priority to SHOP. I'm not a shopping kind of girl, mainly because I can rarely find clothes/shoes with cuts that complemented my size and shape so I gave up on that relentless pursuit earlier on in life. But I could not help but buy some earrings, bags and a few small trinkets. Okay fine, some is an understatement but they were beautiful!

Admittedly, there were some hits and misses but what country doesn't?

9 Places in Bangkok You Should Visit

1. 7-Eleven

Yes, the first and longest one on my list had to be that. I have never been more delighted to shop at a 7-Eleven. I'm sure Japan would be impressive too, if not more impressive. But let's circle back to Thailand.

They had shelves and shelves of food, all waiting to be bought and enjoyed. Our first night there, we arrived close to 12am (thanks to a delayed flight) and as we walked out to the arrival hall to catch our Grab ride, the 7-Eleven sign shone bright like a saviour.

I'm telling you, they've got dumplings, rice boxes, buns, sushi, onigiri, seafood, instant noodles... the list is endless you've got to see it for yourself. For someone who doesn't frequent 7-Eleven (other than the occasional slushie when I was younger), this was pretty good. Also, I was probably hungry.

So we ended up buying a few things to share: instant noodles, rice box with red curry, gyoza/dumplings and rice bun with pork. All delicious. The rice box and gyozas were yummier than expected, and well I don't think pork rice buns could go very wrong anyways. 

2. Mr. Joe

Crispy roast pork with "keuh jap", which is basically a bowl of noodles with pig spare parts/organs e.g intestines, heart, kidney etc.

Personally, I don't mind spare parts so this was a pretty good bowl of soup. But, the beauty lies in the roast pork.

Crispy, succulent, juicy - just as a roast pork should be. I'm not a huge fan of roast pork cause the ends tend to get quite salty back home, but here they didn't need salt. It was good on its own.

We also ordered some siu mai, which was mediocre.

3. Chaktuchak Market

This market is humongous. We thought we'd spend maybe a few hours here, but ended up staying here for most of the day. Also I don't really shop, but this place will convert you.
One thing that helped me was knowing what I wanted to purchase. Before coming, I knew I was looking for: bags, earrings and the likes. If you come here without direction or a goal, you might get lost and spend a lot more money than intended.

You can find almost everything here. From food, clothes, bags to aromatherapy oils, dream catchers and home accessories. If I came again, I would first visit the information center and get this huge ass useful map. Forget about "Oh, I'll think about it and come back later", there will be no later as you might actually get lost.

If you're into Thai food, you're in luck. There's a lot of street food there as well! The pork satays pictured below are only 10 baht per stick, which is close to only RM1.25! In KL they would sell 3 sticks for RM10. I wish I got more cause I love those!

There's so much more to try, fried egg, squid, fishcakes...

There's also this honey roasted pork sold at a clandestine corner of the market called "Moo Yang" at Section 22, Soi 4. They sell it individually by itself and also with baos. We ordered the one with the bao first, but it was so good we had to get another 100g by itself.

And of course, we had to go for massage! You'll be able to find a lot of parlors in between the alleys. We found one with air conditioning, and it came to about 250 Baht for 1 hour foot/shoulder/neck massage (we asked for 30 mins at first, but as time went by we knew we needed 1 hour). It was totally worth it after a long day of walking!

4. Banyan Tree's Vertigo & Moon Bar

Apparently, Vertigo & Moon bar is one of the best rooftop bars in the world. With roughly 600 Baht per cocktail (RM96, including service charge and VAT), it better be! I got the mocktail myself, which was 450 Baht (RM60+). Views were stunning!

5. After You Cafe

One of the better cafes we tried here! We had the original toast (mini) and Thai Iced Tea shaved ice. The toast was much better than the equivalent Haraju-cube. Albeit, with a lot more butter and ice cream.

And the shaved ice wasn't like the plain tasteless kakigoris served back here, it was actually really good!

6. Mango Tango

I personally liked it! Mango was sweet, and the sticky rice was soft. It's not perfect though: A little overpriced when you can get this for cheaper at markets, and mango pudding/sorbet did nothing for the dish. The mango with sago dessert was nice too!

8. Rachada Rot Fai Market

Rachada Rot Fai Market is a market only opened at night. Similar to Chatuchak, but smaller (still huge though!) and slightly cheaper.

There were a few alleys dedicated to only food, with street food everywhere. So we tried the squid, mini crabs and pig intestines. They were all good!!

But we definitely needed more than several skewers and small portions of street food to fill us up. I was walking and passed by a couple eating stir fried basil pork with sunny side up eggs and rice on a large metal plate. We knew we had to get it! So we added a salt baked fish and omelette as well. And this had to be one of our favourite meals of the trip.

The fish was juicy and succulent, and accompanied well with the stir fried basil pork with rice. I wish I could go back and eat it all over again!

And me being me, I had to try out some insects. I knew if I didnt, I wouldn't really get the opportunity to again (at least in the near future). The lady only allowed me to purchase minimum 40 baht for each insect! I wanted to go lower, muchhhh lower - like maybe 10 baht but she was having none of it. So fine, I bought 80 baht worth of insects. Did I regret it? No.

Would I try it again? Also no.


9. Pier 21

The place with a huge variety of Thai food! This food court really gets you more bang for your buck.

And here are a few bonus local haunts, that our Thai Grab driver recommended to us but we barely had the time to go (and I would go the next time round cause they look amazing!)

Jeh O Chula for largeee bowl of Mama noodles

A post shared by ᗩᒪIᑕE . ᒪEOᑎG 爱丽丝梁 (@shye__________kei) on Sep 4, 2018 at 11:41am PDT

P'Aor for Tom Yum Goong with lobster

A post shared by @doubleshot_em on Aug 11, 2018 at 1:58am PDT

And a few more that we Googled and found/heard quite good reviews of:

Wattana Panich for beef noodles

A post shared by タイ国政府観光庁 (@thailand_jp) on Mar 8, 2018 at 2:12am PST

Suppaniga Eating Room for authentic Thai Issan food

A post shared by @doubleshot_em on Aug 17, 2018 at 7:47am PDT

And of course, the ones we went to but thought was overrated:

Chinatown's T&K Seafood

We weren't very impressed with the seafood here. Fish and grillled cockles was overcooked, prawns were not very sweet, tom yam and vegetables were nothing special. The only thing I felt was good was the huge oysters. 50 baht for 1 though, which is RM6+ - a bit over my personal budget but comparing to the oysters sold back here, RM6+ is not too bad.

Audrey Cafe

They're famous for their Thai Iced crepe cakes. We decided to celebrate our friends' birthday in advance there because we've read many good things about this crepe cake! Coincidentally on the same day, they were doing a buy 1 get 1 crepe cake free promotion (I think). So we got 2! But the thai iced tea taste was lacking in the sauce, and if you ate the cake without the sauce it tasted just like a normal crepe cake. But interior was beautiful, much like a Japanese butler cafe.


5. Greyhound Cafe

You start the meal with buns and butter. That didn't make up for the fact they messed up my friend's order of a macchiato. Instead, what came was a mochachino after repeating several times that we wanted a macchiato and pointed at the menu. Oh well. Let's see how the food tastes.

We had the Complicated Noodles and Spaghetti with Crab Meat in Prawn Cream Sauce. Personally I've never really had anything like these 2 dishes before, but Greyhound wouldn't be a place I'd go for again. Dishes were pricy and I didn't understand the hype surrounding the cafe. Both dishes were decent though! I think we ordered right.

Gram Pancakes

Gotta admit, it wasn't great. The queue was superrrr long, and we waited for close to 30 minutes for 1 souffle pancake with whipped cream. I didn't see why people were queuing up so long for it.

And that's it for my Bangkok recommendations!
Honestly, I would love to go back. So much more things to buy and eat that I never got the chance to when I was there. The trip also wasn't horrendously expensive and not too far away so it was a good short getaway.