Bangkok (1st Day)

Thursday, woke up rather early to meet my jc friends at the airport. All of us have arrived except for Derrick who was still having his breakfast. Since we cannot collect our boarding passes yet, we had our lunch at the staff canteen at Terminal 2.

Collected our boarding passes after Derrick arrived at 12.30 pm. Guess what, the economy class seats are mostly taken up and they provided 2 business class tickets for 2 people. Terence and his gf took the 2 business class seats while the 5 of us settled for economy class. Took a picture at the waiting area.

Above the clouds after take-off

A view of the rather delicious airline food with Haagen Dazs ice cream (courtesy of Cathay Pacific)

After we touched down at Bangkok, a tour guide brought us to Asia Hotel where we had booked 3 rooms. Jim unfortunately sprained his ankle when he entered the minibus. There was quite a bad traffic jam en route to the hotel and i took several pictures along the way.

After we settled and unpacked some of our stuff at our allocated rooms, we took the BTS (Bangkok Mass Transit System) to Chit Lom station as Jimmy wanted to bring us to a Japanese Restaurant near World Trade Centre for dinner. A view of the cityscape from the BTS.

We arrived at the shopping centre after a few stops and saw several shopping centres in the area.

Having dinner at the Japanese restaurant.

The meal was not very expensive compared to Singapore (each person paid around $10). Walked around the shopping centre and Jim bought a pair of ankle guards for only 60 baht ($2.50). We then headed back to the hotel at 7 pm as the tour guide was waiting for us to bring us to the infamous Thai Girl show (some people call it the Tiger show). The ticket was 600 baht per pax and the tour guide arranged transport to a club/bar. The show is actually illegal in Thailand but the clubs paid the police money so that the infamous show can continue operating (info from tour guide). We were brought into a club with loud music and there were quite a lot of caucasians inside. The venue was not as big as i expected and there were a number of people smoking inside.

No pictures are allowed to be taken inside and using of handphones are prohibited as well. I shall avoid mentioning the R(21) content and skip to the next part of our tour. The show lasted for around 1 hour and we requested going to Yaowarat for supper instead of going back to the hotel. Walked along Bangkok's chinatown which many roadside stalls and we decided to eat bird nest at a chinese restaurant. The lowest grade bird nest soup costs 200 baht and all of us ordered it except Derrick who got a premium grade coconut bird nest soup.

Headed back to our hotel in cabs and the taxi fare is only 50 baht (cheaper than Malaysia cabs). Got to wake up at 7 am the next day for the half day city tour.