Monthly Archives: May 2008

Shopping in Bangkok

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Today we woke up early and checked out of the hotel to catch the free shuttle to Chatuchak Weekend Market. It was really HOT! But only if you were standing directly under the sun, inside was tolerable because a lot of people have their own portable AC units.

We had some lunch at one of the shops. We had the green papaya salad, fried noodles, and fried pork sausage.

The way they cut the papaya is interesting. It’s hollowed out and then they use a chop vertically multiple times then shave it to make thin slices. It’s yummy stuff.

The market had some cool stuff.

We left the weekend market for more conventional malls and had a small snack at one of the food courts. They give you this card with a 1000THB limit and you go from stall to stall to order your food and you pay as you leave.

Ron had a pad thai tostada.

I had the mango and sticky rice.

While walking from mall to mall, we walked place these shops that do eyelash extension so I had it done just for fun.

What do you think of my (temporary) new look?

After that we went to Pantip Plaza to shop for movies before heading back to the hotel to pick up our luggage. We ended up hailing a tuk-tuk and bargained for 80THB to our hotel. The guy kept on trying to convince us to pay him 90THB but we told him we’d get off if he kept on pestering since we only got on because he agreed to 80THB.

We headed to the airport for our flight back to Singapore.

On one last note, pharmacies in Thailand are the same as most other pharmacies but you can buy a lot of medications without a prescription. They’re behind the counter though so you need to talk with the pharmacist.

Sightseeing in Bangkok

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I’m a bit tired so just going to share a little about our sightseeing around Bangkok today. We took a taxi from our hotel to Wat Pho (less than 80 THB on meter) and paid our 50 THB entry fee to see the Reclining Buddha. It is quite impressive.

With some perspective of how big it is:

Next we walked a bit to find some food before heading to the Grand Palace. On the way there, we caught a photo of this tuk-tuk carrying a lady with all here vegetables. Very impressive how much stuff they can fit on a tuk-tuk.

We stopped by a stall for a skewer which cost us way too much money (it was 15THB for 1, later we would find out they should only cost 5THB).

Later we had some seafood fried rice which I think they made the portion smaller for foreigners since for locals, they seemed to serve larger portions.

I had one of my favorite drinks, it’s a coconut milk with colored chewy things. May sound weird but it was very refreshing and I love to drink it.

We also shared a dish of fat noodles, also a bit smaller looking than the local portions… but it was enough.

After lunch we went to the Grand Palace to see the palace and Emerald Buddha. Although they had a cool replica of the Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia.

Off to the Emerald Buddha, this is the temple that it’s housed in:

Unfortunately we’re not allowed to take photos inside so I don’t have a good picture..

We headed to the Grand Palace afterwards:

We then took a ferry to Wat Arun but got a bit lost along the way… we ended up at a pier too far and had to catch the ferry back and then take a “cross ferry” to Wat Arun.

We climbed to the top… here is me at the bottom.

Then we had to climb back down:

We had a quick ice cream:

Then headed to the Lumpini Muay Thai Stadium to watch some boxing. The tickets are quite expensive and you can’t get the cheap “Thai only” price. But do ask for a student discount and you can sit in the front rows (it’s still 1600THB). It was something interesting to see live.

We went to Patpong to have some dinner and do some shopping. We had this delicious noodle soup at a stall on the street.

We also had some takoyaki earlier in the evening in the Japanese part of town.

For dessert at home, we had a nice dish of local fruits.

For some more pictures of the day, take a look at the slideshow or click here.


Off to Bangkok, Thailand

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Ron and I are spending a short weekend in Bangkok. We booked our flights through Jetstar and will be staying at the Amari Atrium Hotel. Our flight was a bit delayed and Ron couldn’t get online so was a bit annoyed while we were waiting in the terminal.

The Bangkok International Airport (BKK) is actually quite beautiful, lots of glass windows and has interesting decorations.

There is an extra 50 Bhat (THB) charge to take a taxi at the airport and the information desk said it shouldn’t take more than 400 THB to get to our hotel. Our taxi driver said we had to pay the toll which is 25 THB and we could just agree on 400 THB for the fare (plus the extra charge and toll, so total of 475) with no meter. We decided to have him turn on the meter and it took about 30 minutes to get to our hotel. The fare ended up only being 300 THB plus the 25 toll and 50 extra fare so over all it was still cheaper.

Our hotel room had some nice fresh orchids and large king sized bed.

Looks comfortable doesn’t it? It is…

After we checked into our hotel, we walked to the Petchaburi MRT station which is about 5 minutes away. Quite convenient. Plus it was only 22 THB per person so quite cheap (as compared to California were BART starts at $2 or $3 USD for the shortest trip).

We headed to the Suan Lum Night Bazaar at the Lumphini MRT stop.

We had some dinner first at the food stalls. We tried the oyster egg pancake (actually mini mussels I think).

Here is the finished pancake and a stick of beef tendon balls with spicy sauce. The spicy sauce was also sweet and sticky but went well with the grilled meat.

We enjoyed a bottle of beer for 50 THB (~2SGD).

We also had this clear glutinous rice ball filled with peanuts and some vegetable. I wasn’t sure how to eat it but since it was served with lettuce leaves, we wrapped it with the lettuce and ate it like a mushu roll. It was more salty than sweet.

Here’s the food stalls:

We went walking around the night bazaar but it seems like places were closing pretty early… maybe because it was Friday… inside we found something called the Beer Garden which seemed to have many types of imported beer but we were already too stuffed from dinner.

On the way back to the hotel, we had to haggle again with the cab driver and we paid 100 THB on the way back.

Parked in front of our hotel was a tour bus:

Funny huh?

Tomorrow we will do sightseeing then Sunday will be shopping before heading back to Singapore.

Yum Yum Thai and Peaberry & Pretzel on Sunset Way

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We had quite the dinner tonight. This was our second visit to Yum Yum Thai on Sunset Way near Clementi Rd. Joyce joined us this time for dinner because we both has this briefing meeting for next week’s new pharmacist pledge ceremony. It’s very similar to our “Oath of a Pharmacist” that we take during our first year of pharmacy school and at graduation except that this is a more formal ceremony. The ceremony is next Thursday so hopefully I’ll have some pictures then.

Anyways, for dinner, we had the traditional Pad Thai:

Fried vegetarian spring rolls:

Spicy chicken:

Pomelo salad (one of my favorites!):

Steamed scallops with chili sauce. This dish didn’t have much flavor and I didn’t really enjoy the chili sauce.:

Dinner was very filling but we saved room for dessert since while walking to the Yum Yum Thai, we spotted Peaberry & Pretzel and their desserts looked fabulous!

We had the fruit panna cotta, it was delicious!

Then something called “Super 7” which is 7 types of sorbet. From 12 o’clock and clockwise: lychee, mango, coconut, strawberry, lime, passion fruit, and dark chocolate.

Oh so good… we can’t eat like this everyday.

Lunch at Coffee Bean and IMM Shopping

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I am glad today was the last day of my on-call. I handed off the pager to the next pharmacist this evening at 5pm. I had three more calls today, one at 3am, one at 9am, and one at 4:30pm… I couldn’t easily get back to sleep this morning and got woken up again by the morning page. I really don’t know how the pharmacists here can handle this. If I was working a graveyard shift and had to answer drug information questions while on shift, I’m fine but to be woken up abruptly by a beeper and have to be coherent to whoever is on the phone is tough. I’m looking forward to a good night’s sleep tonight.

Today is actually Vesak Day which is a public holiday in Singapore so I didn’t have to go into work today. It’s sometimes called “Buddha’s Birthday” but is actually a celebration of the birth, enlightenment, and passing of Gautama Buddha. Each religion here has at least one celebration that is a national public holiday.

But although I didn’t have to go into work, I decided I’d head out with Ron to do some studying. He still had class in the evening and had some work to do as well. I took the opportunity to finish reading the notes on breast cancer that my boss let me borrow and also to read up on Bangkok since we’re going there next weekend!

We had lunch at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf at Holland Village before we started studying.

I had the chicken shiitake mushroom fusilli. I used my camera phone so it’s a bit fuzzy. The pasta was very creamy and had way too much shredded parmesan cheese. The toast was also stale tasting. The portion was well sized though, perhaps a bit too much and the sauce was actually quite good.

Ron had the Chinese chicken salad which had a bit too much salad dressing, the lettuce was coated with it.

We stayed at Coffee Bean until I had to go meet up with the next on-call pharmacist and Ron went to class.

I met up with the pharmacist at the IMM Building to hand off the pager, laptop, keys, and other documents. Afterwards, I headed inside for some retail therapy and shopped away for 3 hours. Next week starts the Great Singapore Sale but there were a ton of pre-sales, many things were already 50% off. The stores were very crowded. I can’t imagine what it will be like when the real sale starts on the 23rd of May (it lasts through 20th July 2008).

Now it’s time to get a good night’s sleep.