Jan 25 2014

Thailand travel days 2

Today is the last day of our trip to Thailand. I’m a bit disappointed about the vacation coming to an end, but am happy to be getting back home. I was really excited about coming to Thailand, but many of the things to which I was looking forward were letdowns. It is upsetting when you spend weeks and weeks planning every little detail, and several things end up not going how they should have gone. That being said, it was a wonderful experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything. Maybe one day I will make it back to Thailand, and see some of the other treasures that it has to offer.

We started out the day with breakfast at Café Mozu, which consisted of a lot of freshly-made pastries, some great meats, and made-to-order omelettes. Some of the pastries were truly extraordinary, but overall, I found the buffet to pale in comparison to the one at the Eastin Grand Sathorn.


The pool at Lebua Bangkok – Mozu Floor
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After breakfast, we headed northeast on Silom Road to find the Silom Cooking School. It seemed like an interesting activity, but upon arrival, we found that it wouldn’t work for the day. As such, we basically just walked around the Silom district for a while and headed back to the room for some relaxation.

We lounged about for quite some time, got everything packed, and then had dinner at Taling Pling (which was only a few blocks away from the hotel). It wasn’t all that great of food, and the service was miserably bad, but it served the purpose. After dinner, we checked out of the hotel (which again, took WAY longer than it should have), and we headed to BKK. Our flight wasn’t until 01:00 GMT+7 Saturday morning, but we needed to get there a couple hours early since it was an international flight.

At BKK, I found it interesting that they had a Dairy Queen. I noticed that many of the flavours were the same as in other countries, but that there were ones that were unique (such as green tea with red bean). I went for the ol’ trusty Oreo, and it was a nice treat.

The flight from BKK back to Tokyo Narita was rather uneventful, and I actually got to sleep a little bit. With the tail wind, it was even about 45 minutes shorter. We had a layover in Tokyo, so we went to the American Airlines Admiral’s Club to relax for a bit. We had some cereal, tea, and various snacks before the lengthy flight from Tokyo to Chicago O’Hare. That flight, too, was substantially shorter because of the tail winds. Fortunately, neither flight felt as bad as they had when we were departing for Bangkok.

With a five-hour layover in Chicago, we again took advantage of the Admiral’s Club membership, and here I sit. As said, there were many disappointments to me on this trip, but those were completely due to things not working out the way that I had intended. I spent a lot of time planning, but I need to learn that there are some things that just can’t be helped–I need to work on flexibility. I really enjoyed the experience, and hope that future travels will be just as outstanding, if not even better.

Cheers,
Zach

Jan 23 2014

Thailand Day 12: Hangover Part 2 hotel and Sirocco

This was another one of those odd “split” days where we travelled from one place to another. This time, though, we started out in Ao Nang, and then headed back to Bangkok in the late afternoon.

We started out by having breakfast, and then headed to the strip so that I could pick up a couple pieces of artwork. I had purchased one a couple nights ago, and decided that I wanted to get another one like it and one that was a bit larger so that I could make a three-piece set on the wall of my office. After looking at a bunch of different places, I finally settled on the other two pieces, bought them, and we headed back to the hotel.

After packing everything, we checked out, and a taxi took us to Krabi Airport for our flight back to Bangkok. The flight was easy as can be on Bangkok Airways, and we got in just about on time. We took a taxi from BKK to our new hotel, which I booked just because it has to be experienced if you’re in Bangkok. We stayed in the Tower Club at Lebua (which is located in State Tower) in the Silom district. The hotel became famous for its outstanding restaurants and five-star amenities, but became a smash hit when it was featured in the movie “The Hangover Part II.”

After a really long (unacceptably long, actually) check-in process, the hotel was pretty nice. I don’t actually think that it is worth all the hype that it gets, and that the Eastin Grand Sathorn is truthfully a nicer hotel, but this one was pretty swank as well. We didn’t get to spend much time looking around because we had dinner reservations at 20:00 at Sirocco, which is the open-air Mediterranean restaurant on the 63rd floor of the hotel.


Club Tower at Lebua Bangkok – Fruit basket they brought us for our inconvenience at check-in
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We headed up for dinner, and the service was impeccable. We started with some jumbo prawns, which were massive, and came in a wonderfully aromatic jar. My main course was some pork with an apple compote, and she got a seafood sampler that had lobster, Japanese scallops, mussels, clams, crab legs, and more. Both of the main courses were exceptional in their own ways, and they didn’t disappoint in the least.


The presentation at Sirocco (even the bread and butter) was exceptional
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The prawn appetiser was delicious, albeit a bit small given the exorbitant price
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We also each had a bottle of wine with our meals. She had a 2011 Pinot Gris from Alsace, and I had a wonderful Spanish Tempernillo. We finished off the meal with two fantastic desserts: a black cherry cheesecake (also served in a jar) and a chocolate soufflé. Though the meal was RADICALLY overpriced, everything was delicious, and it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It was also a beautiful end to our trip to Thailand.

Jan 22 2014

Thailand Day 11: Beaches, massages, and… monkeys?

Today was our last full day in Ao Nang, which was sad because that meant that the trip was nearly over. That being said, we didn’t let it go to waste. We started off by having breakfast at our hotel (Aonang Phu Petra), and then headed to the beach. I tried to get some photos of the beach, but the early-morning haze made it rather difficult.

When we were getting ready to leave the beach and go back to the pool, I decided that we should walk down to the other end of the beach just to see what was down there. At the very end, I saw a Macaque monkey running near the tree line. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, there were TONS of them running around! People started swarming in and feeding them everything from bread to bananas to crisps.


Stump tailed Macaque monkey eating a biscuit – Ao Nang Beach, Thailand
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Macaque monkey eating some peanuts – Ao Nang Beach, Thailand
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We spent a while watching the monkeys, and then one decided to lie right on top of our bag and dig through it. For a moment, I thought that Deb was going to lose another pair of sunglasses, but this time to a monkey instead of a baby elephant! 😉


A Macaque monkey raiding our beach bag – Ao Nang, Thailand
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Macaque monkeys sitting in a tree on Ao Nang Beach
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This family with a little boy in a stroller came by as well. One of the monkeys jumped up on his stroller, and just sat on the handle bar. I’m guessing this startled the little guy, because he jumped out of the stroller. Just then, another monkey walked up to him. He just sat there staring inquisitively at the monkey. He didn’t know what the monkey was, but he knew that he had better give up his stroller if that’s what the monkey wanted. 🙂


Little boy looking at a Macaque monkey – another one laid claim to his stroller
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We headed back to the hotel, and laid out at the pool for about an hour before heading back into town for our massages (again at Ao Nang Haven). This time, I went for foot reflexology and a milky cream massage (for a total of two hours). They were both nice, but I’ve found that I actually prefer Swedish massages (or deep tissue ones) over Thai massages. That being said, Ao Nang Haven offered an incredible environment that was completely professional and relaxing!

After our massages, we went for dinner at the Massaman Restaurant. I had the pumpkin curry, which was delicious, but to me, it wasn’t nearly as good as Ao Nang Boat Noodle, and it was more expensive. There are some good Thai places in Ao Nang, but if you find some that you like, I recommend that you stick to those. Feeling overly indulgent, we walked from the Massaman Restaurant over to the Mercure Krabi Deevana’s Kingfisher Restaurant (at our previous hotel) for dessert. They had some of the best ice cream (New Zealand Natural) that I have had in a long time, so we made the trip especially for it! I really loved the cookies and cream, so I got a few scoops of that. Surprisingly, so did Deb (even though that’s generally not her favourite flavour).

We then strolled along the main Ao Nang strip, walking in and out of shops looking at the various trinkets and such that the vendors had for sale. We weren’t really looking for anything in particular, but it was neat to see everything that was available (from scarves to jewelry to bespoke clothing and more).

Lastly, we stopped back in at The Diver’s Inn and had some wine. We talked for quite some time with the owner (Jürgen) about the trials that he had endured with owning a restaurant in the area for fourteen years. His story was fascinating, and his business model of providing excellent service and great value for quality European cuisine is one that has been and will likely continue to be highly successful in the area! After our nice relaxing time at the Diver’s Inn, we walked back to the hotel and called it a night.