Bangkok Shopping & Food Hunt Travel Blog

UPDATED 2/11/13: Sampeng Lane Market (see below)
UPDATED 31/03/14: More Shopping Guides at my new blog post: Bangkok Shopping Guide

They say Bangkok is a girl's paradise. 

I spent the last week of my summer vacation in Bangkok. 5 days in the busy town known for its delicious food and crazy shopping experience. 

We booked our hotel room from agoda which I personally enjoy booking from them. KC Place Serviced Apartment. It was of good value and was really near the area we wanted to be in, Pratunam Market. 

We took the cab down to KC Place which cost us quite a bit. I personally recommend taking the airport link instead if you're staying at where I'm staying (Stop at Ratchaparok). The train ride is about 30mins and it's relatively similar to taking the taxi there, except the streets of Bangkok are really packed and you may get stuck in a traffic jam if you're in a taxi. And it's a lot cheaper for 2.

Chatuchak Market:

On our first day there, we woke up really early to head down to Chatuchak Market, the popular weekend market. 

We took the public transport route down to Chatuchak - Airport link Ratchaparak -> Airport link Phaya Thai -> switch to BTS -> BTS Mo Chit.

It was really easy to travel on the BTS. However, do avoid peak hours because it gets really crowded at the station on weekends because of Chatuchak Weekend Market. Tip: Prepare a bag of coins to ease the process of buying a train ticket. 

We've arrived! The Chatuchak Weekend Market was just a little walk away from the station. You'll just have to follow the crowd because everyone's going there.

I would recommend the yellow rice chicken at Chatuchak. I have no idea which part of Chatuchak it was at but it was along one of the main streets and pretty easy to spot because we've walked past it countless times while we were shopping there.

Another thing not to be missed is the coconut ice-cream. Normally, the stall would be really crowded so it's easy to spot too. My boy loves it so much that he had it twice.

It comes with a cup of coconut juice too!

And we spent our afternoon shopping at Chatuchak. We went in the early afternoon and in my opinion, it wasn't as crowded or hot as others have described it to be. It could be because it drizzled a little while we were there at that time.

I'm not a really good shopper because honestly, I get tired from shopping really easy. So we left the place when it's around 3pm. Here's our loot:

Honestly, we really wanted to keep and reserve more money for other days to continue shopping. My cheapest loot was the 60 baht sleeveless peacock shirt which I wore the next day. My favourite loot would be the brown bag which I got at 290 baht :)

As mentioned, our place was just behind Baiyoke Sky. So it was easy to get around the area because if we were lost, we just had to look for the tallest building around and walk towards it.

We had street food for our dinner almost every night because it was simply too delicious. The street with all the delicious street food is just 5 minutes walk away from KC Place. 

You'll have to cut through the backdoor of Baiyoke Sky bus carpark and then walk through Pratunam Market. Afterwhich, turn to the right road and walk all the way down. You should be able to see some food stalls along the way. The best food stalls are the one in the street marked in the map (after 93 Hotel). It's a little path after the 7-11 stall. 

There's this lady who sells the most amazing rice vermicelli there. Unfortunately, she only sold on the first night we arrived and we could not find her the subsequent nights. There's this man who sells steamed spicy fish along the road too, and it tasted really good.

This is the prata man.

And this is the best tomyum soup available along the street. It's really nice and it can be evident by the long waiting queue. Also, there were a few people buying the tomyum paste from him while I was in the wait. 

Tomyum soup, rice vermicelli (my favourite!), omelette rice, cuttlefish on stick, egg prata.

I don't know what's your take on street food but I personally thought it was pretty safe, considering they cooked on the spot when you order. But I guess you have to really careful when you see the raw food being left unattended. Some of them can be pretty unhygienic. You'll have to be careful, or simply follow where the Singaporeans go and what they buy. There are a lot of Singaporeans there, buying back their food too, when I was there.

I guess if you're really worried about the hygiene of the street-side stalls, you can give food courts a go. They're as affordable as street food 

The top level of Platinum Mall has a food court with a wide variety of food. You'll have to cash in money for a cashcard to be used in the food court.

I personally love the egg noodles with roast duck there. The beef soup was good too (on the top right of the photo). 

Platinum Mall has plenty of comfort food too if you're not used to the Thai food. Mcdonalds, A&W, Swensens, KFC, etc...

Baskin Robins!

Thai salad. This was bought from the basement of Platinum Mall. I'm not a good shopper so I was tired and the boy got me this salad. Enough to energize me to go another round of shoes shopping in Platinum.

We ventured to Central World area, further down Platinum Mall. The traffic was crazy so we walked there which was pretty near. But I was dying of exhaustion after all the shopping and was simply dragging my feet there. We quickly settled for some place to grab food and ended up at Big C Supercenter.

The food court there wasn't worth any photos but they do have a variety of food outlets and a really big supermarket. 

MBK Shopping Mall:

Then there's MBK Shopping Mall at the other side of Bangkok too. We grabbed a cab down so I'm not really sure how to get there on public transport. My view on MBK was that it was such a boring shopping malls targeted purely for tourists. 

We couldn't even find any cheap or nice food there so we ended up in a restaurant.

Green curry.

Nothing really special or worth the price. I would so go for street food.

T&K Seafood Place:

That day, we took the taxi down to Chinatown, Yaowarat. My parents recommended T&K Seafood place in Yaowarat as a must try. To avoid the crowd, we decided to head down early at 5pm. 

The place is famous among tourists and the taxi drivers do know of this place so there wasn't any need for us to explain to the driver which we faced a lot of difficulties doing so.

We ordered a huge seafood feast that night.

Steamed fish.

BBQ river prawns. Something you don't really get in Singapore. 

Crab with vermicelli. Yes, I love vermicelli.

Curry powder crab that has already been peeled because the boy doesn't like to peel his crabs. I'm not a fan of this because it just doesn't feel like I'm eating crab. 

Fried prawns :)

Look at how fat these prawns are!

My take on T&K Seafood - Price fairly acceptable, seafood range is good. However, it's the best. I can't quite understand the crowd of tourists who flock there everyday. 

The bird's nest was good though.

My 10 baht egg roll with hot dog :) 

Mango sticky rice! :)

And we ended our 5 days 4 nights stay in Bangkok with these loots. 

Sampeng Lane Market:

In case you ever got tired of the shopping opportunities in Pratunam area, I would highly recommend hopping on a taxi and travel down to Sampeng Lane Market in Yaowarat. 

Sampeng Lane Market is a wholesale market where you can find accessories at a really low price. I would say the stuffs there are definitely cheaper than Pratunam Market. 

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