Northern Thailand 2017 - Bangkok Part 9 The End

Soon after a good night sleep in Chiang Rai (though I'm not so certain about the 'good' part as we needed the alarm to wake up), we took a taxi to the airport and flew to big BKK!

From the airport, we took a van taxi to our hotel. I had booked the Berkeley Hotel Pratunam for our stay. If you want to book at the same hotel, try to get a room in the main tower. Otherwise, you will have to take the elevator to the 11th floor, walk over to another building, and wait for another elevator to get to your room.

Even though we got a taxi through the official taxi stand at the airport, the driver still tried to haggle for a higher price. This is something that I didn't like about Bangkok. I had to insist meter-fare most of the time and it just left me with an unsettling feeling every time.

We arrived at the hotel at around lunch time and there was a huge crowd at the lobby and at the reception desk. I should have expected this for a popular large hotel, but from the boutique hotels we stayed at prior to this, it was a shock. :D There were no clear line and everyone was just piled up by the desk. Haha.... After a while, I managed to check in and as soon as we dropped off our luggages in the room we ventured out for lunch. Not too far though, the hotel was attached to the Pratunam mall and we just ate at their food court..

After lunch we went over to Platinum Fashion Mall. This place is a must-visit if you are in BKK. Miss Kiki bought matching T-shirts for her and DH...

For dinner we went to a supposedly-famous chicken rice restaurant just across the street from the hotel. There was a lineup and we got ourselves in line. Not surprisingly, someone tried to cut the line right in front of us but hey they were messing with the wrong people. Off to the back they went.

The food was good, but really nothing to brag about. We were so hungry by the time our food arrived we forgot to take pictures of the chicken rice!

Just beside our hotel was the newer Neon Night Market. It was small but lively, with plenty of food options ranging from dinner to snacks.

On the following day, we promised to take Miss Kiki to Big Dog Cafe. So we ordered Uber and headed out. It was just our luck, the Big Dog Cafe was relocating and that very day was their moving day! What were the chances of that...

The Uber driver was nice enough to ask around for us, and then in the end we asked him to drop us off at the JJ Mall next to the Chatuchak Weekend Market. As the name indicates, the Chatuchack market is only open on Saturday and Sunday, but some stalls also open on Friday night. We figured it would be a good time to go because it wouldn't be as busy as Saturday or Sunday.

The JJ Mall is not too large, with a considerably large number of stores selling coffee machines and cafe supplies. Other than that, they have the usual clothes, crafts, and food. We sat at a cafe there for a while and at around sunset time, we walked over to JJ Green night market through a fish market.

JJ Green Market is located inside a park, and it caters more towards a younger crowd. Slightly larger than Neon Market, it has several permanent restaurants as well as vendors in tents. You can find the usual market items here plus live music entertainment.

Finally from there we went over to the famous Chatuchak Weekend market. As expected, it was much smaller than it would be on Saturdays and Sundays, but it was still busy with visitors and vendors.

We had an unpleasant experience here with an Uber driver. We ordered one and we messaged and called. The driver said that she was coming. after waiting for more than half an hour the driver cancelled on us. Grrrrrrr.... Then we tried to catch a taxi, the first one refused to take us back to the hotel. Fortunately, there was another taxi that stopped for us and dropped us off at the Neon Market with meter (without having to haggle for it). I think it was the best taxi experience in Bangkok to date. Silly me, I should have asked for his phone number because that would've been very useful.

We ate at the Neon market, walked around, and went back to the hotel... and got locked out of our room! Our key didn't work. It turned out that when the cleaner came, we had left the door open so by their standard procedure they had to lock us out. It took more than half an hour and two visits to the receptionist before someone came and opened the door for us.

Finally it was the last day in Bangkok and it was time to go home! We checked out of our hotel and walked to a Bagel restaurant with good reviews. It was called BKK Bagel Bakery, a clean eatery with big glass window full of foreigners :D

The bagels we ordered were good!