After waking up from our nap, Ari said he wanted to take us to Nara, a Thai restaurant located near Erawan Shrine. And at the same time, he wanted to show us the hotels that he’s been staying at in the past few weeks. It was like having a mini tour of the places that he had been to (not that many, because he spent most of his waking hours at work).
Even though we could take the BTS from Siam to Chit Lom, where Erawan Shrine was located, we decided to take a walk. There was a wide floating shaded walkway right underneath the BTS from the Siam shopping area to the Central shopping area, so if you walk through there, you’re away from the traffic and intersections, but still connected to all the shopping centres. It’s kinda like the underground tunnels in Orchard, but this one is out in the open. And since it was at night, the walk was breezy and cool. Very nice. Although I’d imagine, the walkway would be a good walking option too during the day, to avoid the hectic traffic and the hot sun of Bangkok on the street level.
The Erawan Shrine was bustling as usual. It was full of activities… people selling flowers, people praying, and the Thai dancers danced non-stop… It was hard to believe that 7 months ago, someone detonated a bomb there.
Since we weren’t hungry yet, we walked around at the street level around the Shrine. There were many stalls — food, flowers and crafts stuff — were open on the sidewalk. No wonder Ari likes to stay in this area. So many things to see (and eat) at night, even after work hours.
Aina ended up buying a handmade paper-cut card for herself. It was a foldable peacock card, and she was amazed and curious on how it was made.
Nara was crowded. Even though we got there rather early, most of the seats were already taken. Maybe because it was Sunday night. There were tons of menu selections, mostly finger food stuff, which was perfect for us, because we could taste many different dishes. We ordered a few rice dishes and small side dishes.
The purple rice and the fluffy omelette was yummy. But the fish cake was kinda meh. Ari said we should’ve ordered the shrimp cake instead. That one was delicious.
After dinner, we decided to walk back to Siam, this time by the street level. The traffic had wound down, the sun had set and the night market started to fill up the sidewalk. So, it was a lot more interesting to walk around down there.
Before we went back to the hotel, we bought a banana nutella crêpe. There was actually a long line on this crêpe stall. But it was an entertaining wait, because the cooking process was entertaining, especially for Aina.
mmm, so goooood!
We’ve also noticed, Bangkok had many cute characters scattered around the city… Some were logos and stuffed toys at stores, some were super large sculptures on the side of the street. And this was like Aina’s thing. She was so busy doing “monster-spotting” every time we walked around.
The rest of the photos of this trip is in Bangkok 2016 photo album at Flickr. Other entries of this trip is at Bangkok 2016.
