Ari left for work early in the morning while Aina and I continued sleeping. From this day forward, Ari would only join us for dinner, because he has to work throughout the rest of our trip.
We woke up around 9 in the morning and went to the hotel breakfast. The breakfast selection was nice. They had the regular stuff, like cereals, freshly made omelette, fruits and juices. But they also have a variety of Asian breakfast like Miso soup, congee and dim sum or pau (they alternate those). They have some selections of ham and cheeses. And their bread was my favorite. Aina had a few favorites: the salami, the pork sausage and their hashbrowns (which we only found out on the 4th day of the stay… d’oh).
After breakfast, we immediately went into the pool. This was something that Aina had been waiting for since we arrived at this hotel: Swimming!
However, when we got to the pool, we realized that most of the pools have a depth of 1.2m — which was perfect for me, but not so perfect for Aina. She’s been out of swimming practice for months, so even though I thought she would be fine, she was too nervous to step into the deeper pool. So she was mostly hanging on to me when we’re exploring the deeper pool, and stayed at the shallow kiddy area when I was basking.
She eventually got over her fear and started to swim again, but that was 2 days from now… -__-
I made a big mistake of eating too much during breakfast, and ended up with a pot belly. Yikes, what was I thinking? Bikini and big breakfast don’t go together! So no picture of me in a bikini… toes are okay, though.
After being in the pool for a few hours, the it got really hot and we thought it was time to have lunch. Indoors. With air-conditioner. Whew, Bangkok could get really hot.
So, we showered and headed to the Hello Kitty House that we passed yesterday. I can’t find their website, but it’s basically located at the ground floor of Siam Square One. Unlike the Hello Kitty Cafes, this one is a house, because it had a Hello Kitty Cafe on the 1st and 2nd floor, a Hello Kitty Spa that you can get manicured and pedicured at, also on the 2nd floor, and a Hello Kitty shop in the basement… Aina wasn’t interested in getting manicured, so we ordered some sandwiches and drinks. Hello Kitty smoothies for Aina and a cup of tea for me.
The food was okay… I wouldn’t recommend the place for the food, but the decoration was very cute, so it was totally worth a try. We didn’t get the cakes because we were too full — although they looked delicious. And we were going to check out the shop, but totally forgot about that… oops.
After lunch, we walked around Siam Square. There were so many little shops with bears. Some were flower shops, another was, I think, a cafe that sold stuffed bears and its accessories. Again, it was really an Aina thing…
We also found a small park behind Siam Square, called the Park @ Siam (not to be confused with Siam Park). It’s a very tiny park with big trees and a pond… and a very cool mirror sculpture.
The problem with walking around outside at this hour was the sun… It was scorching HOT! Aina said it felt like the sun was piercing her skin with little needles. So, we couldn’t go on and decided to head back to the hotel room… and watched movies on TV! Aina quickly picked the Snoopy and Charlie Brown: The Peanuts Movie. I fell asleep not long after the movie started, only to wake up right when the credits came on… It’s not you, Snoopy… I was just really tired walking around under the hot sun.
And then, Ari messaged me that he and Cindy, one of his co-workers, were on their way back from the office and would like to have dinner together with us. So, we all met up at the back of Siam Square One, the same place we had our Hello Kitty lunch. The lady at Cindy’s hotel recommended Ban Khun Mae for dinner, which was only across the street from where we were standing.
And, how glad were we that we followed her recommendation! It was the tastiest dinner we had in a loooooong time! And I think, their Tom Yum Kung was the best Tom Yum I’ve ever had. EVER!
Everything there was excellent… the tapioca balls were so yummy, and the red snapper with lime was tangy and delicious (although very spicy!). I think I gained 2kg when we left the restaurant. We were soooo stuffed that we could hardly walk.
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.