Sunday, February 12, 2017

24/09/2016 BKK 2016 - Day 2 (Chatuchak Weekend Market, Somboondee Seafood Restaurant Scam, Rod Fai Night Market)

I'm back to update BKK 2016 Day 2. Just 2 posts back was on BKK 2016 Day 1 (blog about it few weeks ago, you may click here for it) and I hope I can keep up with it. 

Day 2 started with hotel breakfast served by Glow Pratunam Hotel. As mentioned before, it was my first time staying at Glow Pratunam Hotel (previous trips stay was at Baiyoke Sky). So this is the first time trying out this hotel's breakfast and the reviews online seems good. 

We were lazy to go out hunt for food as shops in BKK doesn't operate that early so hotel breakfast seems to be a better choice. 


Quite a wide and delish spread of food served for breakfast...


Fuel to kick start the day...

And this was only round 1 of what I took.


Scramble egg cooked by the chef. This is a must have for every hotel's breakfast.

There were other types of eggs being served too and we get to try all of them by the end of our trip.

We went back to our room to get ready to head out to Chatuchak Weekend Market. It's been awhile since I've been there because we feel that it's not a must-go place for our BKK trips in recent years. 

However, our BIL and SIL have not been there before so we slot in the trip to Chatuchak as part of the itinerary. 

As mentioned in Day 1 of the trip, we purchased our customize hat and had it delivered to our hotel. We went to enquire with the reception counter the night before and they told us there weren't any caps for us. 

I had to resort to whatsapp-ing the HolyCaps's person in charge. The person was kind enough to help me check the status and confirmed that the caps were delivered to the hotel receptionist.

After resting for the night, Derp and I went to the hotel receptionist after our breakfast once again to asked whether are there any parcels for us. And this time round, they took out the 'parcel' for us. They were all wrapped up so one can't tell there's caps inside.

At the very least, I do expect the hotel receptionist to have them deliver and place it in our room but nope they didn't do it when they received the parcel. No idea why too? 

For a moment we thought our caps were gone for good (we had paid the cost of the caps in full) and should have just collected the caps ourselves to prevent such miscommunication. We were glad to finally get our caps in the end. A huge sigh of relive because they aren't cheap at all and we really look forward to receiving them. 


Our customized caps :) 


I love the font I chose for my caps! 

Initially, I didn't know what to choose because there were too many options until Derp pointed out to me this heart shape looking font. I love anything heart shape so I went for it without giving it a 2nd thought.


#selfie with the cap. 

Love the natural room lighting in the hotel room. Best for taking selfie :)


After settling our caps (like finally), it's time to head to Chatuchak weekend market! Since there were 4 of us, we took a cab there instead of public transport. 

If you will like to know how to get to Chatuchak via public transport, you may refer to this blogpost which I've written years back :)


Finally here after a good 20 mins or so taxi ride. There was slight jam but it wasn't that bad. 

We reached Chatuchak  around 11+am and there were quite a number of shops that weren't opened yet.

We start walking around lane by lane and we went to the extend of covering those shops which sell household/antique decoration items for the house.

And while shopping around, we passed by those handphone accessories shop and decide to take a look. We decide to each buy the fish eye lens because it's really cheap (around few sg dollars) and starting taking photos with it lol. We were quite amazed by its ability to take wide angle photos haha! It makes taking welfie much more easier.


Us at Chatuchak!


:)

We start to feel famished after 2pm and proceed to find food then. 

We walked around Chatuchak but didn't have any idea on what to eat. We only wanted a place to sit down and rest our legs to have our food instead of standing around under the hot sun. 

In the end, we settle down at this street stall. Quite a big stall as they do have quite a number of seats for tourists there. 

There weren't much food option but it was good enough for us. 


BIL ordered this fried chicken for us to share.

Can't really make up what the sauces were but if I never remember wrongly, botlh are spicy sauces. 

Btw, they do taste really yummy! :) 


Our mains. 

All of us ordered the same mains because there weren't much option. And we have no idea why do they sell this Vietnam pho noodles in Chatuchak haha!

After our lunch, we went to hunt for our dessert. Actually, there's not a need to hunt for them because coconut ice cream can be found anywhere in Chatuchak lol. We didn't explicitly went all out to find the original one because most/all of the stalls there claimed they were the original coconut ice cream.


Favourite coconut ice cream from Chatuchak :) A must have especially under the hot sun! 


With the coconut ice cream before digging in! 


Making full use of the wide lens camera once again haha! 

So after we were done with the coocnut ice cream, we took cab back to our hotel to rest before dinner time. 



Placing all our caps together for a 'group pic' 


All my loots from Chatuchak

Comparing this to many years back when I first went Chatuchak, these were less than half of the total things I bought from there haha!


Derp and my loots..

 And the carrot soft toy actually belong to Day 1's loots though haha! 

We rested for an hour plus or so before heading out for our dinner. And that's when we fall into the famous Sombondee Seafood Restuarant Scam.

We simply flagged a cab (from below our hotel) to Rod Fai Night Market as we were going nearby that area for claypot tom yum porridge. After we got into the cab and told the cab driver about it, he started telling us there will be massive jam to the night market. It will probably take us 1 hour or so to reach that place. And also the night market doesn't start operating at such a early hour.

None of us have been to that night market before so we somehow believed him. 

Eventually, BIL told him we were heading there for tom yum porridge first before going to the night market. The cab driver then said he have better recommendation about this seafood restaurant which sells the best tom yum soup and also crab in BKK. 

After some debate, we eventually just proceed to go where he's bringing us too. I remember mentioning getting down to shop around at the malls first and this cab driver hop in to say everywhere is closing soon when obviously it's not. 

Upon reaching, I have a really bad feeling about the place after seeing the signboard written Sombondee Seafood Restaurant. I remember back then when I was searching for Sombom Seafood, they have warned tourist of fake restaurants using their name out there. 

Once we were seated, they gave us wet towels, peanut and etc. I was busy on the phone searching on my phone regarding this restaurant and hardwarezone even have a thread talking about it (somehow forums always provide the best information). I'm quite sure it was a scam after quickly reading through the stories posted on the forum.

Before we order anything, we quickly returned the wet towel and etc to them because there's bound to be unreasonable charges for them. 

We looked through the menu and came to consensus that we will only order the 'cheaper' food  solve there because we do not want to get overcharged too badly. 

So here's what we ordered at the scam restaurant..


Pineapple Fried Rice and Mussels..


This was our only carbo dish that night. The pineapple fried rice was tasteless. 


And we also ordered this asparagus with prawns. The texture of the asparagus was very hard which made it very difficult to bite and swallow.

No picture of the tom yum soup because they helped us to serve e into 4 portions once it was served to us. I suddenly remember we ordered 2 types of seafood tom yum soup, 1 clear tom yum soup and 1 normal tom yum soup. Should have just stick to 1 will do because they really taste not nice at all!

The food served there were below average and they charged us way too expensive.

This meal costs us around $80SGD for just 3 dishes and 2 soups. After viewing the bill, we noticed they add on additional cost (for no reason) like a few hundred baht on top the total bill. Btw, we purposely didn't order any crab because there weren't any fixed price written on the menu. They will probably overcharge us to the max if we were to order crab.

We didn't wish to accuse them for overcharging us because afterall, we are in a foreign country so we are at a losing end. We quickly pay the bill and left this scam place.

Took a cab who is station just right outside the restaurant and he charge us 100 baht for bringing us to Rod Fai Night Market. By right it shouldn't cost that much but oh well, that's how all these cab drivers earned from bringing customers to and fro this scam restaurant.

We went back to do some research and came to realize the night market which we initially wanted to go (because of the nearby claypot tom yum porridge) is called the New Rod Fai Night Market/ Rod Fai Night Market 2. IKR, it's really complicated and easy to mix them up!

Upon reaching Rod Fai Night Market, we started to walk around the various stalls. It's not a big night market (unlike Chatuchak) and you can easily cover it within few hours the most.

The stuff sold there were more or less similar to those from Chatuchak but at a higher price. There were many repeated stalls too so we got bored after an hour or walking or so.

We started to get some snacks/drinks to eat and drink while walking around..


Cute cupcakes sold at the night market.



We packed this back to our hotel because it's the first time we see colorful mango sticky rice haha.

Rod Fai Night Market
Thailand, ถนน ศรีนครินทร์ - Srinagarindra 51 Alley, Nong Bon, Prawet, Bangkok 10250, Thailand

I do hope that by writing my experience down, more people will be aware of the Somboondee Seafood Restaurant Scam and not fall for them like we do. By all means insist to go to the place you wish to go instead of following the cab drivers recommendation will be a safer choice at all times! If not, just request to get down the cab then since he refused to drive you to your destination. 

Alright, that's all for Day 2 of BKK 2016

Be back soon to update more :) 

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