For breakfast this morning we walked a straight road out to the McDonalds in Ploenchit Center at the mouth of Sukhumvit Soi 2 on which Doubletree Hilton was on the very same road.
To date I've not talked much about Ploenchit Center but don't underestimate this place. It might not look glossy or shiny or bright like some of the newer and more popular shopping malls, but it is a practical one where there's a Starbucks on the ground floor, there's a McDonalds also on the ground floor, and in the basement, you have a couple of shops, a couple of dining places, and a Villa Market which holds plenty of imported produce both wet and dry.
This morning we had a Big Breakfast with an additional order of sausage muffin, and a cup of hot tea.
It's wonderful, really, this thing called globalization and franchising.
Don't matter where you are- you'll know what to expect- and even if there be differences, they'll be minor.
Like, I don't think there was butter or jam to go with the muffin.
And they didn't have salt for the taking.
But the meat patty was tasty, even without chili, ketchup or salt, and the muffin was lightly burnt on one side so you got a bit of smoky taste too. What surprised me was the hash brown. Far from being soggy, as I had assumed it would, the hash brown was actually so well fried!
We hung about in the room the rest of the morning until around noon when we went out for a lunch of dim sum at this restaurant called Sui Sian in The Landmark Bangkok Hotel.
Located right close to Nana in the Khlong Toei area (not too far away from Ambassador Hotel where we went the last time) Sui Sian is said to be one of the best dim sum places in Bangkok, featuring award-winning chefs from Hong Kong offering authentic Cantonese cuisine and over 40 varieties for dim sum in either a buffet style, or ala carte.
This afternoon we ordered quite a bit of food.
Strangely enough it seems we ordered more of the larger, heavier dishes than the dim sum ones even though I know we had steamed char siew baos, siew mais, xiao long baos and a good number of fried dishes that are not in the pictures.
It is always a staple- steamed char siew baos- and because we like the fluffy white kind, it has become such that we have them whenever we go try new dim sum places.
Same goes for the xiao long baos (if they have them) and the siew mais (which most places they always do).
I'm not sure whether we ordered any cheong funs this time.
We might have, we might have not.
But we had some rather unexpected dishes on the table for what was a buffet dim sum.
Like the roast pork siew yok which, I have to say, was, like others which I have had here in Thailand, hot, slightly chewy on the meat, and with its skin skillfully roasted to a nice, brown crisp.
Then there was the fish maw soup that had big chunks of fish maw and sliced mushrooms bobbing about in the thick, starch-like soup.
We also ordered a plate of roast duck.
One of the signature dishes offered by Sui Sian, theirs had a delicious crisp, slightly burnt layer of skin, then a thick row of fat that, upon a single bite, oozed down into the duck meat itself.
Eating this took a bit of getting used to.
I'm not that familiar with delicious oil and fat that comes from perfectly roasted well-fed poultry. Most of the ducks I tend to eat back on the island tend to be on the thinner side.
Or rather, they're not as fat.
Amongst some of the dim sum dishes we took this afternoon there was a plate of bean curd skin, a plate of fried puffs with char siew filling inside, and what I think is some sort of fish paste on top a little red pepper.
There was a lot of filling inside the bean curd skin, which, if I recall, had in fact been just as crisp and very well fried. I liked the prawns that had been stuffed inside the triangular-shaped portions that reminded me of cones.
Then the fish paste was clean-tasting and really cute.
But it were the char siew puffs that I fancied most of all.
See, most of the time when I have these puffs, they are filled with a warm, soft, mushy yam paste inside.
And because I hadn't been paying attention to what we ordered, imagine my surprise when upon first bite, I tasted not the light, sweet, distinctive taste of yam, but the strong, sweet taste of the red sauce we normally have when we eat char siew.
It was so good.
First, the outer layer of pastry flaked off at first bite.
After that, there was a bit of chew, and then after that you got to the little chunks of char siew slathered over with the bright, auspicious looking red sauce.
So unusual, and rare was this pastry that I wished we'd ordered more.
But then we were starting to feel full, and anyway it was time for us to go.
Mung Thong Thani was 22km away.
And we were going there to get shoes.
Mung Thong Thani is a real estate development in Nonthaburi Province on Bangkok's north side. Built rapidly during the 90s, it underwent real estate ups and downs throughout the years, and today, besides the industrial condominiums that are being used by Kasikorn Bank and the Defence Technology Institute, there're residential complexes, as well as flatted factories, retail developments and hotels surrounding the IMPACT Arena.
We were here this afternoon specifically for the weekend market and the Outlet Square.
Few are the places, I tell you, where you can find Nikes, Reeboks, Adidases, Levis, Timberlands, and major street style sport brands of good retail quality at great discount price.
Not just that, if you wanted the brands, there were the outlet stores, fine.
But if you weren't interested in brands and just wanted a dressy shoe or a jacket or a top, there were these stalls outside offering a mixed selection of styles, and you got them just as well.
The last time we came I think we got a couple of Adidases, so this time my friend got three pairs from Nike, I got two pairs from Converse (really beginning to love this sneaker brand) and I got a lovely pale purple tote bag from Nike.
We wandered around Cosmo Bazaar a little bit, then walked out to the residential area of Mung Thong.
It was deliberate, I had wanted to do that since the last time we came.
It wasn't so much about the estate that interested me (even though I had been first introduced to it a year ago by Thai singer/rapper NAMEMT) but the fact that I had seen these buildings back on the island before and I was quietly interested in the estate and the shops and the people who defined the estate they lived in there.
One thing about structure and architecture that really fascinates me is just how buildings from the same era all tend to look the same.
Doesn't mean they're all used for the same purpose- here on the island, most, I think, are for commercial, and if I'm not wrong, they're either in industrial areas and serve as offices, or dotted here and there all over town on streets that were redeveloped during the 80s and 90s.
I cannot tell for sure whether I've been inside one of these buildings even back here on the island, but for some reason I get an impression of dim, cool (dark) interiors, wood furniture, and thin carpeting in maroon or green.
There were shops and little dining places on the ground floor.
There were dessert cafes and coffee cafes too.
There was a little playground and a court and a couple of open spaces here and there.
The whole estate looked neat and lived in, no signs of graffiti. Above me, outside the sliding windows, a good number of units had air conditioning compressors mounted on the outside walls beneath their windows. Some units had clothes and blankets and mattresses flung over the window sill to catch the hot midday sun. And all around me in the car parks there were cars and motorbikes and pickup trucks parked.
I appreciated seeing the locals go about their day.
Most of them seemed to be going in and out of the keycard-controlled gates at the corners of each building. Some headed to their cars. Others headed in the direction of Cosmo Bazaar across the road where I assumed they might be buying their meals or going to the AEON supermarket that was there.
It would be lovely if one got a chance to see how their corridors (and apartments) were like but oy, that's asking for too much (I know) so I'm just glad to have caught a glimpse, and perhaps, one day, if there might be, I'll have a chance to see more.