Bangkok

It's great that I finally get the chance to see Bangkok in person. I had great food and more importantly experience the cultural differences.

My wife and I ate at her favorite Thai restaurant which is Som Tam Nua. It was really nice and I got to try the menu that is less common in Singapore. The dessert called strawberry dome at neighboring shop was also interesting. We managed to eat bake cheese tart of which queue is very long in Singapore.

I was impressed by the taxi stand at the airport where we are given queue ticket indicating the Lane of our taxi, something that is more manual in Changi. But few hours later we found ourselves waiting for more than 1 hour at Siam Paragon due to inefficient taxi queuing system. The taxi drivers were picky but the mall officer only check the destinations of the first two passengers in the queue. So once the destination is not desirable, there will be empty cabs passing by as both the drivers and the mall officer did not check with the rest of the queue. At the same time, I learn not to generalize quickly as the officer at the EmQuartier was very good. He gives handwritten tickets so that he knows where all queue members want to go. Also, he asked us to go to the mall across the road once he saw our destination as the taxi drivers do not typically want to make U-turn in a jammed road.

We also managed to go to Chatuchak that is only open on weekend and Asiatique Riverfront market that is open only at night. Both are nice places to visit and shop.