Bangkok – The Peninsula Hotel, Water Ferries and Sky Bar

Today is part two of my Bangkok entry! Here are the links to previous entries on Hong Kong and Bangkok (Part 1).

Bangkok was the yummiest place we stayed our entire trip. I wish I had taken more food pictures but by the time we arrived in Bangkok, Mr. Feather and I had each tired of the endless “Whose carrying the DSLR this time?” debate and started leaving it home altogether (that thing is heavy, especially in the heat!). But here are a few photos that we did take:

My favorite part of our whole trip was the street food. I love street food and night markets, and in Bangkok you could get a delicious chicken satay or pad thai for about $0.25 – $0.50 US. I could have eaten here for every meal, the choices were endless and everything we tried was amazing. I also loved the Thai style breakfasts we had – crab omelette, spring rolls, chicken noodle soup, fresh fruit below:

These photos were taken in our suite at The Peninsula Bangkok after they brought up breakfast to our room. This was one of my favorite hotels ever – it’s a beautiful property and and the suites were all gorgeous with lovely Thai details. That morning we were really jetlagged so we got room service but I would recommend everybody that stayed here to go do the breakfast buffet downstairs overlooking the river. The spread is huge, delicious, and the view is awesome. My favorite item from above was the chicken noodle soup, which I normally wouldn’t associate with breakfast but I thought it was perfect.

The Peninsula is right across the river from the Mandarin Oriental, and the two operated their own little river boats that took you across and to various sites along the river. It was so charming and I loved the feeling of being out on the water. As a result I also wanted to take the water taxis and ferries everywhere – the ferry though was incredibly crowded, most people had to stand, and during rush hours I found myself unfortunately sandwiched at armpit height between several sweaty tourists. Shudder.

Aren’t the water taxis and ferries sweet? I wanted to take them all the time. However, during our trip my friend J warned that the canal water was really dirty and potentially dangerous. She told me a story about a local boy band called D2B which at one point apparently was the “Backstreet Boys of Thailand”. A band member in D2B named “Big” had a car accident in 2003, where he flipped his car into the canal. A bystander who pulled him from the water gave him CPR and he was appeared fine. However, a few weeks later, Big slipped into a coma due to bacteria from the water entering his brain, and he died years later. The story freaked me out, especially since I regularly saw young boys bathing and swimming in the water. Just a little warning!

On our second night in Bangkok, we went out to dinner and met my Bangkok local friends J and T for a drink. I took this photo in our living room before going out – Zara dress, Banana Republic heels, Marc Jacobs scarf and Chanel bag.

image via Skyscraper city

The restaurant we went to was only a few miles from our hotel but the concierge recommended that we leave 45 minutes early – the traffic can be really bad. We were told that Bangkok introduced these countdown timers next to the stop lights to be psychologically soothing for frustrated commuters waiting in traffic.

Later on our friends J and T suggested that we go for a drink at the Lebua hotel at their Sky Bar. However when we all arrived, they were shocked at how crowded it was. It turns out that Hangover 2 had some scenes filmed at the rooftop bar and as a result, the bar was seriously packed full. I didn’t take any photos because it was so crazy (and I may have also drunkenly forgot). But a snapshot below.

via Swedish Lifestyle magazine

The little blue bar you see is on this platform overhanging Bangkok from 50+ floors up and it’s an absolutely gorgeous view. While we were enjoying a drink, my friend T asked if we ever had been to any New York rooftop bars – yes we had. “Do you remember if you used glass or plastic cups?” he asked. Of course we didn’t but he enlightened us and told us that in New York (and many US cities), all rooftop bars have to use plastic cups to avoid accidents if the cups fall over the edge. At the Skybar though, all the drinks were in nice, thick glass containers. I can’t even imagine what what happen if one of those glasses were to launch over the edge and fall 50 floors down!

All right…that’s it for Bangkok for now! I have a few more bits of Bangkok I want to share with you all, but next time I’ll be going into our trip to Phuket. Thank you all so much for reading along with me, and if you have any of your own Bangkok tales  – I’d love to hear them!