Things I Learned From My Bangkok Trip
Monday, October 13, 2008
Chalking it up to experience, I learned:
1) A trip to Bangkok is best experienced with girlfriends simply because it's a shopping haven! Boys wouldn't appreciate it as much. So if shopping is your mission, go with girlfriends.
2) It's best to be organized by having an itinerary, checklist of things to bring and projected expenses before coming to Bangkok. Research, research, research is key. The internet is your friend.
3) Why go for a hotel when you can have the same accommodation and service at a cheaper rate in a serviced apartment? Besides, you went to Bangkok to shop, right? And your hotel is just for resting? So why spend so much for accommodations? The money you save in getting a serviced apartment can easily go to your shopping allowance.
4) Play down being a shopaholic by injecting a few cultural activities in your itinerary. In our case, we had the river cruise, snake farm, Thai jewelry shop visits courtesy of our free tour. We also had the two massage sessions and Patpong. Yes, I classify them as cultural.
5) Buy a local sim card for cheaper communication between you and your girlfriends, in case you will have to go separate ways. A local sim card also makes communication abroad cheaper as well. (With the sim card I got, a text from my Thai sim card to the Philippines cost only P9.59 whereas a text from Globe to Globe would have cost me P20- P30, regardless whether the number is in Thailand or the Philippines!)
6) Serious shopping? Bring a huge luggage that's almost empty. Bring a huge, preferably expandable bag, where you can put your small purchases in while you shop. Instead of carrying a purse, use a belt bag. The belt bag I used was so slim that I wore it under my spaghetti strapped top!
7) To save on money, my friends and I brought our own breakfast. We brought canned goods and bread and even plastic utensils, cups and paper plates (since our serviced apartment had a kitchenette). We were quite sure though that all the utensils and plates would have to be rented which explains why we brought utensils we can easily dispose of.
8) It is cheaper to have your money exchanged to Baht here in the country. We had our money exchanged at Banco De Oro.
9) A lot of stores lower the price of clothes if you buy wholesale (read: 2 to 3 pieces). Elaine and Cris learned that it would be best to team up and shop together just to get clothes at wholesale prices. It's a good thing they had the same taste in clothes.
10) We realized that if we had our boyfriends with us, we would:
a) have more cultural activities than shopping
b) have more pictures
c) not have accomplished as much since there would be 4 more other people to wait for.
d) probably end up going separate ways because we'd have our boyfriends to accompany us if we wanted to go somewhere else/ stay in the hotel/ etc. With just the girls, one would not have any choice but to come along.
11) Do not just ride a Tuktuk without asking how much. You can get a ride as low as 40baht but sometimes taking a cab would be cheaper. This we learned on our last day.
12) Never buy the Skytrain (BTS) pass that's good for 20 rides. We were planning on doing that yet on the entire trip, we rode the Skytrain 3x.
13) Jin implemented a great idea of printing on a small piece of paper different denominations in baht and their conversion to pesos starting from 100 baht to 200 baht to 300 baht all the way to 2000 baht. That way, when a seller would tell us "450 baht!!", we can just look at our cheat sheet and know immediately how much it is in Pesos.
14) Thai people are generally friendly and helpful. (It helped also that Filipinos can easily be mistaken as Thai). When they say thank you, they press their heads together and bow their heads, no matter what they're doing! The simple gesture just shows how sincere they really are.
15)It's best to travel with people you know you can get along with. We hardly had any problems with one another and any changes in our plans were discussed and decided upon by everyone so that nobody felt bad about the change in plans.
16) People sometimes ask you, "Which would you rather be? Rich but sad? Or poor but happy?" Ask me that after coming from Bangkok and you'd definitely know what my answer would be.
1) A trip to Bangkok is best experienced with girlfriends simply because it's a shopping haven! Boys wouldn't appreciate it as much. So if shopping is your mission, go with girlfriends.
2) It's best to be organized by having an itinerary, checklist of things to bring and projected expenses before coming to Bangkok. Research, research, research is key. The internet is your friend.
3) Why go for a hotel when you can have the same accommodation and service at a cheaper rate in a serviced apartment? Besides, you went to Bangkok to shop, right? And your hotel is just for resting? So why spend so much for accommodations? The money you save in getting a serviced apartment can easily go to your shopping allowance.
4) Play down being a shopaholic by injecting a few cultural activities in your itinerary. In our case, we had the river cruise, snake farm, Thai jewelry shop visits courtesy of our free tour. We also had the two massage sessions and Patpong. Yes, I classify them as cultural.
5) Buy a local sim card for cheaper communication between you and your girlfriends, in case you will have to go separate ways. A local sim card also makes communication abroad cheaper as well. (With the sim card I got, a text from my Thai sim card to the Philippines cost only P9.59 whereas a text from Globe to Globe would have cost me P20- P30, regardless whether the number is in Thailand or the Philippines!)
6) Serious shopping? Bring a huge luggage that's almost empty. Bring a huge, preferably expandable bag, where you can put your small purchases in while you shop. Instead of carrying a purse, use a belt bag. The belt bag I used was so slim that I wore it under my spaghetti strapped top!
7) To save on money, my friends and I brought our own breakfast. We brought canned goods and bread and even plastic utensils, cups and paper plates (since our serviced apartment had a kitchenette). We were quite sure though that all the utensils and plates would have to be rented which explains why we brought utensils we can easily dispose of.
8) It is cheaper to have your money exchanged to Baht here in the country. We had our money exchanged at Banco De Oro.
9) A lot of stores lower the price of clothes if you buy wholesale (read: 2 to 3 pieces). Elaine and Cris learned that it would be best to team up and shop together just to get clothes at wholesale prices. It's a good thing they had the same taste in clothes.
10) We realized that if we had our boyfriends with us, we would:
a) have more cultural activities than shopping
b) have more pictures
c) not have accomplished as much since there would be 4 more other people to wait for.
d) probably end up going separate ways because we'd have our boyfriends to accompany us if we wanted to go somewhere else/ stay in the hotel/ etc. With just the girls, one would not have any choice but to come along.
11) Do not just ride a Tuktuk without asking how much. You can get a ride as low as 40baht but sometimes taking a cab would be cheaper. This we learned on our last day.
12) Never buy the Skytrain (BTS) pass that's good for 20 rides. We were planning on doing that yet on the entire trip, we rode the Skytrain 3x.
13) Jin implemented a great idea of printing on a small piece of paper different denominations in baht and their conversion to pesos starting from 100 baht to 200 baht to 300 baht all the way to 2000 baht. That way, when a seller would tell us "450 baht!!", we can just look at our cheat sheet and know immediately how much it is in Pesos.
14) Thai people are generally friendly and helpful. (It helped also that Filipinos can easily be mistaken as Thai). When they say thank you, they press their heads together and bow their heads, no matter what they're doing! The simple gesture just shows how sincere they really are.
15)It's best to travel with people you know you can get along with. We hardly had any problems with one another and any changes in our plans were discussed and decided upon by everyone so that nobody felt bad about the change in plans.
16) People sometimes ask you, "Which would you rather be? Rich but sad? Or poor but happy?" Ask me that after coming from Bangkok and you'd definitely know what my answer would be.
Labels: Bangkok
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