Day 6 in Bangkok and Em Quartier

Day 6 in Bangkok and Em Quartier is the 6th part of my 7 day account of our recent Bangkok trip

On our sixth and last morning in Hilton Sukhumvit, I finally decided to go to their all-day-diner (Scalini) for breakfast, and instantly regretted not going there earlier. The variety (although nothing compared to Dubai breakfasts) was so much better than their Club Lounge’s variety!

After breakfast, M was still asleep (no big surprise there), so I decided to take the short, 5-minutes walk over to one of the two malls that Phrom Phong station exits to: Em Quartier. I decided to kill time the best way I know how, by raiding the aisles of the Gourmet Market- the chain of supermarkets you find in malls there, and made mental list of all the exotic things I would buy to take back to Dubai. The reason I didn’t buy the perishables there and then was because my bag-carrier (M) was still asleep, remember?

We checked out as soon as M woke up, and checked into a much (much) smaller room in Movenpick Sukhumvit, which was only a few streets away. You can read all about that here. We dropped our luggage and decided to walk to the nearest train station. The mistake we made was not asking the hotel’s concierge for directions, and relied on asking random people on the street instead. Big mistake, because it turned out that everyone we spoke to didn’t even understand the words “Skytrain”, even when accompanied by frantic hand gestures. Finally, it occurred to us to use the term “BTS”, and someone pointed us towards Nana station. We would later discover that Asok station in the other direction was closer.

On our way to Nana station, we passed by a cute discounted bookstore, called Asia Books, as well as stalls (openly on the street!) of explicit adult toys and….um…performance enhancing medicines which looked rather scary, with snakes and scorpions made on the boxes. I have a strong feeling they weren’t FDA approved, and was totally judging the tourists who were buying them.

Now here’s the funny bit: the entire time we were staying close to Phrom Phong station, we would ride to Siam every day, and now that we were closer to Siam, we were riding back to Phrom Phong, because by now I had realized how very promising Em Quartier was, and had just discovered the Em Quartier Food Hall.

M and I ate Pad Thai, Tom Yum and Sticky Rice and Mango, and then explored the mall. By now my jeans were really digging into my soul, and I needed to buy a bigger size, so we ventured into a store called Uni Qlo to look for some chinos. Love this place, the prices are reasonable (you can find pants for around AED 90-110, and the quality is very decent. I also ended up finding the coolest ever “lounge pants”, which are basically like elephant pants but without the elephants. Oh how much I LOVED being able to walk around in pubic, in what were practically just pajamas, and not have to worry about the judgemental glares of the Chanel and Louis Vuitton donning masses of Dubai.

Note: we got a small VAT discount over here too. In order to get the VAT refund form, make sure you keep a copy of your passport with you. This form will be filled out by and provided to by the stores themselves.

By now, I could tell M is starting to get quite bored. He’s not used to spending this much time with me and away from his laptop, and was starting to look dazed and disoriented. I could sense an existential crisis creeping in, so I asked him if he would like to watch a movie, to which the expected and very enthusiastic response was a big YES. He googled movies and their timings, realized that the one he wanted to watch was playing at Terminal 21 in half an hour.

I tricked M into thinking I would watch the movie with him (honestly it’s his fault for falling for it, when have I ever wasted time in foreign lands, watching a movie?), but then just as he was paying for the ticket and didn’t have the wriggle-room to ask questions, I bailed, went to Dairy Queen, grabbed a quick sticky rice and mango Blizzard and skipped over to Lek Massage parlour to get a foot, neck and head massage.

After my very relaxing massages, I went back to Em Quartier, and read my book at the Harrod’s cafe over some Black Forrest cake, which is surprisingly pretty much the same price as Starbucks in Bangkok. M and I then reconvened at Em Quartier Food Hall for dinner, and were pleased to discover that on weekends it actually closes at 12. And that’s how you can spend an entire day in Bangkok doing absolutely nothing productive but not getting bored at all.