Entopia!

Last weekend, we had our 3rd time to Entopia (actually the 4th time as we went once when it was still Penang Butterfly Farm). You can read my post on our first time in Penang Butterfly Farm here and Entopia here. This trip, we went with Hubby's sisters and their kids and also my MIL. For most of them, it was their first time here.

We actually went again to Entopia last year, and Heidi insisted on wearing her butterfly wings there! It caused a lot of amusement with the park employees and other visitors alike, and even the the butterflies were attracted to her - they probably thought she was their long-lost sister!

So this year, both Heidi and Helene wore butterfly dresses instead. I got them from H&M and Helen's was only RM10.00 It's now Helene's favourite dress to wear so I definitely got a good deal! :)

Even little Charlize had a butterfly t-shirt on! :)

It was quite a productive trip this time. We were early so we managed to catch the butterfly-releasing session at 10.15 am. Here are the girls patiently waiting to release their butterflies in the plastic containers.

This time, it was Hannah instead who was the butterfly magnet :)

Hubby and I managed to attract some butterflies too!

After that, we participated in holding a scorpion at the bug show and tell. Well, maybe not "we" but rather just Hubby and his sister! :p

And then Hubby and his sister again participated in a trial activity which is going to kick-off next year - which is to transfer bugs from one container to another and to help clean the old containers. The bugs which they used this time was the Madagascar Hissing Cockroach. Now you know why the kids didn't want to participate!

Hubby even did a short interview after that on what he thought about the activity and his opinion on how it could be improved. So for those visiting Entopia next year, look out for this new activity!

After all the fun, it was time for lunch! We tried Hai Wei Seafood Restaurant in Precinct 10 for the first time and we were not disappointed. The food was good, the service was quick, and best of all, it was not expensive at all! We had 10 dishes for 11 adults and kids and 2 toddlers (total 13) and the bill only came up to RM217. We even had fish. So definitely on the "to-go again" list! See the food we had below - one pork dish is missing from here.

My 3 butterfly girls before leaving the house in the morning :)

#ABinBangkok

So let me continue with my Bangkok post. The last post was about the hotel we stayed in, so this post will be about what we did in Bangkok. I got the #ABinBangkok hashtag idea from our luggage tags given to us by a friend. We went with both these bags half empty, and came back with them full!

We took the early flight from Penang to Bangkok with Thai Smile - leaving Penang at 8 am in the morning. As Bangkok is an hour behind us, we got there nice and early, which gave us plenty of time to explore Chatuchak weekend market (which was the reason why we took the early flight!) There is so much to see (and eat!) there so we took our time walking along each small path exploring. Here are some of the food which we ate, not forgetting my favourite Thai milk tea!

There were many stalls in Chatuchak selling coconut ice cream, but we managed to find this stall which was the cheapest for only 30 baht! The stall owner even gave us a cup of fresh coconut water, and we also had a place to sit and eat in front of the stall *happiness*

We were in Chatuchak until dinner time, then we took the BTS back to Saphan Taksin station and caught the shuttle boat back to the hotel. So that ended the first day in Bangkok.

The next day, we had to attend the Anantara presentation, so after that was over (we didn't sign up for the membership package, by the way, again), we decided to take go to this mall called The EmQuartier. We travelled everywhere in Bangkok by BTS, it's cheap and convenient. So this mall was at the Phrom Phong BTS. A friend of mine had posted about this cafe called Audrey Cafe' des Fleurs so we decided to check it out. I did find out later that they have several other outlets across Bangkok.

We ordered the tomyam pizza and the Thai milk tea crepe cake to share. Both were yummy! The crepe cake looks extremely sweet but surprisingly it wasn't.

After that we headed to Siam Paragon (Siam BTS) where I had these sinfully delicious fries. I liked it so much I came back the next day to have it again!

After walking around Siam Paragon, we headed back to Saphan Taksin BTS to catch the shuttle boat to Asiatique. There is also a shuttle boat provided from our hotel, but since we were already at the BTS, we took the Asiatique boat, and then later in the evening only took our hotel boat back from Asiatique to our hotel.

Asiatique is very popular with tourists as it's like a large open air mall/bazaar, selling things mostly like Chatuchak. Things are slighly more pricey here, but it's worth to come for the experience.

Here I am in front of the large ferris wheel which we could see from our boat rides and also from our hotel room window. It cost 400 baht per person to ride the ferris wheel, so I was contented to just take a photo below haha.

For dinner that night, we tried this place which my sister went to the last time she was in Bangkok. It's called Baan Khanita and they serve authentic Thai food. The price is a little on the high side, but the food was so delicious that we had no regrets! Since it was just the 2 of us, we had the creamy tomyam (which came with 2 big river prawns) and Hubby's favourite green curry chicken.

These were the souvenirs which we bought from the girls from Asiatique. Aren't they cute? :)

The next day, we had a full free day. We googled and found out there was a Jim Thompson outlet store somewhere in the city so we decided to take a look. It looked quite far away from the BTS on Google maps so at one of the roads, we stopped to ask a hawker at the corner. Hubby asked her if it was the correct road, but her response was, "You wanna buy Jim Thompson? Yes down here!". We thought that was pretty funny - a lot of tourists must have asked her the same thing! This outlet is 4 storeys here and you can even buy fabric, besides the usual accessories like handbags and clothing.

After that, we went back to Siam BTS. After getting my fries fix, we explored around the area a bit. Besides Siam Paragon, there are other malls like Siam Centre, Siam Square, Central World, MBK & Tokyu Department Store.

The food at the various food courts were cheap and yummy!

And on the final day, we just hung around the hotel and went for a walk on the other side (not the river side) - where the Riverside Plaza was.

A few more selfies in the room before checking out, and then it was time to leave.

Goodbye Bangkok, it was a fun trip of lots of eating, shopping and lots of walking! We hope to be back soon.

Anantara Riverside Bangkok Resort

So since today is our R.O.M. anniversary, let me post about our trip to Bangkok, just the 2 of us! It has been some time since we last took a trip together without the kids, so when we got an offer from Anantara for a 4 days 3 nights stay for just USD99 in exchange for a 2 hour presentation of their Vacation Club membership (yes, similar to Phuket earlier this year), we decided to take up the offer.

We had actually attended the preview before, 2 years ago when we went to Koh Samui so that is how they got my contact details. We did not purchase the membership at that time, so probably they were trying their luck again, to see if we would sign up this time!

The initial offer was to stay at their brand new hotel Avani Riverside Hotel Bangkok but we had then enquired about taking our kids along. They replied to say if that was to be the case, then Avani could not accommodate any extra beds and so we could stay at Anantara Riverside Bangkok Resort instead which was just adjacent to it. In the end, we did not take the kids, since this would be our anniversary trip, but we requested to remain at Anantara instead, rather than at Avani. We preferred the resort-feel type of hotel, rather than those modern, trendy ones. However, unlike Phuket, this was not a Vacation Club hotel, but a proper resort.

And we were not disappointed! The hotel arranged a limousine pick-up to and from the airport, so that saved us a lot of money already.

We arrived at the hotel at 10 am (I had informed the hotel about this earlier) and the room was ready when we arrived despite the normal 3 pm check in time. I had requested for a room set-up for our anniversary, so we were pleasantly surprised to be greeted by this!

The hotel also gave us another surprise - a super rich chocolate cake!

And another surprise - we were upgraded for free to a room with a view of the Chao Phraya river!

This hotel is very nice - apparently it's the only hotel in Bangkok which is resort-type and not like the typical city hotel. Here are some pictures of the hotel surroundings.

Same view by day and by night:

And here are some pictures of the interior. There is a Jim Thompson shop inside the hotel lobby too.

The hotel runs its own shuttle boat service (similar to most hotels situated along the river) and this is the pier leading up to it. The shuttle boat runs every 20 minutes (so it's quite frequent) to Sathorn Pier (where the Saphan Taksin BTS is located) as well to Asiatique in the evenings.

The boat service was quite a novelty for us - it was like taking a river cruise everyday! When coming back from the pier to the hotel in the evenings, the boat even prepared cold towels for us to freshen up.

Some of the views during the boat ride, by day and by night:

Another factor which made us choose this hotel was the rave reviews about their buffet breakfast, and they were not wrong! The hotel had so much variety - from Korean to Japanese to Thai to Indian to Chinese and Western selections. And everything tasted good!

And this was Hubby's favourite - the noodle soup! It tasted so good that he had it 3 days in a row (but it was a different type of noodle every day).

More about what we did in Bangkok coming up in my next post!