+66 Down the Chao Phraya River

This was the first time we stayed by the Chao Phraya River in all our trips to Bangkok, and I have to say it is quite a refreshing change from a typical Bangkok trip. I've been to Bangkok several times and always stayed in the city centre - Pratunam, Sukhumvit. We tend to book boutique hotels with more space and near a BTS station, so it was quite a change for us.

It definitely is a more quiet environment, and at some points, it even felt like I was in a beach/seaside property in Phuket. Also to get a 5-star suite at such a good rate, of course we had to compromise a little on location. But the view....speechless....

I also got to ride down the Chao Phraya River canals in a private long-tail boat and it was quite a "scary" experience at the end when the waters got choppy =.=

Hotel staff helping us get on the boat. The entire trip lasted for an hour and cost about THB700 per person.

 

You get to see the river-side residential of the local people, and everyone who saw us were so happy and waved at us. Which got us thinking....how real was everything that we were looking at? Were the people at the temples paid to feed the fish so they would jump about when tourist boats passed by? Haha. Nettie even suspected this giant turtle we saw when the boat slowed down was a robot -_-

 

If you are deathly afraid of vendors, the boat only stopped once for this lady. We politely said no to everything she tried to sell us, until she said "How 'bout a beer for your driver?" And we were like, oh, okay, that can be his tip! And as she sailed back to pass him his beer, she was probably chuckling that this trick works all the time. Haha. Ohwell, little joys of life.

Not really a temple person, but the river-side religious artifacts were quite a sight. Behold!

We spent quite long on the last evening contemplating if we should even walk out to find food (cos we're lazy and it was raining and I had started coughing) or to dine in at the international buffet. Unlike the city centre where food is everywhere you don't even have to think. In the end, we settled for the international buffet dinner with BBQ seafood, pleasantly surprised that there was a 40% discount for in-house guests when we reached the restaurant :D

As our flight was in the evening, the hotel kindly gave us a free late check-out as well so we could nua like tofu until the late afternoon. But in the end we sadly had to pack up to catch our flight, but not before some afternoon tea at the lobby lounge :)