BKK Work Trip, March 2012: Arrival in BKK @ Renaissance Bangkok Hotel

Recently, Mastercard announced that Bangkok is this year's number 1 city for travel. Since I'm on BKK mood recently, here's another entry during my work trip to BKK last March, 2 weeks after I came back from LDN. Arriving at the airport, bright & early! Coincidentally, Bro-in-Law Roger was also on his way to BKK to attend a conference.

 

Window seat (again) on the usual SQ972 flight :)

 Whenever I'm at the airport, I tend to scuffle off to my usual hangout place to wait for boarding time. This time round, I took a couple of minutes to visit the fern garden & koi pond (located at T2, departure transit lounge). Landscaped with tropical tree ferns, the garden also features a wide range of unique ferns, such as Birds' Nest Ferns, Rabbit-foot Ferns etc. It was also interesting to learn that the giant Tasmanian tree ferns - Dicksonia Antarctica, which is probably a survivor dating back to dinosaur era, are known to live for more than 400 years!

 

Walking to gate E12. As much as I prefer gates that are nearer, there are times where the planes will be assigned to the last gate of the wing, which meant that passengers will have to cover a longer distance to reach the gate.

  

Looked like it will be a full flight! 

 

 Always a pleasure to fly on our national carrier. 

While waiting for take-off ;)

 

Up, up & away to BKK :) 

 

Meal on-board to curb my hunger pangs :) A pleasant surprise to find ice-cream, but no chocolate ice-cream :( #disappointed

 

Arrived @ Suvarnabhumi Airport 2.5 hours later. I always have difficulty pronouncing the name of this airport to cab drivers. Normally, I'll just hop on to the cab and says "Airport, Suva.....", then the cab drivers will go "Oh, ok!" Finally, I googled and it is pronounced as "su-wan-na-poom", which means "The Golden Land", specifically referring to the continental Indochina.

Making my way to immigrations, hopefully the queue will be short.

 

Air-Asia has now moved all their operations to Don Muang Airport, which is nearer to the city. Don't make the same mistake as us during our last trip to BKK.

Landed, lugging my suitcase to the meet up point for airport transfer. 

You will pass by 2 tolls gantries along the way (I think), total of 70THB. This will be taken care of if you're travelling on airport limo transfer. However, you will have to pay the charges if you're on public taxi.

 

Saw this en-route to the hotel. The building management actually cater a "window" for the tree branch instead of cutting it off #savetheenvironment :)

This time round, I stayed @ Renaissance that belonged to Marriott Group. Roger stayed in the same hotel too & turned out that we were on the same floor as well, lol!

 

The drive-way. Not many taxis know about this hotel - or rather, it could be the way we pronounce the name. I still remembered during my stay in Conrad, I told the cab driver "Conrad" and he gave me the confused look. So I had to direct him to Wireless street & drove into Conrad drive-way before he turned around & say "Oh, Con-lad", lol! So during my stay in this hotel, for cab drivers who don't recognise the hotel address, I'll ask them to drop me off @ BTS Chit Lom station & walk back.

  

The hotel is situated in central Bangkok, with easy access to BTS Chit Lom station & its skywalk. Gayson, Zen, Central World and Siam Paragon are only a stone's throw away.

 

Help yourselves to the welcome sweets :)    

 The lobby area was furnished with hues of gold and red, a classy welcome for the guests.

 

I stayed in the Deluxe King Guest Room, overlooking the city & Lumpini Park. 

Renaissance Bangkok Ratchaprasong Hotel

518/8 Ploenchit Road

Bangkok 10330, Thailand

Tel: 66 2 1255000

A change of outfit later, I set off for a quick lunch before heading to my client's place.

I don't usually have the luxury of time to venture out for a meal, so I'll tend to settle my lunch @ the lobby bar. Upon stepping into the R bar, I was wow-ed by the over-the-top decor (think reflective surfaces and colour-changing fiber optics). Thankfully, they managed to create a tasty outlook, with the use of plush sofas & sleek tables. 

 

Huge (plastic) diamond placed on every table ... Shine bright like a diamond, lol!

  
Lunch menu - spring rolls with orange juice. The awkward timing always hinder my decision on ordering a full meal, so I tend to head for light snacks instead. 
 
Looking through my notes again before heading down to client's place. I need to start getting a professional notebook to take down notes, but just can't resist cute items, lol!   

R Bar, Renaissance Hotel

518/8 Ploenchit Road,

Bangkok 10330, Thailand

Tel: 66 2 125 5000

Opening Hours: 9am till 1am daily

Late night dessert at Wimbly Lu

With our cooking adventures taking our kitchen by storm, I was normally exhausted on a weekday night. However, Kenneth sure knows the way to lure me out on a weekday night, lol! When you put cafe + chocolates + near your place in a single sentence, that was enough for me to throw in the towel & head out!

I first found out about this place from lil bro. A chance incident when we sent lil bro to meet his friends at this cafe & we sort of lost our way circling round the estate trying to find the place. When we finally got to the location, I was surprised to see the street bustling with life in a private housing estate! It was a miniature version of Holland V at night. Thinking that lil bro was out drinking (I had to report to mummy dearest somehow), I googled "Wimbly Lu" and surprise surprise, this was a chocolate cafe!  

 

Check out the vintage beetle that has become an icon for this cafe, even incorporating it into their logo. In fact, their logo reminds me of a pumpkin carriage from Cinderella. 

With a name of Wimbly Lu, I was surprised to find that the cafe was jointly created by owners Lim Wee Bin & Lucinana Tan, who decided to swap their 30yrs (combined) TV production careers for a "kitchen" life.

Kenneth & Meiqin reached before us & was given a table for 4. Just as we pulled up in front of the cafe, Kenneth called and he was contemplating of leaving & filled me in on the details. So the drama unfolded .... Kenneth & Meiqin were asked to move to a smaller table of 2 pax in the midst of their appetizers. The staff wanted to take back the table (of 4) to cater to a bigger group. They claimed that since their friends (me+Leecher) were not here yet, Kenneth will have to move to a smaller table first. Naturally, Kenneth was upset as they were already halfway through their appetizers! He tried to reason with them, stating his displeasure, but end up still had to give up the table. When I arrived (5 min later), I had to stand around the 2 pax table that Kenneth & Meiqin were now sitting at while they prepared another 4 pax table for us. We then moved (utensils, food and all) to the new table. Basically, Kenneth had a change of 3 tables within the span of 15 min. While they were extremely apologetic about it later, but I think the night's mood was more or less dampened.

 

At least they offered to change a brand new soup for us. I had a taste of the mushroom soup ($5, for soup of the day) and it was good! Definitely nothing that came out from the campbell can. 

They certainly redeemed themselves with their tasty food. Not a lot of cafes are able to nail both food + desserts successfully, but I guess Wimbly Lu is one of the few that managed to do so. Chicken & Mushroom Baked Rice ($10) was tastefully done too, which I was tempted to try out this dish in the kitchen!

 

with Kenneth & Meiqin :)  

 

with the dearest, of course!  

Glass-roofed dining area, which leads to a small neighbourhood playground and park at the end. I'll definitely love to head back during day time again :) 

A peak into their kitchen (for making desserts)!  

Most of their decorative items were handmade, which added to the personal touch.

Koppaberg Cider, strawberry & lime flavour ($12). It was a refreshing drink & I like the fruity taste, though strawberry definitely empowered the lime flavour.

Leecher went for iced chocolate with Baileys ($10.50). This was a very watered down version, no hints of Baileys at all. It felt like drinking melted Walls' ice-cream.

Since they are famous for their chocolates, we just had to go with everything chocolatey! First up, we have Rocky Roads ($5). This was extremely nutty, though it was rather difficult to slice up the portion for sharing. A lovely start :)

Rootbeer Cake with Vanilla ice-cream ($6). Who would have thought of putting mixing rootbeer with cake? A mouthful of cake & you have rootbeer + chocolate exploding in your mouth. Pair it with vanilla ice-cream to neutralise the sweetness.

A cuppa for Kenneth, I'm pretty sure he will have difficulty falling asleep that night, lol! 

Waffle with ice cream, topped with chocolate truffle ice cream and drizzled with chocolate sauce ($8.50). This was what I came here for! Crispy waffles served warm, always a pleasure to eat it with chocolate ice-cream! There are a couple of ice cream choices available - rum & raisin, salted caramel, honey cinnamon, milo, cheesecake and (boring) vanilla.

Even though we encountered the unpleasant incident earlier, I guessed the staff pretty much made amends later on. Overall, I would still head back to this cafe to try out their other homey items on the menu, but .... I'll make a reservation next time! 

Wimbly Lu
15-2 Jalan Riang
Singapore 358987
Tel: 6289 1489
Opening Hours: 1pm till 10.30pm (Tues-Fri), 9am till 11pm (Sat-Sun)