That was close...

Bangkok hasn't been the safest place on earth in recent years. With the Red Shirt's protests and the clamp down of it this year, coupled with the burning of few good buildings (like Big C and CentralWorld in the heart of Bangkok city for instance), we haven't been able to pay our trade visit to Thailand for a long while.

Then when the dusts finally settle down, we seized the opportunity to visit Bangkok last week. Well, we used to stay at Pathumwan Princess Hotel, which is great as it's a very nice hotel with beautiful breakfast, and what makes it more lovely is the fact it is connected to MBK mall! Genius.

But, of course, there's always a 'but' - the fare is actually, not quite within our budget.

So we found this new lovely hotel called the Pullman KingPower Hotel. Well, the name is kinda funny and unusual, but it's new and, to be frank, very elegant and beautiful. Right next to the hotel is a nice huge Duty Free Shopping Mall called the KingPower Duty Free Shops, where tourists from overseas can shop for duty free items and collect them at the airport before you depart the country.

Furthermore, the hotel provides free 'tuk tuk' service to fetch its customers to its nearest BTS station, which is the Victory Monument Station. Well, it only takes about 5 mins walk to reach the BTS station, but, the hotel decides to pamper you with alternatives if you're just too lazy to walk.

So here we stay, did our work and enjoy our stay there. There's this road called Rang Nam road, right outside of the hotel, is where my colleague and I loitered the most for the short 3 days visit. We were walking up and down, looking for massage parlours and some nice dinner places, only to find ourselves eating at one of the many 7-Eleven along that road and a superly overpriced massage place which was highly recommended by the concierge... Despite all that, we still think that perhaps, we can make this hotel as our first choice going forward.

Then, the following week, this news startled us

"Grenade explodes near shopping centre" - BangkokPost

"The grenade blast in the heart of Bangkok early Friday morning was clearly an attempt to discredit the government... the grenade, which was put in a plastic rubbish bag and dropped on a pile of garbage in front of a house in Rang Nam Road opposite the King Power duty-free shopping centre, went off about 1.30am..."

That was close...

Guess it's time for us to find ourselves new hotels to stay in, if, we are going there anytime soon that is...