Bangkok is one of the world’s greatest cities for food, it’s everywhere! You can take your pick from street vendor food, small family run restaurants, mid range chain restaurants in the shopping centres, international food, fast food and Michelin star restaurants.

Whether you want Pad Thai, chicken and rice, pizza, Indian curry or a Zinger burger…Bangkok has it all!

A lot of people I know return from Bangkok saying that the food wasn’t as cheap as they were expecting. When I ask where they ate the usual answer is, “oh in the hotel bar”. You can pay over the odds for food in Bangkok if you want, if you’re prepared to search and perhaps eat in the more plain looking family restaurants then you’ll find the legendary tasty and very cheap Thai food.

Here, I will try to give a rundown of the sort of thing you can expect to find in Bangkok along with a few personal recommendations.

Street vendor food

It is a bit clichéd, but it’s true that the best food in Bangkok is the street vendor food. Sure, the surroundings are less than salubrious, but I just love the atmosphere and the feel of eating food by the side of a busy road, sat on a plastic stool! You’ll find these set-ups all over the city, usually a group of people together each with their own speciality on their own cart. The most common dishes are chicken and rice (Khao man gai), red pork on rice (khao muu daeng), Pad Thai, many kinds of noodle soup and various curries. Just be adventurous and if you’re not confident with the language you can always point to what you want! Always have a glass of Thai-style icy milkshake on hand if something is unexpectedly spicy! I always find milk is much better than water at cooling your mouth down.

A good tip from a local if you’re not sure which vendor to choose, is go to the busier ones. That generally means the food is tastier and safe. I’ve never had any problems eating street food.

Other items for sale include various grilled meats on a stick and fruit portions. My personal favourite are the various vendors that line the wall of Lumpini Park in the evenings, in the car park area along Ratchadamri Road. The stalls in the Patpong/Silom area are also very popular.

Thai family restaurants

The Thai family restaurant is something that many foreigners never experience. A lot of people are put off by the bland appearance of these places, they are also quite hard to spot and many people just don’t know they’re there. At a glance it may look like someone’s house with the shutter doors left open. Look more closely and you may see the old aunt or grandmother of the family cooking noodles or chopping up chicken at the front of the shop! The décor is usually very basic, flimsy metal tables, plastic chairs and bare walls. The only decorations are spirit houses with the daily offering of Fanta and portraits of past and present royals will hang on the walls.

The food, however, is out of this world and always at a reasonable price. The menu choice is, of course, far more extensive than the street vendors. Always look out for the fish dishes, some are extra spicy! Yam Mun Sen (spicy sea food salad with noodles) is also a personal favourite.

A good choice in terms of location is Lek seafood, not far from Chong Nonsi skytrain station.

Chain restaurants

There are many good quality and fair priced chain restaurants around Bangkok, usually to be found in shopping centres and supermarkets. Listed here are the major ones:

Bar B Q Plaza – My personal favourite, I have to eat here every time I visit! Essentially you’re set up with a mini gas heated grill in the middle of your table, which also has a small moat of soupy water around the outside. You order plates of meat and veg and cook/boil it yourself. You will be given some dipping sauce, lime, garlic and chilli which you can mix to suit yourself.

Daidomon – Along similar lines to Bar B Q Plaza, except you actually get a small barbeque in your table instead!

Fuji – A hugely popular chain of Japanese restaurants, serving all the usual offerings of sushi, gyoza, tempura, curries and much more.

Oishi – Another big favourite with Thai’s. There are many variations on the theme, but it’s basically a Japanese style buffet restaurant, pay one price and eat all you like. The bigger ones serve sushi, teppanyaki (made to order) food and various Chinese foods that are rotated.

See Fah – Serves a good selection of Thai food.

Sizzler – Get there early because these places fill up fast! Popular with Thais and tourists, this is an American fill-ya-face steakhouse with an extensive western menu and unlimited salad bar. You could get seriously overweight if you ate here every day!

MK – Similar concept to Bar B Q Plaza, but here you boil all of your own food. They serve hot items off the menu too, the duck is a favourite.

Pizza Company – Despite the name, this is a Thai pizza chain, but they sell all the favourite pizza toppings, garlic bread etc. Similar standard to Pizza Hut and slightly overpriced for pizza, but it’s a good fill if you need a pizza fix!

I’m sure there are more that I’ve missed, but this covers the main choices!

International food

There are any number of Italian, French, British, American, Indian etc etc eateries around Bangkok and I won’t even attempt to categorize them here! Wherever you stay, you’ll more than likely have a few in your vicinity. The main concentration of European food is around the Silom and lower Sukhumvit areas. Great Japanese food is available on Soi Thaniya (Little Tokyo) just off Silom (near Pat Pong). This is also a great people watching spot, spend an hour in any of these Japanese eateries and you’ll see a never ending procession of Japanese executives coming and going, some in groups, some alone. Some reading newspapers, some reading comics (!!). All with a mobile phone or IPhone glued to their ears!

Arab and Indian food is plentiful around Ploen Chit and Nana skytrain stations and surround Sois. I like Mrs Balbir’s Indian restaurant, on Sukhumvit Soi 11/1 (Nana skytrain station). For a cracking pizza, try Bangkok Pizza on Sukhumvit Soi 26/1.

Fast Food

You can get your fix of KFC, McDonalds and Burger King all over Bangkok….enough said!

Upmarket eateries

If you fancy a splurge on upmarket eateries there is also plenty to choose from. For the location, try Vertigo on top of the Banyan Tree Hotel on Sathon Road (weather permitting of course!).

Baan Khanita (off Sukhumvit Soi 23) is an award winning Thai restaurant and La Normandie in the Oriental Hotel offers great food and great views of the Chao Phraya river.

There are many, many more but of course, I need to save up before I can afford to visit another!

Bad food experiences are rare in Bangkok, just be adventurous and don’t just settle for the hotel room service option, get out and about and explore what’s in your area. If you have any more tips to add to this list please feel free to let me know and I’ll happily add your contributions to my list.

Source by Matthew Tedstone

A moment of truth is an opportunity whereby a customer forms either a good impression or a bad impression about the restaurant service quality. Millions upon millions of “moments of truth” occur out there in the restaurant customer service world, but the successful businesses register the highest percentage rate of good impressions. It means everything to their image and reputation. This concept must be taught in every restaurant service training program.

The host is such an important part of the “dining room service experience” as he or she is the first person the customer sees and the last person the customer says goodbye. Great first impressions are great lasting impressions.Therefore, the host must dress nicely being neat and clean. The host must always be upbeat, friendly, and helpful to customers. The true purpose of guest seating is to make “every table seem like the best table in the restaurant!”

More concepts that must be taught in every restaurant service training program are as follows:

The telephone must be courteously answered stating the restaurant’s name and asking, “May I help you?” Whenever taking a dining reservation, one must politely ask for the name and the number of people in the party, date and time of the reservation, and the contact telephone number. Also, special requests should be noted, such as birthday guests, high chairs, customer food allergies, or the need to be seated at a specific table or location in the restaurant (for example, far from the window on a cold night; close to the window on a beautiful day). This information must then be recorded in a Reservation Journal that eventually will be transferred onto the Daily Reservation Sheet.

During busy hours, the customers waiting for an open table in the lobby or sitting at the bar can be offered menus to pass the time. In some restaurants, hors d’oeuvres are served to customers who have been waiting a long time for an open table. All ways and means must be exhausted to prevent customers from leaving to dine at another establishment-even if it means offering some complimentary items.

If the host is not busy seating customers, they can purvey the dining room for customers in need of service and relay such information to the waitstaff. This is up to the discretion of the host, for they should never stray too far from the Front Door.

So you see, the host who does the greeting at the front door is extremely important as the reputation and the bottom line are affected by the host’s restaurant customer service performance.

Source by Richard Saporito

The first thing I noticed at the New Year’s Eve dinner party I went to was just how beautifully adorned all the women were with their perfect make up and stunning dresses. They weren’t part of my social circle but I genuinely admired them from a distance; their graceful movements as they made their way through the crowds and kissed and hugged almost everyone in the room. Beautiful, popular AND lovable, I thought.

A few sodas later and with a full bladder, I made my way to the Ladies Room – the most dreaded room in the entire restaurant. As I pushed my way inside I found women occupying the entire space by the sink and even more of them fighting for a glimpse of their reflections in the mirror. Another half dozen were sitting on the chairs and chatting away – a sight that debunked the mystery of why restaurants and malls place big sofas in women’s bathrooms.

To my surprise, non of the chatter sounded friendly or happy. As I stood there awkwardly waiting for the next stall to open up, I became more and more aware of what these ‘pretty’ women were talking about. Did you look at her dress? Who wears fur anymore? I can’t believe she is here! Ugh her sister is so disgusting. How is she running a business?

Upon hearing this, I suddenly felt extremely conscious of my very-plain-Jane dress and lack of make up, and I prayed for a door to open up. Luckily one did and I half ran inside and let out a long sigh of relief. What felt like a lifetime of waiting was realistically only about a minute long, and although it was probably one of the most appalling sixty seconds of my life, it was also one of the most eye opening ones.

These women who were so beautiful and perfect on the outside were rotten on the inside, and I mean rotten to the very core. I’m talking about full on catty and snarky behavior. I’m talking about down right horrible.

I pitied them for the fact they had to resort to hatred, but I was mostly shocked; why would these women feel the need to talk so harshly about other women behind their backs? Why were they being so much nicer outside these four walls? How can a person be this fake?

As a mid twenties woman myself who tries to stay optimistic about the development of our sex across the nations, I was very confused by this behavior. In this day and age, I had higher expectations where I had envisioned women standing with one another and supporting each other so that they can achieve total equality of the sexes. I was under the impression that we were all running the same race and reaching for the same prize, but I was very wrong.

Feelings of jealousy and insecurity triggered by others is a common reality amongst females, but this was a whole other level of bitterness and hostility that I was never exposed to. The scientific world, on the other hand, has been very well aware of this phenomenon for decades.

A study conducted by researcher Christopher Ferguson of Stetson University in Florida asked two sets of female participants to watch different TV shows (one with a lean female star and another with a chubbier one) and to interact with different women afterwards (in casual or attractive clothes). They concluded that the participants were not affected by the characters on TV but by the live encounters instead; those who interacted with the lean women in attractive clothes felt generally more distressed and negative about their own body image.

Another survey conducted by the Workplace Bullying Institute found that female bullies target other women in their workplace 68% of the time.

More research has been done over the last five years and they all have big numbers that point to the same conclusion: the number of female vs. female hostility and competition is high. But why is this continuing to snowball? Different theories associate this with two root causes; genetic hardware and biological imperatives or the way women are socialized and stigmatized from a very young age. Either way, science suggests that these are more or less innate behaviors.

But is this true? And even if it is, do we, as women, not have the capacity or ability to become more aware of our harmful behavior and change it? Do we want to raise a generation of girls who manipulate and shame each other to reach their goals, whether it is to win the heart of the perfect man or to place a CEO placard on their doors? Or do we want to set an example of what it’s like to admire other strong women and to support one another?

Source by Maram J

If you are looking for outdoor furniture either for your garden or patio you can depend on Rattan Garden Furniture as the best solution. The garden or patio’s ambiance will also depend on what type and style you choose for it. Garden or patio sets will be an add on to its beauty, therefore you must take care to choose the right type as you do for your interior decoration.

It has been there for innumerable years. Rattan is a long vine found in tropical areas. If rattan is heated it becomes flexible making it fit for crafting using wicker technique. But the USP of rattan is that when it cools down after heating it becomes rock hard making it the right material for crafting it into durable sets.

If you are looking for sophisticated and stylish furnishing items for your garden and patio, then it is the right choice. We can assure you that you will enjoy sitting out either in your garden or patio in the sofas made from this material.

Well you can also get it made from synthetic materials so that it will last longer. The synthetic rattan is called poly rattan garden set, plastic, PVC or resin rattan outdoor item. These brands of man-made category are ideal for all weather conditions.

Both traditional and contemporary outdoor rattan cube sets from this type of material for garden are either four chairs and a table with glass top or two individual chairs and a sofa arrangement with cushions.

Consider buying furnishing sets made from renewable, organic sources crafted with traditional skills complete with teak frame if you are living in a place with dry climate. You can expect them to last at least 20 years.

It provides both quality and variety. The rattan wicker dinning set is made of good material with long durability preserving the stylish looks. As the frames is made of aluminum non rusting frames that are strong and lightweight making this dinning set easily movable.

Maintaining this piece of dinning set is also easy. It can be washed using soapy water or even hose for washing with no damages.

It also offers variety if your budget is not a constrained. You will get a wide range of choice at the best available prices and a durability that cannot be matched by other furniture.

Source by Renu Rohila

If you are in search of a furniture cover that is long-lasting and moisture resistant, you should think about getting neoprene seat covers. If you choose to go for this type of seat cushion, it will bring many benefits which will be discussed in this article. Here are some benefits you can rely on which are indeed true.

• Neoprene is an excellent material that can produce a quality and durable chair cushion. Other than being heat and water resistant, the material can offer better protection from friction. Compared to other types of materials for seat covers, neoprene can last for an extended period of time. They won’t easily get damaged and there will not be too much accumulation of dust.

• Neoprene chair covers are known to be moisture-resistant decent cushions. This is because neoprene is the same material used in making wet suits. If you accidentally spilled liquid on your seat cushion, you don’t have to worry about a thing because liquid can just evaporate from the material.

• Neoprene material is also heat resistant. Cars can be parked for so long under the heat of the sun and chair cushions tend to accumulate heat. Neoprene chair covers are heat resistant therefore, when you get on your car on a sunny day, you don’t have to endure burning your legs.

• Another advantage to having beautiful covers made from neoprene is that the material is not flammable. If you are a smoker and you have to smoke inside your car, you don’t have to worry about having your chair cover catch fire since the material is not flammable. If you either intentionally or unintentionally drop cigarette ashes, it won’t be too much of a problem.

The things mentioned above are some of the benefits of having neoprene furniture covers. This kind of chair cover is becoming popular and more and more people find recognition of this material. Not only will these furniture covers be advantageous, but they are available in many styles and colors if you wish to have them custom-made, giving your car more appeal. There are plenty of seat covers made from neoprene and you can find some of them from the internet. You can choose from various colors and trims that will suit the kind of style you like. If you search online, you can find cool furniture cover designs that will match to your liking. These seat covers are affordable and choosing them can make any car look great.

Source by Annie A. Smith

There comes a time when you need more seating in your home. Maybe it’s the holidays and you’re hosting dinner. With friends and family there, you have to pull out every available chair. Or maybe it’s a backyard barbeque, where the cooler doubles as a chair for someone who doesn’t mind getting up every time someone needs a drink. In the old days, this meant getting out the old metal card table and chairs. You know the ones, silvery-gray and dull. If you were lucky, the seat had a bit of padding, but not much. Typically, this would be the kids table. If there weren’t kids anymore, it felt like the outcast table. No one ever wanted to sit on the folding chairs. Oh, but how the times have changed! Nobody has to sit on those utilitarian metal folding chairs anymore; the cooler can just be for drinks. Now, there are pretty, stylish, comfortable wood folding chairs.

Wood folding chairs may have started out as simple outdoor chairs, but they have come a long way. Take the Adirondack chair, for instance. It’s best known for sitting on a deck or lounging on the beach. The popular style easily folds down so that it can be stored for the winter or transported to a new location. The comfort and convenience would even make this a good chair for indoors.

When you think of patio furniture, do you imagine wicker or plastic? Or metal with plastic webbing? Most people do. The problem with most of these is that they take up a lot of room for storage or have to be covered in inclement weather. For the space conscious, wood folding chairs are perfect. There are patio sets, as well as matching tables and chairs. All of which fold down and take up less than half the space of typical patio furniture, just like storing a card table. Save a little space on storing furniture so you have room for more important things.

One of the nicest things about wood folding chairs is that they come in so many different styles. Some are very similar to the quintessential metal folding chair, with the small back and slightly padded seat. There are others that have the same shape, but a more interesting back, such as a lattice design, mission style, or slat back, even rattan for the backing and seat. There are chairs made of bamboo or teak, with or without armrests, table or bar height.

Perhaps you’re looking for an upholstered side chair to complement a dining set, or you’d like leather insets for a more upscale look. All these are available and more.

Whenever extra seating is needed, you want your guests to be comfortable. You don’t want to give them a chair that screams “nothing else available.” Just because it isn’t used often, doesn’t meant it shouldn’t be nice looking or comfy. Available at discount stores or upscale merchandisers, as indoor or outdoor styles, in different finishes and various designs, wood folding chairs make saving space an easy, stylish option.

Source by Scott M Beshenich

Bean bag chairs have been around for a long while and are now gaining back their popularity. A unique seat that adds a fun flair to any place where comfort is desired. Not always remembered, almost always forgotten, these interesting alternatives deserve our consideration. Stepping away from the conventional type of lounge chair, bag chairs can add a uniquely comfortable seat, to anywhere we relax and wind down.

The pear shaped bean bag chair is a fascinating prospect to this otherwise round chair. When a pear shaped design is used there is a substantial amount of back support added to the already comfortable seat. In the traditional bag chair, there is minimal to no back support, which will cause you to be in a more lying down position. Bag chairs with the pear shaped design, allow the lounger to do those upright activities such as reading, working on a laptop, playing video games and a myriad of activities that would be uncomfortable in the round version of the chair with no back support. They allow the beans to mold to your shape all the way up the back to the neck.

With this in mind we need to explore the idea that all bean bag chairs are not created equal, the quality of the materials used is something that should be considered. The fabric quality, construction, type and quality of the filler and the safety features are all things to be considered. There are many lower quality bean bags and bean bag patterns out there that will not provide the quality and comfort higher quality bean bags provide.

Look for high quality fabrics, seams that are double-stitched, and filling that is made from material that will continue to provide comfort for years to come. Safety features are very important and all bean bag chair manufacturers are required by law to provide each chair with double locking zippers. Making your own chair will not provide these safety features nor will it provide the strength and durability of high quality upholstery grade fabrics and double stitched seams.

Bean bag chairs make great pieces of lounge furniture and can be enjoyed for years to come. Picking the right chair with all of the safety and durability features and also the added “Pear” shaped design is the key. Providing the softness and comfort of a bag chair and also great back support makes pear shaped bean bags the chair to choose. Choosing a lower quality less expensive chair will waste money and give a bad opinion of these extremely comfortable and unique chairs.

Source by Amber Minnick