Southeast Asia Travel Journal

I’ve been a bit remiss on taking a look back at my statistics for all of 2011. The impact on my sites from the floods and the continuing economic woes in Europe have had me focused on the short term. So, owing to the big downturn, I was a bit surprised to see that AsiaForVisitors.com, including its two sub-sites ThailandForVisitors.com and BangkokForVisitors.com, received a total of just over 1 Million visitors last year.

A million unique visitors is quite a milestone, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank every one of you. Unfortunately, I can’t do it individually, so this blog post will have to do.

I’m definitely not siting back on my laurels, and continue to update and expand the content. You can expect a big update to the Penang guide soon, as well as a new do-it-yourself day trip guide for Bang Pa In Summer Palace. And that’s just the next few months.

Thank you again for all your support. Have a great 2012, and may it include lots of travel!

Among the few new players at the shiny new Central Rama IX Mall is the first Thai branch from the French chain, Hippopotamus Grill. The chain has over a 150 restaurants in France. Thailand is apparently their second country in Southeast Asia, after Singapore.

The large restaurant’s interior is comfortably plush without being stuffy, casual but smart. The menu seems to be almost an exact copy of the French menu, with a few local adaptations. It offers the chain’s trademark steaks, as well as burgers, appetizers and desserts. There also is what looks like a decent wine list, although in Bangkok these are going to cost you.

The comfortably plush interior of Hippopotamus Grill

I wasn’t in the mood for a steak – I rarely am – so I decided to try one of the burgers, which are supposed to be good as well. There are several ‘basic’ burgers to choose from – ‘classic’, cheeseburger or bacon burger – and for whichever burger you select, you also have to choose a sauce, which is served on the side – and a side dish, which can be French fries, potatoes au gratin, potatoes dauphine, or even Thai steamed rice. The server will also ask how you want the burger cooked.

I went with a cheeseburger with black pepper sauce and au grautin potatoes. The French fries looked like the typical shoestring fries you get anywhere, so I thought the au gratin potatoes might be a nice change. To drink, I tried the Hippo Smoothie, a blend of mainly strawberry and banana.

The Cheeseburger with au gratin potatoes at Hippopotamus

The food took a reasonable amount of time to prepare. As you can see, the presentation is simple, but nice. I like that there was no ‘garnish’ on the side that would just be thrown away most of the time. The cheese, rather than just melted on top of the patty, was mixed in with the grilled onions, which is certainly different.

As you can probably see in the photo, the patty is a little small for the bun. It wasn’t too bad once you put the top bun in place properly, and the pepper sauce went well with the bread, so I didn’t feel too cheated by that. They don’t serve ketchup or any other condiment with the burger, although they might provide it if you ask. The au gratin potatoes were a little more bland than I expected, but a little pepper made it better.

The burger was good, but at 350 Baht it was a bit over-priced. You can get bigger, better burgers for the same price or less elsewhere. The steaks might be a better option, although they will set you back a lot more, 1,000 Baht or so, but that is competitive with other steak houses in Bangkok. Hippopotamus is an expensive place to eat, but the price is comparable to other similar places. However, the location seems a bit odd to me. The area and the mall don’t seem to be the right fit for a high-end steak place. The choice is either genius, or will doom the restaurant.

Hippopotamus Grill is open mall hours – 10:00 am to 10:00 pm. There doesn’t seem to be a web site for the Thai operation as yet.

Bangkok Essentials Cover

I’m pleased to announce the availablity of a new ebook, joining the line of PDF eguides that have proved so successful. The new title, Bangkok Essentials, combines the sight-seeing information from the two eguides, Bangkok’s Big Three and Off the Rails in Bangkok. Since ebooks don’t have any weight, I decided to combine all the sightseeing guides into one volume to give you the most bang for your buck.

Bangkok Essentials covers the ‘big three’ sights of Bangkok – the Grand Palace, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha (Wat Po) and the Temple of Dawn (Wat Arun) – as well as half a dozen other interesting sights, all of which can be easily reached by Bangkok’s boat and train system. Detailed information about each sight is given, along with how to reach them using the Skytrain, Subway or Chaophraya Express services.

Bangkok Essentials is available in either ‘Mobi’ format for Amazon Kindle devices/applications, or ‘ePub’ format for Apple’s iBooks, Stanza, Aldiko and many others.

You can purchase Bangkok Essentials either directly from the AsiaForVisitors.com eBook Store, or for Kindle you can purchase from Amazon
and have the book delivered automatically to your reader.