[Review] Holiday Inn Express Bangkok Siam

 

Had a pleasant 6-night stay at HIEX Bangkok Siam early this March! The first time we stayed at Holiday Inn Express was seven years ago at Singapore Katong. We loved the concept where only the basics are provided, prices are kept low, and you get the same Holiday Inn hospitality. Perfect for tourists who are mostly out the entire day and only wanted a safe and comfortable place to sleep in.

Here's my Youtube feature of the hotel:

 

Room and price

We got the Queen Standard with breakfast for around ₱4,600/night. Upon check-in we were upgraded to stadium view which was nice. 

Queen Standard

 
Stadium view 

We knew we could get a cheaper place but I don't know, for 6 nights I wanted to make sure we're staying at a credible hotel with thick walls so we can sleep soundly in the evening.  

Room is quite spacious at 23sqm, there's a Smart TV, floor to ceiling window, water kettle, cups, coffee and tea, and a mini ref. They also have soft and firm pillows, as usual and a very comfy bed!

Toilet and shower area is impeccably clean and towels are replaced daily. Water pressure is good, but the cold shower doesn't get that cold! Hot shower can get really hot which is nice, but I'd like to alternate with a cold splash once in a while and unfortunately the water just won't get that cold. Must be the weather. It's a very hot week in March.

Location 

 

I rate this place 10/10 for the location. BTS National Stadium is just 1 minute away (80m) and it's a terminal station too so it never gets busy. 

Ground floor has McDonald's and a bunch of cash machines. There's also 7Eleven nearby at Mercure hotel.

There's a coffee shop too along the driveway. And Lek Massage next door.  

Aaaand it's also walking distance to Jim Thompson museum (300m).

If you're looking for a place to buy pasalubong there's Lotus's Rama 1 Supermarket which is 600m away.

It's also one station away from Siam central station where the subway and Sukhumvit line interchange is. This is where all the big malls are huddled around. Near enough not to get stuck in traffic! It's very very central and we loved it so much.

Amenities

Being an "express" hotel, don't expect five-star amenities here. No swimming pool, no grand lobby, no fancy breakfast spread. Everything is basic and kinda self-service.

 

They have a 24-hour gym which has enough equipment for cardio and weightlifting.

 

They also have a spacious outdoor garden right outside the gym.

There are designated smoking areas, a meeting room, and a 24-hour laundry room where you can also fold and iron your clothes.

We also love that there's an ice machine! Perfect for when we're about head out and needed to fill our tumblers with ice water. As we've learned, water isn't free in Thailand. Even ice! 

Breakfast 

 

Breakfast is served from 6-10am at the Great Room. You can either dine in or Grab & Go - they provide take away coffee cups and bags for pastry. Really appreciate Grab & Go because I love their coffee!

 

They have a modest spread but quite frankly it's more than enough for us. We tend to skip breakfast anyway. The usual spread is sliced bread, croissants, muffins, fresh fruits, yogurt, milk, juices, rice, sausage, beans, pasta, congee, eggs, vegetable stir fry, rice, and something special called the hero's dish. Some days it's chicken stir fry, other days it's Pad Thai or Tom Kha. It varies. 

 

My favorite part of breakfast is probably their coffee. It's so good! 

Finally

Overall we had a great stay. Wouldn't mind staying here again and 100% recommend it to anyone who wants to explore Bangkok! 

New vlogging camera and spotting a fake Legato Largo bag

Remember when I promised not to buy anything this year? I'm out. I just bought the DJI Osmo Pocket 3. What can I do? It was on sale! I got the standard version for 5k less. It's even cheaper than the 2nd hand ones on marketplace. So yeah, forget it. I'm back to overspending and mindlessly shopping for little things. 

New gadget means new accessories. Besides an SD card, I also bought a magnetic mount, and also a new bag. Why a new bag? My current bag would be too heavy with the camera in it, and I needed a bag with more compartments so I could dedicate one to the pocket 3. It's a pretty delicate camera because of the gimbal so I needed to secure it better.

Ever since getting the camera I've been eyeing for bags on Shopee, and what really caught my eye is the Legato Largo line. It's a sister brand to Anello and can be found in some @Tokyo PH branches. It looks like a Longchamp Le Pliage but without the annoying flap. 

I tried it on at the mall and decided on getting a medium beige on Shopee. When it arrived though, I had doubts if it's real. The stitching on the handle isn't clean, and the color also looks off. True enough, when I checked back at the mall, the difference is huge. 

The leather details are bad, but besides that they pretty much got everything else right. The size, the labels, the feel of the nylon fabric, even the tags. I'm actually quite impressed. But the handle and the straps are really screaming fake. So I had to return it (hopefully seller accepts and Shopee refunds me).

I bought the original one at the mall and went home happy. I got the display item cos it's the last one and I love it!

Yet again, buy nice or buy twice. 

On another note, it's been weeks procrastinating on work. I really really need to get something done today. It's my productive day before we head off to a week long vacation. Urgh, I always fail to reserve energy for work.

:)

January

I opened the laptop with the express intent of paying my credit card bill, but the banking app is on maintenance so I couldn't access my statement. So that brings me here.

January went by so quickly. 

The first week we were still on a holidaze. I was editing vlogs nonstop. My phone storage couldn't keep up with the happenings. I had to transfer footage to my laptop. It was so busy. We were out a lot. Meeting family. Meeting friends. It was exhausting.

Then I got back to working onsite after being on temporary WFH setup because of my knee surgery.

I noticed my Weekly Monotony vlogs are getting more views when I put a face on the thumbnail. And so I changed the way I design my thumbnails and now I'm getting 5x more views. Which is cool. 5x seems a lot but on average I get only 10 views per vlog, and now I get 50 hehe. Just by changing the way my thumbnails look. It does look cuter now. 

I promised myself not to buy anything new this year. And so far I've been successful. It wasn't easy though, cos I was itching to get the Osmo Pocket 3. So instead, I rented it for a week. Just in time for our La Union trip. 

It was awesome. But I couldn't quite get the hang of daily vlogging with it. For a bunch of reasons:

• It's kinda fragile. I'm a grab and go type of vlogger and my phone has been extremely handy for that purpose. With the pocket 3 I always need to pull it out from its case, and put it back as well to secure it because of the gimbal. 
• It's an added weight to my bag. If I wanted it to be more handy and still safe I need to change my bag into something with a separate compartment solely for the pocket 3. 
• The footage doesn't sort well in my video editor. When I transfer the files from the mimo app to my phone, it can be sorted by date from the gallery, but not on my editor. In VLLO when I try to sort, it creates date groups that are sorted differently. It's been difficult trying to arrange the clips chronologically.
• So for the most part, if not all, I edit my osmo vlogs on my laptop, using DaVinci Resolve.
• Also because I don't have enough storage on my phone haha.

If I do decide to get the pocket 3, I also need to upgrade my phone so I can continue editing on it, also get more storage. Not anytime soon.

All that adjustment and I'm still leaning towards getting it in the future. Why? Because the quality is superb. These two vlogs are such a delight to watch, at least for me, because I can really tell the difference in quality. 

Anyway. My favorite day in January goes to that one day when I had pho, a manipedi, a foot massage, and iced mocha in one day. Such a great day. 

2025 screen recap

Here we go again! Not proud of my book count, as usual. I think I may have gotten over my love for reading. Which sucks. Because it's like one of my proudest hobbies. It's when I learn the most; write the most. I don't want to give it up. I believe it's just a matter of finding the right books, and intentionally giving it time. 

I enjoyed The Kite Runner and A Man Called Ove. They're both really good reads. I finished each book in less than a week, which is a personal best, given my dwindling attention span. 

Whitney, My Love was a re-read. I remember being so hooked with this type of period romance ten years ago. But now that I'm older I find it annoying haha. Clayton and Whitney need to learn to COMMUNICATE. It's marriage 101, my goodness. Then again, this book wouldn't exist without the pettiness that miscommunication brings. Oh well. 

Maybe I'll re-read Nicholas Sparks instead. 

 

I watched a whopping 47 movies this year. All with my husband. Mostly Marvel because we decided to re-watch everything that leads to the infinity saga. 

We also "re-watched" Kung-fu Panda. Putting it in quotes because my husband insists we've already watched them together more than ten years ago, and I have no recollection of it. I do remember dreaming about Mr. Ping's restaurant in the past but I'm not sure if it was halfway into the movie haha. I tend to fall asleep watching movies at home.

Besides re-watching, we also enjoyed a bunch of films that came out recently, like Weapons, Novocaine, The Companion, and Quezon.

 

My favorite series of 2025 has got to be Severance. It's so freakishly mind blowing.
I would love for Mythic Quest to go on but apparently it got cancelled after four seasons.

 

That's about it for 2025. Hope to get back to reading more books and picking up on KDramas!

 ETA: I forgot to put in One Punch Man Season 3 lol. It's not that good, but yeah that's 9 shows for 2025.

Nothing new for 2026

It's that time again where I pretend to realign with my long forgotten goals. So yeah let's do this haha

I want to jump into this trend of fighting overconsumption by reducing the things I buy this year. This means no new clothes, shoes, anything personal and material, except of course if something breaks or runs out. Like my hair ties and body oil lol.

Besides limiting my purchases I also want to continue decluttering items we don't use anymore, just to make space, not for something new, but for the sake of regaining storage space. Our house may not look that cluttered but I assure you every cupboard and drawer is full and we could probably throw away 50% of the stuff in this house. Maybe I'll do a weekly declutter. It's so easy to give away stuff within our condo anyway.

I always tell myself to limit doomscrolling as well, but I couldn't get myself to quit Instagram or Facebook. It's where I discover and document things. Maybe I'll quit Facebook instead and focus on Youtube and Instagram? I don't know yet, but I know that I want to write more and scroll less.

Speaking of writing more, that goes hand in hand with reading more - in my case. My 2025 book count was dismal (3), but at least it's not as bad as the previous year where I only finished a single book, regretfully at that. This year, I really want to read more. In fact I've just made my first ebook purchase, for A Thousand Splendid Suns, because the copy I downloaded for free was so horribly transcribed. 

While jotting down my bills payments earlier I happened to look into the sum total of our credit card expenses and learned that we've spent close to 8 million pesos in the past 9 years. What a sum. I couldn't imagine we've spent that much. We're not even businessmen.

Which is why I want to save more money this year. My goal is to be able to save a million pesos at least, and put it in MP2. Should be easy if I don't spend a lot on unnecessary stuff! Also food! Argh!

Oh well, we'll see! Here's to still trying in 2026!