Because I couldn’t stand the smell of outside, we spent most of the time shopping. I recommend shopping at Siam Paragon as we spent almost an entire day there and still didn’t cover all the grounds.
Pantip Plaza
If you are into computers and electronics like myself, make sure you visit Pantip Plaza (it’s located here). The electronics prices are very close to Australian prices, but they do have some other cool stuff you can’t buy in Australia. So it’s worth to check out some of the products. I wouldn’t buy any electronics from here, as my experience of buying from overseas isn’t that great, but it’s great if you like to Window Shop for electronics.
Luxury Cars in Siam Paragon
Street Shopping
Shopping out on the streets was a completely new experience for me. There’s nothing comparable with it in Australia. Why, because it’s all over the place. The stalls are centimetres away from main roads, and it’s packed of people walking by and buying things. You even look down the buildings and there are even more shops. There wasn’t too much here that interested me (for some people, there could be heaps). But I am not much of a shopper anyway.
Food
I have to say, the food here in Bangkok was very nice (mostly from my Hotel). I wouldn’t eat some of the food they sold on the streets as it didn’t smell very nice, but the locals seemed to be eating it, so I don’t think it was that bad. We did buy some orange juice of the streets in one of the stalls, and I have to say, that was some of the best orange juice I have tasted in my life.
We didn’t really eat in many places, mainly because we didn’t trust it. We usually just had Walls Ice-creams. (In Thailand, Streets Ice-creams are called Walls – I find Walls a strange name for it). The prices where slightly cheaper than Australia, but would be a luxury for some people to have.
We mainly had the food that was made in our Hotel, which was very nice, and we had a pizza in the Siam building.
The People
The people in Thailand are completely different to the people in Australia. In Australia, we work hard and long hours. In Thailand, they work long hours but they don’t work very hard. While eating breakfast, we watched a person put up an umbrella. It took him at least 10-15 minutes for him to set it up as he was working that slowly. And I still couldn’t work out why he set the umbrella up anyway. It was against a wall where no one sat. It’s like they are bored working and will just make work for themselves to give them something to do.
There seems to be a lot of people working on one single task, but all of them do it at a very slow pace. Whereas in Australia, we’ll have one person work on many tasks, working faster.(
People in Bangkok seemed to be either very poor or very rich. There were heaps of people who you could tell didn’t have much money, and then there are some people who seemed to make a lot more than others.
However, the majority of the people where very nice, especially those in our Hotel. If you get lost, (or you are are looking at a map), someone will give you directions, sometimes hinting for a donation which was we were happy to pay. The Tut-Tut drivers would give you directions and tell you were to go after you go through their factories and pay for your ride. I have to say these Tut-Tut drivers are hard to say no to.
Recommendations for Next Time
The next time we are at Bangkok (a 2 night stop over on our way back to Australia) we’ll book a Hotel near the Siam Centre as you can easily catch the Airlink Train straight the the airport for about 45 Baht per person.
Would I come back to Bangkok? For a one night stop over I would because a 24 hour flight isn’t my cup of tea, but I couldn’t live there, or stay any longer for a week unless I had a personal oxygen tank. Next time, I should try Hong Kong for another stop over flight instead.