The Travels of That Man, Matt

Category: Thailand

  • The Malls of Bangkok

    The Malls of Bangkok

    The shopping mall. You know: that place where the lighting is a bit too bright, the escalators are broken, and there’s a “food court” piled high with teenagers and empty trays.

    Bangkok’s malls are… not like that. If the Mall of Berlin is a medium ranking church of capitalism, then the Siam Paragon is the Dom in Köln, centralwOrld (yes, that’s how it’s written) is the Sagrada Família, and ICONSIAM (yes, again) is the Vatican.

    These are places where the wealthy come to spend and the curious come to take pictures and snark.

    Bangkok is home to two of the top ten largest malls in the world – Central World at number six, Icon Siam at number four. Along the Sukhumvit BTS line where I’m staying, there are six within a six-station distance, all conveniently connected to those stations so one doesn’t even have to touch the ground or barely suffer the humidity outside. Three of them are so close together that they almost merge into one; you never have to step foot outside.

    Icon Siam

    Icon Siam is the newest kid on the block, opened in 2018 and toppling Central World’s crown as the largest mall in Thailand. It has something like 525,000 sqm of retail space. For comparison, Manchester’s Trafford Centre – third largest in the UK – is about a third of the size.

    It has its own BTS spur line connecting it to the rest of the metro system, called – unironically, one assumes – the Gold Line. It’s not the most graceful way to approach, being a glorified airport train, a bit jumpy and lumpy and slow.

    BTS Gold Line train at Charoen Nakhon station.

    One could also approach from the river by boat, or from the road in one’s Mercedes, but truly the only acceptable arrival is by helicopter to the adjacent Millennium Hilton.

    Entering this cathedral is a mind-boggling experience. It’s not just big; it’s ambitiously, blatantly, conspicuously big. And while I essentially dislike the whole idea of twelve floors of luxury stores and Michelin restaurants and lifestyle retail all being thrown in my face… well, they certainly know how to make it work.

    The first thing that I saw: a triple-level store with a name I have never heard of, selling… well, hard to say. Two enormous sculptures of semi-naked men (by enormous I mean: 10x10x3m), and at the other end of the store, this:

    A Dackel.
    Do not touch the Dackel.

    No, I don’t know either. Sunglasses, I think.

    Of course, literally every luxury brand you can name is here, and there’s a curious thing: those same brands are in every other mall too. Luxury is not about exclusivity here.

    Names, sweetie, names.

    So at first I was considering making this a half-hour thing, yeah yeah GucciLouisMcQueenDiorLagerfeldHermesYadaYada but… since I’ve come all this way, let’s have a wander about because there has to be more than that. And there is… of course all the usual suspects: Uniqlo, Muji, H&M, Zara, Nike, Adidas, Apple, even JD-fucking-Sports is here. Numerous food outlets selling fancy cakes and less fancy pastries (which I would not have been surprised if Greggs was written above the door). Also, cars: BMW, Mini, Volvo, BYD.

    So many floors.

    In between: just so. much. stuff. Like, housewares, but for no house such as I’ve ever been to. The kind of items you exactly expect to see being sold in a place like this, but never expect anyone to actually buy.

    And restaurants. At least six are Michelin-something’d.

    Some of the restaurant options.

    There are more floors: a cinema, a gym, a concert venue, a gallery space. Outside, wide vistas over the Chao Phraya river.

    And they really nailed that mall escalators thing: never allow a simple route up or down. Once inside, patrons must be guided past every shop possible just to ascend or descend. (Also: make the lifts slow and inaccessible).

    Escalators never where you expect them to be.
    Though shalt walk past every shop.

    Overall, sure, I was impressed. It was a lot less awful than it could have been. And I didn’t spend a single Baht, so I guess I win.

    But I might have to go back for this:

    Upset Duck toy.

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  • Bangkok, part 392

    Bangkok, part 392

    Yes, yes, I’ve skipped over the Laos part, I’ll get back to that at some point. TL:DR is that southern Laos is not as interesting as northern Laos, so I bounced back to Bangkok.

    So what to do with an extra week here? Well, just explore, wander about, buy stupid stuff from the 7-Eleven at the end of the street.

    Today I:

    • Had breakfast in a place where they played NTWICM Summer Hits 1997 (or similar)
    • Walked along a walking street (?)
    • Walked along a regrettable street
    • Took a boat along the river
    • Bought stupid stuff from the 7-Eleven at the end of the street.
    Ong Ang walking street
    Art along Ong Ang
    Housing along Ong Ang
    Housing and canal along Ong Ang
    A man feeding many Corvidae in Mahakan Fort city park
    Mahakan Fort city park
    A black cat

    The Ong Ang walking street is a bit strange. A couple of years ago I think they had a street festival here and wanted to promote the street sellers. But nothing much seems to have come of that. There is some street art, as promised, but it’s not the East Side Gallery (maybe that’s a good thing).

    The regrettable street is the infamous Khao San Road. I thought I should see it, just once, and in the daytime it’s just a bit sad. Lots of people trying to sell food, beer, North Face gear, massages, and trips to other touristy places. Plenty of western tourists (heavily skewed to young lads) and by nighttime I am sure all the worse for it. There’s clearly a market for this; I am clearly not that market.

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  • How did you get here?

    How did you get here?

    When Little Simz asks this question, she ends up with a very different song to when Antony Szmierek asks this question. On balance, how I got to be where I am right now leans more to Antony’s go to work, then I did something stupid than Simz’s trust me, this music ting is my prophecy.

    Apparently Louis Tomlinson also has a song with a similar title but I guess no one has ever heard it.

    Anyhoo. The sequence of steps to how I got here is lengthily and thusly:

    1. Need vacation, ideally around Eastertime to make best use of Jebus holidays.
    2. Decide to tour the Baltic states, all the way up to the armpit of Finland-Sweden. (They probably don’t call it that).
    3. Suffer through the worst Berlin winter since moving there a decade ago.
    4. Decide I’ve had enough of cold, want warm.
    5. Decide to bring forward the plan to visit Taiwan from 2027 to 2026.
    6. Book flights on Etihad to Taipei via Abu Dhabi because I’m not made of direct-flight-on-two-months’-notice money.
    7. Make all sorts of plans! Rent a motorbike! Meet Masto friends! Eat stinky tofu (maybe)!
    8. Watch as a war breaks out in the Middle East.
    9. Curse as the inevitable email arrives to tell me that flight segment Abu Dhabi to Taipei is cancelled.
    10. Fume.
    11. Research alternative ways to Taiwan.
    12. Fume some more.
    13. Go to work, then do something stupid.
    14. Switch plans, book to Thailand via, uh, Dubai 🙈
      • Masto friends: this is what I meant by rolling the dice 🎲🎲
    15. Make all sorts of plans! Fly to Laos! Rent a motorbike! Ride Vientiane to Pakse via two or three excursion loops!
    16. Watch as a continuing war in the Middle East causes fuel price shocks and shortages across the world, increasing the price of fuel in Laos by 50% in two weeks.
    17. Cogitate.
    18. Ruminate.
    19. Have a complete crisis of confidence and consider bailing on the whole Laos thing.
    20. Have a word with myself.
    21. Rent the damn motorbike and figure stuff out on the way.

    So. That’s how I got here, here being a little guesthouse in a village called Thongnamy (anglicised), somewhere due east of Vientiane.

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  • Day 32: Huf Houses And Other Attractive German Products

    Hmmm. I tried again to find the hipster street west of the old city. But I went via the Lanna Traditional House Museum. This is an area of the Chiang Mai University grounds where there is a small collection of wooden houses from across many years, typical of the kind found in northern Thailand.

    It was pretty interesting (not super interesting, because for each house there’s only a short paragraph about when and how it was built).

    Obviously the houses were not all conveniently built in the grounds they’re in now, but it illustrates how (relatively) easy it is to deconstruct a wooden house, and move it elsewhere. I’m not actually sure if you can do that with a Huf Haus but still.

    When that was done I thought about the hipster street, decided I was already too sweaty (very humid here the past two days) and went back to my hotel.

    For there I needed to shower before my most important activity of the day: a 90-minute traditional Thai massage. Thai massage (I learned) is considered by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage and ninety minutes of it sure did something tangible to all those muscles I’d grittily tightened during eight days of riding around Laos. It was so good. Normally I’d hate going to a fancy spa-massage place but this was lovely and good use of 40€.

    Of course one can get a massage from any number of roadside establishments for a lot less but I felt I needed pampering and indeed I was.

    Final night in Chiang Mai so nothing crazy this evening, just a nice meal (two dishes, actually) at this local place I like and the chance to talk briefly with a very solid piece of German manliness, who told me that while he was on Koh Phi Phi he’d drunk twelve beers and then taken part in an amateur Muay Thai fight.

    Reader, I was smitten (but he was straight so y’know, I’m not married yet).

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  • Day 31: Boozehound

    Despite Because of my second-place win at the pub quiz last night I’ve been feeling a little under the weather today.

    And looking at today’s post number, it’s rather obvious why: I haven’t had a day since I started all this when I haven’t had at least one beer.

    Oops.

    I’m not turning into a raging alcoholic but I rather forgot that I’m on a six-week journey not a week in the Canaries.

    So I’ve had a day off today, and will do tomorrow and probably Friday (which is a travel day anyway) and give my processing organs a rest.

    I eventually dragged myself out to get some food around the corner and then remembered about the “canalside night market” about twenty minutes walk away.

    Twenty minutes sweaty walk; it’s really humid today.

    Wasn’t really all that special, a rather grotty canal with various stalls and cafe bars alongside it.

    But also some more aloof cats (I know, all cats are aloof but Chiang Mai cats are the aloofest).

    Illuminated fish floating above the canal. I doubt there are any in the canal.
    And some wall (part of what’s left of the original city wall). A kind of moat runs around the entire old city.

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  • Day 30: Second Place

    I’ll be brief because it’s late. Came second in a pub quiz, so all the beers I drank cost me only a net 80 Baht (€2.30).

    400 fake Baht winnings.

    Also turns out then when I turn 50 I can get a retirement visa to Thailand for only 800,000 Baht (€22,700) and now I’m reevaluating my future.

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  • Day 29: Dust: Busted

    Not the most exciting day, if I’m honest but some nice downtime in Chiang Mai. I like this city, it’s my third time here and markedly busier than my last visit in November 2023.

    I started the day with a trip to a park very close to my hotel. At the start of February it was the Chiang Mai Flower Festival, and there’s still a lot of nice plants in the park, some a little past their best, but also a lot of orchids being show-off orchidy.

    At least in comparison to flower displays in Vietnam, these ones are actually planted in the soil, and still attractive to look at. It was nice to spend about an hour wandering around, politely pausing to let Korean tourists take photos of each other against the walls of orchids.

    Aloe flower, if Apple’s lookup is to be believed.
    A fancy swan.
    A fancy bear.
    Moth orchids.
    Moth orchids.
    Vanda orchids.

    I walked further towards the “hipster area” of Nimmanhemin Road but seems I turned off too early and didn’t reach the point where I found the reason people go here (fancy coffee bars and artisan shops) so maybe I’ll head back another time. Very typically of Thailand the pavements are mostly an afterthought and I was wearing my sandals which are not great for walking any great distance.

    “Well wear better shoes then, you dumbass,” you might say. Indeed I would but my trainers were at the laundry place that I know does good work. They (and clothes) were delivered back to my hotel this evening, minus all the dust they picked up in Laos. Extremely impressed that for 200THB (€5.50) they went from this:

    Dust-encrusted AirMax 95s.

    To this:

    Near-pristine.

    Almost like new. Very impressed.

    Also: cats. Lazy cats.

    Annoyed that I disturbed him.
    Shy.
    Too big for the basket.

    Probably another lazy day tomorrow, then when the motorbike hire place I want to go to opens on Wednesday, I’ll hire a scooter and head up to the mountains with a specific purchase in mind. Ooh, mysterious.

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  • Day 28: Bye-bye Laos, Hello Thailand

    Nearly forgot to write a post today (oh no, I hear all zero of my readers say).

    I’ll be brief anyway, since it’s mostly a travelling day. Laos is over (😪) and I’m in Thailand (Chiang Mai) for a few days. The flight was a few minutes over one hour, on a tiny turboprop. Second-best thing was being given a little extra legroom by the check-in clerk. First-best thing was the in-flight snack: cake.

    Take that, all other airlines with your poxy snack crackers or half a sandwich. Lao Airlines serves cake and you are all on notice to up your game.

    Cake. Yes I started eating it Neanderthals-style before realising there was a knife to cut it into civilised slices.

    Chiang Mai

    Third time here. I really like this city, even though on approach I had some concern that the annual burning season had started early (it is rumoured to have done so in the south of the country). But the haze turned out to be just “normal” pollution and at ground level it’s standard sunshine and heat.

    It being a Sunday, the huge Sunday “walking street” market is on. Actually this is one of the good ones, the side streets have most of the food offerings, and the main street is a little higher quality fare than usual. Absolutely no sign of knock-off branded products which is a real surprise.

    Absolutely no sign of rubbery fish cakes at any food stall which is also a surprise and not a welcome one 😡.

    Meanwhile, my dusty clothes are at the laundry, along with my dusty Nikes, which will either never come back, come back smaller, come back ruined or (🤞🏼) come back looking like new, for the princely sum of 200THB (€5.60).

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