Although I had heard so much about Panthip Plaza, the so-called electronics mecca in Bangkok, I was totally disappointed after my first (and my last) visit there. First of all, Panthip is one of the ugliest shopping emporiums that I have ever been to. In this multilevel technozoo (I believe there are at least 8 floors), there are countless shops and makeshift stalls selling a wide variety of electronic goods - digital cameras, computer parts and components, software, memory cards and chips, cell phones, and it seemed that every store was selling virtually the same merchandise, all at prices seemingly 25% higher than the United States. I went to Panthip specifically to buy a 512MB Sandisk ultra secured digital card for my camera; after checking numerous stores, I found that only one place carried it albeit for about $90 USD, which was about $35 more than what I paid in the states. To add to my disenchantment, like the Emporium, there’s some loud disco and trashy pop music blaring inside the place. I left Panthip without buying anything and the schlocky ambiance of totally drained me. I ended up going back to the Emporium and purchased my digital film at an electronics store there for the same inflated price albeit with a lot better ambiance. I guess you could say, that my Panthip adventure was a good experience, in the sense that I could say that I was there.

Bottom line, I wasted almost an entire afternoon on this shopping ordeal between the Emporium and Panthip Plaza, when I could have been getting a full body massage and shampoo at Sazankas instead, and reading a sexy novel by the poolside afterwards. Oh well…

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 29th, 2006 at 8:41 am and is filed under Thailand, misadventures, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.