My Adventures in Bangkok. Part 2

On Being in Bangkok. Part II.
The Heaven and Hell of Shopping.

“Hello Sir! Do you want underpants?” - this question asked from a side of a very busy street packed with sellers caught me by surprise. How do you answer such question when it is long past midnight, you’ve been walking for hours and the only thought on your mind is a bed at the hotel? “May be later” – is as good way as any of saying NO. It does not deter street-sellers from trying. In Bangkok they are everywhere.

Walking anywhere one has to negotiate his way through the maze of tables, booths, and carts with right about anything being sold. The myriad of sellers does not decrease cleanliness of the place. I would not say Bangkok is spotless, but it is certainly surprisingly clean considering the amount of street trade.

Things that one should not miss when going street shopping are: food, CDs, ‘designer’ handbags, and watches. Street food is cheap and delicious. Fried or baked fish, chicken, chicken sate (10 bat for 3 sticks), juice, fresh fruits are the absolute minimum one has to try. I also found that, apparently, there is food I can’t eat: fried cockroaches. There is a limit to how adventurous I am. Though people seemed to enjoy them very much – crunching fried insects like Russians crunch their sunflower or pumpkin seeds.

CDs are another ‘not-to-miss’ item. You can buy any (and I mean ANY) music CD, software, movie video CD (to play on your computer), or DVD. There is a shopping mall in the middle of the city where hundreds of sellers offer anything you want – just ask. I always had rather uncertain attitude towards pirated stuff. On the one hand, the creators of the software, music, movies, etc, should get paid for their work. On the other hand, can you afford to pay few hundreds and often thousands of dollars for software you need? Should a music CD really cost 25 dollars when you like only one song from it? Would you resist temptation of buying DVD with a movie that has not been released in North America yet? Well, to make the story short – Bangkok (as well as the rest of Asia) is a heaven for pirated CD shopping. I have to say, that it is a heaven for a legal CD shopping as well, as even copyrighted CDs and DVDs cost significantly less compare to the identical product in North America or the UK.

The third shopping item is ‘the designer’ handbags (and other designer things). As we were told on multiple occasions: it is ‘the original copy’. The quality of a product is often identical to the quality of copied original as many of Thai factories simply sell the additional product after supplying the foreign companies. Louis Vuitton, Fendi, etc bags and purses are sold on every corner. I did not buy one as I found one very lovely, original, purse by local Thai designer with the price tag of only 10 dollars.

Watches are another product susceptible to ‘the original copy’ shopping. You can find really ANY watch you want. Walking through the market we stopped to check the Rolex watches. As we tried to leave the table we were stopped short by the offer of a seller that if we don’t like anything on the table he can get us ANY other watch from the Rolex catalogue for the same price (about 30 dollars) within 5 minutes. He produced an original, about inch-thick, Rolex catalogue. We did not buy any Rolex watch there, even after the price dropped from 1500 bat to 300, but if we wanted we could have found any (or at least nearly any) brand in existence. As for quality, those who remember my Casio watch – it’s been more that a year and it still works just fine.

Bangkok is a heaven for any kind of shopping – nearly any European designer has an outlet here, as well as many great Asian designers. It is a paradise for anyone with size below British 12. For those of us whose waistlines are sufficiently wider, shopping opportunities become severely limited. Most of my shopping attempts consisted from one line: “Do you have ANYTHING that will fit me?” The only section of the mall (and I am talking about huge six or eight store shopping mall) where I could buy any clothing was special ‘tourist’ section: those brightly coloured pants and skirts that allow spotting a tourist from a kilometre away. I was not that desperate. (Plus, I already had enough of that stuff from India). However, the absence of appropriate sizes does not mean that ‘people with body’ can’t get dressed nicely. Tailoring is accessible and comparatively affordable. The quality is great and speed of work is fantastic. One of the things I love about ‘third world’ (I so detests this term) is the availability of personal services. Tailoring is one of them.

Another important moment about shopping in Bangkok (or on any other ‘third world’ country) you have to shop where local people shop, and not to do so in tourist areas. The purse that I bought in an overheated maze at a weekend market for 500 bat was displayed with the price tag of 3000 bat at the airport. Secondly, even moderate bargaining generally reduces price to one third of the original. Though it depends on many other factors. In short, to anyone going to Bangkok I recommend going with an empty suitcase: you’ll have enough chances to fill it.