Bangkok: Eat, shop, massage, repeat
Bangkok is always a warm (okay, hot) and pleasant destination to visit. Thai people are soft-spoken and polite, greeting tourists with their melodic phrases, moving about their lives with languid grace. The city is a wealthy metropolis, completely filled with the usual ubiquitous world brands and local (and much more interesting) stores apparently serving customers with a strong purchasing power.
Restaurants are numerous, competing neck-to-neck with each other, offering every cuisine imaginable at very reasonable prices. Where else can one get crabmeat already off its shell (effortless eating), swimming in delish crab fat sauce? And tom yum so hot, it makes my husband’s shaven head glisten with beads of sweat?
Malls offer a pendulum-wide range of made-in-Thailand products and prices, showing off their creativity: some with a pop, kawaii vibe, some with lots of feathers, and lot of bejeweled bags, shirts, shoes, even shoelaces. Of course, there are the usual tees, shirts, and dresses — reasonable, wearable, decent.
Retail stores offer a spare-no-expense display equal to stores in New York, London, and Paris — tasteful, unique, edgy. Boutiques use life-size horses, dinosaur skeletons, fancy chandeliers. Even toilets are stylish and themed!
The Central Embassy Mall, which cost 18 billion baht to build, opened last May. Not only does it have all the luxury brands that are already available in other malls (Chanel, Cartier, Hermes etc.), it also has brands like Harrods, Dean & Deluca, Fendi Casa; French brands like Isabel Marant, Martin Margiela, The Kooples, Maje, and Sandro; as well as an impressive display of Bösendorfer and Steinway pianos. I have not seen this retail mix in a mall in Hong Kong or Singapore.
A Thai massage experience at a place called Let’s Relax, on the 6th floor of Siam Square One, is a must — 800 baht buys you 120 minutes of Thai bliss, topped with hot tea and mango sticky rice. Who wouldn’t want to repeat that?
Yes, eat, shop, massage, repeat. We haven’t left Bangkok, and we are already planning our next visit. Photos by CECILIA R. LICAUCO
