Day 2: 25 May 2022, Wednesday
Rise and shine! After a good night’s sleep in our Grand Suite, we went for an early breakfast at 7:15am. The dining area of the restaurant at Grande Centre Point Ratchadamri hotel had two seating areas – one for Asian food and one for Western food. Naturally, we went for the latter. The breakfast spread was decent, with an eggs station where you could pick your choice of eggs and the usual fare of bacon, sausages, potatoes, pastries and cereal, as well as a selection of tropical fruits and a coffee machine. It was nice to start the day with a satisfying breakfast.
We left our hotel at 8:40am and took a slow stroll to Platinum Fashion Mall, about 1.2km away. From CentralwOrld shopping mall, we went up the elevated Ratchaprasong Walk (R Walk), which connects several buildings and shopping malls in the heart of Bangkok. It is a comfortable way to get around as it is fully sheltered and it provides a continuous path, bypassing the traffic lights below.
When we arrived at Platinum Fashion Mall half an hour later, we realised that all the shops were not open yet so we adjourned to Pratunam Market, which is just across the road. Pratunam is a wholesale market and it mainly caters to those who buy in large quantities for business/e-commerce. It’s not just the foreigners but locals come here as well to source for their stocks. We saw many people lugging huge shopping bags, ready for a day of shopping to fill them up with cheap apparels, bags and footwear. These enterprising people will then haul the goods back home and resell them on blog shops or via online retail channels.
We walked through the maze of stalls mainly to pass time, as the goods here at Pratunam were not to our taste. We also saw many roadside hawkers selling all kinds of street food. I wasn’t really hungry but I bought a bag of grilled bananas for 20 baht (S$0.83) as I thought it was quite an uncommon snack. The bananas were not fully ripe and thus, not as sweet, but they tasted nice as they were freshly grilled and slightly charred.
When we returned to Platinum Fashion Mall (click here) at 10:05am, most of the shops were in the process of opening and getting ready for business. Platinum touts itself as the best wholesale fashion hub of ASEAN. With over 2,000 shops selling clothes, bags, shoes and accessories spread over six floors, it is one of Singaporeans’ favourite places for shopping. Unlike Pratunam, the entire Platinum Fashion Mall is air-conditioned and the layout is much neater, providing a superior shopping experience. The products on sale here are also much more trendy and fashionable. Best of all, you don’t really need to buy in bulk and you won’t be frowned upon if you buy just a single piece.
Naturally, the mall is geared more towards ladies as five of the six floors are dedicated to women’s fashion. Even though only the 4th floor is designated for men’s fashion, you can still find some shops on the other floors selling men’s clothes. We set aside two hours for free-and-easy shopping here. I bought a few casual printed shirts for less than 200 baht, or about S$8, each. Dad and I later also bought a few polo T-shirts at 200 baht each. We were pretty pleased with our mini haul.
For lunch, we went to the 6th floor food court, which was very big. According to mum, there used to be many more stalls but I think they had probably closed down due to the dearth of tourists during the Covid-19 pandemic. The peculiar thing about food courts in Thailand is that they use a centralised system for payment. Instead of paying the individual stall for your food, you’ll first need to obtain a stored value card from a manned counter and use that card to make your purchases at the respective stalls. There is no charge for the card and you can get a full refund for any unused credit. In a way, it’s good because the stallholders won’t need to handle cash (which is unhygienic) and all transactions are properly accounted for. From my experience, it wasn’t too much of a hassle as the queue to obtain the card/get a refund moved fast as well.
The prices at the food court were actually quite reasonable. I paid only 65 baht (S$2.70) for a plate of stir fried chicken basil & fried egg rice. I also bought a cup of Thai iced milk tea from ChaTraMue (40 baht/S$1.66) and dad ordered two bowls of dessert for 190 baht (S$7.90). You can pick your own toppings for the dessert, which is served with shaved ice. Dad picked mango, gingko, chestnut, nata de coco, pineapple and grass jelly, and the servings were generous.
After filling our tummies, I booked a GrabCar to take us to ICONSIAM shopping mall. The waiting time for our car was supposed to be 7 minutes but ended up more than double that because of the horrendous traffic in Bangkok. We realised that it would have been faster to just flag a taxi off the street instead of booking a GrabCar. I thought it would be better to use Grab because I was afraid that the taxi meter rates would be much more expensive than the fixed fare on Grab. However, from our experience over the next few days, we found that the taxi rate is comparable, or sometimes even cheaper, than using Grab.
ICONSIAM is located along the bank of the Chao Praya River, a distance away from the main shopping belt at the Siam area. Our Grab ride cost 133 baht (S$5.52) for the 8.54km journey and our driver took us through Chinatown, where the traffic was very heavy. It became something of a sightseeing trip as we got a glimpse of the many neon signboards and goldsmith shops housed in the very old buildings of Chinatown as we drove through Yaowarat Road.
Almost an hour later, we finally arrived at ICONSIAM at 2:15pm. It was our first time visiting the mall so we were excited to check it out. When it comes to mega shopping malls, no other Asian country does it bigger and better than Thailand. To say that ICONSIAM is huge is an understatement – it is simply MASSIVE. Opened in November 2018, it is the largest mall in Bangkok, with its 525,000 square metres of retail space eclipsing CentralwOrld’s and Siam Paragon’s. It has every international brand imaginable under one roof, including the first Apple and Takashimaya stores in Thailand.
However, it is not just its size that is impressive. When we entered the ground floor via the Charoen Nakorn Road entrance, it was like stepping into another world. No expense was spared on décor, with food stalls on “boats” recreating the look and feel of a floating market. There were also restaurants housed in full-size, double-storey wooden buildings and a majestic staircase flanked by a Makara, which is a mythical creature with a Naga head, crocodile-shaped mouth and curved fang. Even the toilets were beautifully furnished and they were attractions on their own.
If we thought the ground floor was impressive, our minds were blown away again when we went to the upper floors, where everything was supersized and shiny. Here, the décor was modern and bright, dominated by a huge standalone H&M store occupying three floors. The % (Arabica) café is also super cool, with reflective silver ceilings and white floorboards giving it a futuristic vibe.
We walked through the spacious Apple store to reach ICONSIAM Park, an outdoor roof terrace with sweeping views of Bangkok’s skyline and the Chao Praya River below. The view was great but it was too hot so we didn’t linger outdoors for long, and quickly retreated into the comfort of the air-conditioned mall.
While ICONSIAM was an eye-opener, we didn’t buy anything there as it was all luxury brands and standard shopping mall fare. At 3:25pm, we hailed a taxi after failing to book a GrabCar. We negotiated with the driver and the resulting fare to MBK Center (Mahboonkrong) was 300 baht (S$12.45), more than double of what it cost to get here by Grab from the city centre. However, the ride took twice as fast and we arrived at MBK half an hour later.
MBK Center is an old favourite of Singaporeans, but truth be told, it has seen better days. Once the largest shopping mall in Asia when it first opened in 1985, it is now a far cry from its heyday. Despite recent renovations to make it more modern and having new tenants such as Don Don Donki to appeal to a younger crowd, the mall still feels dated and the tenant mix is disjointed. When we visited the Shopping Street on the 3rd floor, many of the small, individual stalls were vacant, perhaps a victim of the Covid-19 pandemic. Overall, MBK lacks an X-factor to make it really stand out from the tough competition of mega shopping malls in Bangkok. We decided to leave after spending just half an hour there.
Based on Google Maps, it would take us about half an hour to walk the 1.8km distance from MBK to our hotel. Alternatively, we could also take the BTS Skytrain, which will require a change of trains and a short walk from the BTS station to our hotel. Eventually, we settled on taking a tuk tuk as it was one of those quintessential things to do in Bangkok. We found a tuk tuk outside MBK and agreed on the 150 baht (S$6.23) fare with the driver. It turned out to be a wild ride. It felt more like riding an F1 car as the tuk tuk driver drove quite recklessly, overtaking other vehicles and swerving around corners at high speed. To be honest, we were quite glad when it was over. Nevertheless, it was another item on our checklist ticked!
After depositing our shopping bags and freshening up, we left the hotel again at about 6:10pm and proceeded to yet another shopping mall, Terminal 21. We opted for the safer and more comfortable BTS Skytrain this time round. From the hotel, we walked to Chit Lom station, where we each bought a Single Journey Card from the ticket machine. The fare was 26 baht (S$1.08) for the three stops to Asok station.
Terminal 21 is a shopping mall with an airport concept, which explains its “Arrival gates” at each escalator landing. The mall aims to bring the whole world into one place, with each of its eight floors inspired by the world class shopping metropolises of the Caribbean, Rome, Paris, Tokyo, London, Istanbul, San Francisco and Hollywood. Each floor features décor from its corresponding city, providing Instagram-worthy backdrops and photo-taking opportunities aplenty.
Having visited ICONSIAM earlier, it was inevitable that Terminal 21 paled by comparison, despite the beautiful lighthouse, Golden Gate Bridge replica and Fortune Cat sculpture doing a good job of setting the mood. There were also much less crowds here, especially the upper floors, giving the mall a cold and neglected feel. I know tourism is not yet back to pre-Covid levels, but I really wonder how all these shopping malls are able to survive in the long run, when there are so many of them in Bangkok alone.
For dinner, we decided to switch it up and have some Japanese food at Ippudo instead of Thai food for a change. We ordered the shiromaru tonkatsu ramen, which was quite nice. After dinner, we took the BTS Skytrain back and reached our hotel at 8:15pm. End of another day in Bangkok!
