Jung's Cherry Thailand Tour

Next topic: Shopping. Just about everything you see for sale along the Sukhumvit corridor will be priced higher than elsewhere in town (often dramatically higher). That's especially true of any situation where you have to "negotiate" a deal (which is at all the street stalls).

The way business is done here is the opposite of how Wal-Mart does it ... here, the % mark-up is huge but turnover (number of sales) is low. I knew a girl who had a dress kiosk in Phuket a few years ago from which she sold dresses to Western women tourists. Since there often seems to be more kiosks than customers, I had asked whether she was able to make enough to live on that way? She cracked up laughing and explained that she cleared the equivalent of about US$70,000 per year from her kiosk. I thought she was bullshitting me until she explained her pricing. When a tourist came up and asked how much for a dress, she'd quote a price equivalent to about US$25. Most tourists would haggle and so she'd shave the price a bit. For the best negotiators on slow days, my friend would go as low as the equivalent of US$12 or US$13 per dress. Care to guess how much it cost her to have the dresses made up-country? The equivalent of about US$1. With mark-ups that stiff, it doesn't take a lot of dress sales before the money begins to add up. If you figure that the average cashier at 7-11 or clerk or maid in Bangkok makes less than US$5/day for a nine or ten hour shift, she could sell only one dress once second day and still be ahead of the curve. That's why you see so many vendors crowding Sukhumvit Road (and any other place that tourists go) ... that calculus is compelling.

If something catches your eye and you want it, feel free. But if you plan to do much shopping here, your savings will quickly add up if you instead shop where the local people shop.

There are three places that I'd consider if I were loading up on the sort of stuff that they sell on Sukhumvit Road (and in fact, most of the vendors out on Sukhumvit Road actually buy their stuff at one of these three places and then mark it up by 100% to 300%).

The easiest place to get to is MBK Center ... it has its own Skytrain station (get off at "National Stadium"), just walk through the Tokyu Department store and behind them will be about seven floors of mall that will have anything and everything you can imagine. If you want a wide range of inexpensive Asian food, they have a very big "food court" area with well over a hundred places to pick from (and they've also got a Pizza Hut and McDonald's and Baskin-Robbins for Western food fans, along with a whole bunch of other restaurants of differing ethnic heritages). Plus they've got several movie theaters on the top floor (Thai girls LOVE Western movies, so this makes an ideal "date" if you pick up a "good girl" or if you want to take your favorite "bad girl" out for a real "date"). They've also got bowling alleys on the top floor if you want a change of pace. Prices are all posted, so no haggling is required.

And as luck would have it, MBK is right around the corner from the top University in Thailand (Chulalongkorn University). And since Thai girls love to shop, MBK tends to be packed with co-eds in their snug-fitting school uniforms meandering about window-shopping. Most of the guys I've taken over there can spend a couple hours there and have wood for the entire time (and for another half-hour after they leave) just from ogling the university girls. Oops, feels like I'm starting to get wood myself just from reminiscing, it's time to change the subject.

The second place with big selections and low (posted) prices is Pratunam Market. I've heard a lot about that one but haven't shopped there as it's not as easy to get to (it's not close to a Skytrain stop, so it would require a taxi ride in traffic to get there). But if you're planning to stop by Pantip Plaza (where anything computer-related is on sale, including dirt-cheap software), then Pratunam is just across and down the street from Pantip.

The third place is maybe the cheapest of the three but is only open on the weekend: the Chatuchak Weekend Market. It's close to the "Mo Chit" Skytrain station and is very extensive. Unlike MBK, this market is not air-conditioned (it's open air under an extensive network of big tents and all the stalls will have fans), so Western tourists can get pretty warm after traipsing around for a couple of hours.

If you've got a ton of souvenir shopping to do for hoards of your relatives back home, it's probably worth the trip out to Chatuchak if you're here on a weekend. But for me, MBK is ample for my needs (it's my preferred destination for taking "good girls" on dates). And if you're just shopping for "normal stuff" for yourself, there is a local equivalent of a Wal-Mart out here. It's a British "super store" chain called "Lotus Tesco" and there are several in town (much to the ire of most local vendors who have to compete with them). The easiest one to get to is at the "On Nut" Skytrain station as you can walk from that station directly into the store. They've got most of what you'd find in a Wal-Mart, at prices well below what you'd find for the same stuff in retail outlets along Sukhumvit Road near the nightlife. They also have Pizza Hut and McDonald's and KFC and a bunch more places (plus an ample "food court" since Thai people do like to eat ... amazing how most stay so slim).