Jim Thompson's House is a big tourist attraction. It is the former home of Silk Magistrate Jim Thompson, who misteriously disappeared in Malaysia in 1967 after only living in the home 6 years. What happened to him still remains one of the greater unsolved mysteries of Southeast Asia. The home is made up of 6 seperate traditional, old thai homes that he had uprooted and shipped to Bangkok, where he put them together to create a somewhat Western Styled home. It is magnificent, and well worth the visit. Some of his original Thai antiques and collectables are still on display. The main foyer has White and Black checked Italian marble floors. There is a reason to why the black and white check became popular, originally, the white marble would stay cool whereas the black marble would warm. You would walk on the black marble in the cooler months, and the white in the warmer. Also, we learned why the thais remove their shoes before entering any home or business. Traditionally, Thais used to eat sitting on the floor, in a circle. This is why they keep their floors very clean, this is also why you never wear shoes in a thai home.
We then wandered down Sukhumvit to Nana Station, and went to Little Arabia. We had lunch at another Lonely Planet Recommended place, good food, horrible serivce. Wandered around Sukhumvit some more, watching Old white men try to communicate with their bored looking young Thai girlfriends. We stop to have a quick Singha at a beer garden, and the young man informs us that they will stop serving alcohol at 6pm. Oh yes, we had forgotten, because of the Thai election, Bangkok will be booze free until Sunday at midnight. We were going to venture to Patpong, but I guess it might not be worth it now.
Met some Canadians names Sean and Derrin from BC, hung out with them a bit. They are looking for an apartment, and interviewing for teaching jobs. Sean managed to get a good one before we left Bangkok, and after two months he has the opportunity to move to HR.
We took a walk to Playground!, which is the design/graff/hi-so boutique shopping centre on Thonglor. Basically, this is Jteam heaven. There is a music area, a magazine area with international magazines and books, an art gallery area with exhibitions, books, art supplies, action figures, furniture, knick nacks, “Greyhound” the clothing line, some cafes and tonnes of very trendy young Bangkokians. The parking area is filled with kids mulling about very expensive cars. Everything at Playground is expensive, even by Toronto standards, BUT as an inspiration playgound, it does its job for sure. It is absolutely worth the visit.. if just to fantasize about the things you would buy if you didn't have to lug them around in a backpack for the next couple of months.
This is from their website...
This is a place that gives you new inspiration through various aspects of
marvellous designs of fashion, arts, decorating, music, books, galleries,
restaurants, and cooking school. The shopping arcade was built to satisfy the
lifestyle of unique, independent, hip, and cosmopolitan. Playground! is actually
the one and the only novel art boutique store in Thailand.
Playground! is located at Soi Sukhumvit 55 (or Soi Thonglor), its a
three-storey building which covers around 7,000 square metres. The layout of the
building itself can be divided into zones.
On the first floor, there is a magazine store which is a place-to-be for those magazine lovers due to the fact that it is the largest magazine store in Thailand which also provides the largest choices of both foreign and Thai magazines. In addition, there is
another section for those rare or collectible music CDs and vinyl and a
separated iPod Station. Moreover, the famous Starbucks and the tasteful Vanilla
Industry Restaurant are located on this floor.
On the second floor, this is a mecca for those trendsetters who love
fashion, cloth, and jewelry of famous designers and brands around the world. A
surprise still keeps coming for all shoppers with unique make-up store,
stationery shop, sport store, travel shop, and centre of art and graphic design
books which influence the inspiration life.
The top floor of the arcade gathers various types of goods, furniture,
utensils, and kitchen appliances from all over the world. It also has a nice and
tidy restaurant corner and a cooking school by Kuppa and another restaurant
which focuses on food fusion of contemporary Japanese food called Sonie’s. Last
but not least, a corner called Play Gallery displaying art collections by famous
artists and a corner called Play Area which is a convention room often used for
fashion and art seminars are also located on this top level.
Oh yes my friends. Beats shopping at Magic Pony and then having to walk all the way to BMV.
Chatetuck Weekend Market was our Sunday stop. it covers over 35 acres (1.13 km²) and contains upwards of 15,000 stalls. This market puts any other market, or superstore, or mall, anywhere, to shame. Literally EVERYTHING was for sale. We purchased a pair of one-size-fits-all cotton tie pants for me for 250baht, some springrolls and snacks, a Tshirt for Karine, and Miake got 3 incredible graphic Tees for 500baht. The graphic tees were nuts, one of them is Ed Banger. They has so many there, and they were all so good.. man, when we come home we are stopping first at Chatechuck. Everything is for sale, including more of the bunnies in dresses, baby chicks (birdflu?) puppies, ancient temple salvages, wicker baskets, hot sauces, military garb.. basically anything you can and possibly things you cannot imagine. This is Asia, after all.
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