Bangkok Photos

[tayser]

Bangkok is wealthy, diverse and very western-orientated partly because it's the most favoured stopover on the Kangaroo routes: it's 9-10 hours to Australian east coast and 9-10 hours to Europe like Honkers (whereas Australian east coast to Singapore is 7 hours, then 13 to Europe), it's cheaper than Honkers and most definitely cheaper than Singapore and you're more central to S.E Asia.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

speaking of bangkok...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=cYXU9BOw4xM


that's crazy!


any info on this?

 

[cacruden]

I have seen this clip -- if it is around Bangkok - it is not centrally located. It would not surprise me - anywhere you have space - that is not used - or guarded by the land holder - you will get people moving in and setting up stalls for selling stuff. There are several train lines that run into Bangkok, and a number of them might only have a few trains coming in a day - so I could see it happening - making use of land that is not used 23 out of 24 hours of the day. Bangkok is very big, and has around 10 million people.... A lot of regular people look at setting up their own retail operation - whether it is a cart, a stall, etc. as success -- sometimes it is not as logical since the same people might be able to make more money working for some larger operation -- but then -- it is harder to view it as success.

This looks like an area where only locals (Thai or illegal immigrants) are typically congregating (surrounding area). There are other markets that are very popular with locals and westerners - one is the Weekend Market - I believe there are around 5000+ stalls (almost like storage lockers - that open up on one side when the market is open) selling almost anything you could think of. You will see a lot of low end clothing stalls selling jeans etc. This is of course not a surprise since Thailand has had a very accomplished textile industry - so these are probably bought retail and sold through everywhere.

Right near the weekend market is one of the better food/grocery markets in Bangkok. I wish we had some of these markets in Toronto -- but of course this time of year - the vegetables would be frozen The meat markets - I prefer these being indoors ....