Thailand - Thursday April 12, 2007

A bomb exploded the other day and police are still in the look out of the culprit.

Just like India, here also the English news paper has a space for ‘Sudoku’. But I did not see anybody doing one in canteens. They just relaxed. Here people takes lots of seasonal fruits as snacks.

Today I visited the exclusive electronic mall called ‘Pantip Plaza’ and then the exclusive cloth mall called Platinum Fashion Mall. Now I can comment on ‘is Bangkok the ultimate shopping destination?’. My answer is NO, if you are an Indian, that too from Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai etc

Here we get lots of goods at cheap rates, it is true. Most of the shoes are ‘fake’. For quality items, you need to pay ‘quality’ price. Take the case of pirated DVDs. Here we need to pay Bt.100 per DVD and that means it is about Rs.133. But one can get it for Rs.80 in India. Same with T-shirts, Camera, Cell Phones and all other items…. Most of these shops are like ‘National Market’ and ‘Burma Bazar’ in Bangalore (which sell smuggled and pirated things at cheap rates). If you are buying electronic items from a proper dealer with bill and ‘VAT refund certificate’, there is no huge difference. But if you buy lots of things or the total purchase goes to a big amount, there is some difference. Laptops looked like a good buy. But if you are a ‘Shoppers Stop’ and Branded item guy from India, there is not much to ‘save’. But it is true that there are lots and lots of thing to buy…………