Wednesday's Winter Windows

There might be snow, frost, icicles and snowflakes in Bangkok's malls (and not just because of the roaring air conditioning) but there's no sign of 'winter' outside. Let's face it, the three seasons here are hot, hot and wet and really hot, and I'm ready for simply hot.

What is that noise? Ohhhhh; that's the sound of you all tutting and unhooking your RSS feeds, right? Sorry; but it's meant to be a bit cooler now and it's not and I'm a bit fed up with it.

So here are some of Bangkok's winter wonderland windows:

(And, because great minds think alike, when you've finished at Tea Stains you can check out Vogue's Christmas windows here.)

Accessorize Mega Bangna

Dior Emporium

Department store, Siam Paragon

Zen at Centralworld

Wednesday's Windows: Recycling at Siam Paragon

This week's window is all about a fantasy world created by recycling and is courtesy of the department store in Siam Paragon.

Oh, it's all in the little details. I adore the paint colour chips on the background (we're back with my old friend, Multiples;) her paper hair is gorgeous - I wonder if I could do that look? I love that her skirt is made of shop carrier bags, her bodice is computer keyboard buttons, and I love the mad ram with a Rubik's cube chest.

Love love love.

 

Wednesday's Windows: Hugo Boss

Before I went to the UK, the Hugo Boss window in Siam Paragon caught my eye. It reminds me of the kinetic installations that a peer on my fine art degree used to make. This window display didn't move, (can you imagine how fabulous it would have been if it could?) but, for anyone in Bangkok, there's a vast clockwork installation in the middle of Central Chit Lom that does move! (BAH; why didn't I take a picture when I was there yesterday?)

Using a light source to throw shadows is a simple idea but I imagine it's not as easy to execute as it looks.

Wednesday's Windows

There's been a bit of a War Horse thing going on in some of the Bangkok window displays. There's a third, but my addled brain can't find it!

From CPS CHAPS Emporium
Website

Yakko Maricard Siam Paragon
Website

Sunday Photo

I missed Friday Photo because of a heavy schedule and a three day migraine so here's a Sunday photo.

I spotted this in Siam Paragon. It's nothing unusual to see a car in Siam P; one of the floors has showrooms full of top end cars and sometimes there's an exhibition in one of the lobbies decorated with 'pretties' but this one was in the wrapping paper, cards and gifts section. Perhaps that's a bit odd.

But not as odd maybe as a car having eyelashes...

Friday Photo

As an accompaniment to today's photo I have to tell non Thai residents that Thai people sleep everywhere and anywhere. As a napper, I think this is eminently sensible. Once, I was so culturally immersed, I napped in Starbucks and I've been teased by my friends ever since. Still as you can see here it can be pretty funny too.

This week, as I raced around the malls of Bangkok trying to find Daughter's computer case, I went into a new set of loos in Siam Paragon. I couldn't resist taking this photo. I promise I haven't photoshopped the sign. I am convinced that the (foreign, surely?) translator has been poking a little fun at the Thais' love of forty winks. In Thai, this label says it's the equipment/broom cupboard.

THEY'RE JUST DOUGHNUTS PEOPLE....

I went over to Siam Paragon again today.

A week since my first blog about it and the Krispy Kreme Doughnut frenzy is ongoing. Look at today's queue! There are rumours that they are being resold in MBK for twice the price.Yesterday there was a sale in school: the doughnuts went to the highest bidders. The last doughnut went for 400 Thai Baht (a bit over £8 or $13.) The only redeeming fact about this is that the money was raised for charity.

(Sorry about the dodgy photoshopping job - I can't get the staff. They must all be queuing for doughnuts.)

For anyone that didn't see in my comments I did find out why there was a queue on the first day. I googled it and found this promise:


- 1st customer gets 1 year supply of a dozen donuts per week
- 2nd customer gets 6 months supply of a dozen donuts per week
- 3rd customer gets 3 months supply of a dozen donuts per week
- 4th-100th customers get 1 month supply of a dozen donuts per week
- 101th-200th customers get 1 dozen free donuts 


There are no more free doughnuts to be had people.

Feeling foreign and in a perpetual state of confusion

If I'm not in my apartment but you know I'm working, you can usually find me in my other, unofficial office: Starbucks on the third floor in Siam Paragon mall.

That's where I was heading this morning, a bit later than planned, when I saw the first sign of a queue; its end tapered out at the edge of the mall. The traffic was heavier than normal for 11am on a week day; it's a common sign that the traffic has been held up for someone Very Important.

The queue was solid, not straggly, and stretched the entire front of Siam Paragon. There must have been a couple of hundred people in it. The last time I saw something like this was when a famous pop group made a public appearance but this queue wasn't behaving quite right for that. It was too orderly. They weren't here to see someone; they wanted something. Eventually my taxi crept around the corner and dropped me near the door and the head of the line. A hiso (high society) Thai had a big arrangement of pink flowers to present. There must be a celebrity....

Crowds and queuing always reminds me of my foreignness. There's a fuss about something or someone that I don't understand. I am excluded. Usually when I arrive somewhere I don't even know the event was happening because I haven't been able to read the notices in the media and if I do happen upon it I don't recognize the celeb. I can't read the signs (if there are any) so I am there with all these fans who are in a state of excitement and anticipation but I'm quite cut off from the experience.

The queue used the far right hand door and those not interested - or oblivious in my case - used the normal door where the security people check bags. Nobody stopped us from entering thinking we might jump the queue. I really couldn't think what they were all here for....

I know that I can normally be relied upon to take photos to illustrate my blog but this time I needed both my hands to pick my chin up at the anti-climax of it...

This big line of people were queuing to go to a newly opened branch of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.

What. Is. That. All. About?

Some of the aftermath

Until the red shirts made their camp there I didn’t even know that the junction in the middle of so many of the malls was called Ratchaprasong. I’m never likely to forget where it is now…

Yesterday’s visit to Bangkok’s shopping district turned into a surprisingly emotional trip.  I was cheered to do a bit of shopping and to find my favourite place to eat in the whole of Bangkok, the gorgeous Sunshine Kitchen inside Siam Paragon was in operation, but the rest of it was horrifying.

I knew CentralWorld had been wrecked by fire but the knowledge and the reality hadn’t quite come together.  I passed by in a taxi so still the impact didn’t quite hit me. Instead it was road level parade along Siam Square – Bangkok’s funky teenage hangout – that shocked me. Facades had gone and I looked straight into burned out cavernous holes. Wires and struts spewed out, bits of wall and ceiling, not claimed by the fire, hung useless from what remained of the structure. Water continued to drip through the fabric and pool over the ground.

I cried quietly several times while I was out yesterday afternoon. I walked back towards home, passing CentralWorld. God knows Bangkok isn’t in short supply when it comes to malls but the waste, the willful devastation… it took my breath away. Bullet holes and attempts at vandalism left their mark on the windows of Gaysorn Mall.

Siam Square frontage. I like seeing the vendors: setting up despite everything.

Other posts mentioning CentralWorld, before, can be found here, here, here, here and here.

Wednesday

I had a fabulous session in the gym this morning. I was fired by banana power; a tiny cup of tea (can’t do without) and a banana half an hour before I started. I seem to have come on leaps and bounds today; stronger, quicker, smilier.

I had plans to go to the newly reopened Siam Paragon today but when I’d showered and dressed, this happened:

Still seeing the sky like this (it’s rain not fog) is waaaaaay better than seeing it full of black smoke.

(I think it might have cleared up enough now for me to brave the outside world. I am off to sit in Starbucks  in Siam P with my book, notebook and index cards… just because after weeks and weeks of not being able to… now I can.)

Happy Chinese New Year

Friday Photo: Mooo

I called and called. "Kor-tord Ka!" I said, "Excuse me!"

But that cow was on a mission.

It ignored me.

Perhaps it didn't speak Thai?

Anyway, it seemed to know where it was going.

Is it just me, or does it look like it needs the loo?

Friday Photo(s)

A special chandelier just for tea stains...

Friday fervour

To balance last week’s Friday Fury I’m raving about ‘Sunshine Kitchen.’ I went off to do some 'research' about ten days ago so that I could blog about them. However I forgot to take a picture; I was half way through scoffing my food before I remembered and then I wasn’t prepared to stop.

Sunshine Kitchen – okay, it’s not a great name – but OMG, the food… the food more than makes up for it. They describe the food as ‘quality, healthy, fresh and tasty’ but the reason I love it is because it’s proper vegetarian food. They do serve meat and fish – separately obviously – but their use of grains, pulses and veggies make this among the best vegetarian food I’ve ever eaten.

For anyone in Bangkok, you can find them downstairs in the vegetable market part of Gourmet in Siam Paragon. You can take away or eat in at a no frills high stool and bench arrangement. They’re total foodies. When you arrive to look at the food, the first thing they do is to get a pot of spoons and let you try stuff.

It’s been a mystery to me why I hadn’t found excellent veggie restaurants in Bangkok. There’s a branch of Buddhism that is vegetarian and think of all those studenty type backpackers that come to Thailand. Is it presumptuous of me to think that they’ll be a higher than average number of veggies among them?

And no, I’m not being paid to say this; I just feel fervour for the grub. I’m a frustrated vegetarian. I grew up among foodies but they were confirmed meat eaters. My sister became vegetarian in her teens and my parents declared it a stage she’d grow out of: 25 years later my Dad’s still calling it a phase. Sod’s law would have it that I married a meat eater too but not only that, but he’s nearly phobic about vegetable, grains and pulses.

This plate of food cost 200 Baht (currently about £3.60)

Lowering the tone

This should really be a Friday photo post. But, if I don't post this, I'll start squealing hysterically about how much I've taken on... and how the paralysis has set in... and I don't want to bore you all to death.

Anyway, I tried really hard to walk past this - (the security men outside Siam Paragon department store are always telling me off for taking pictures) - but you know what? I couldn't ignore it. I had to retrace my steps, hide behind a sign and take it anyway because it made me chuckle.

I read somewhere recently that the British are ridiculed by the rest of the world because their sense of humour includes being amused at body part/bodily function jokes... I was a bit sniffy at the time, deciding that I didn't include myself in that. I don't get Monty Python; it's silly not funny. But most boys I know (that's old and young) are definitely more into lavatorial humour than I am.

Until I moved away from the UK, I never even considered the notion of whether I was typically British or not.

But, hey, look at this; it seems I am after all.

The King and I

I was out of sorts yesterday so I went out to the cinema. I went to Siam Paragon, one of the big flashy malls here.

I got in the lift at the basement level.

Two ‘bomb squad’ men got out on the ground floor.

On the mezzanine floor, two firemen got in. It was only then that I started to wonder if I should abort my plans to go to the cinema. (Though you might not see it on the news, we are still having political demos here – this time, it’s the other side, the red shirts.) The firemen travelled up to the 5th floor with me.

The cinema lobby didn’t look immediately different from normal, though looking back it was busy for a weekday. It took me some time to realise that most of the people were in an assortment of uniforms.

I queued for my ticket. I’m used to living my life in a certain ignorance or maybe it's oblivion; remember this is a foreign country. The subliminal messages don’t always get through because my spoken Thai is pitiful (my reading Thai is non existent) and I can’t perceive the subtle differences that we take for granted in our home country.

There were securities everywhere: security staff, naval uniforms with gold epaulets, army soldiers, (mostly) men in dark suits, police, Paragon security staff and more cinema staff than normal.

I asked the boy on the ticket office 'is someone special here?' He leant forward conspiratorially, motioned with his hand and says ‘the King is over there.’

OMG! Only a few feet away. Only a white sheet and several hundred security staff separated us.

There's an excellent article here from Jonathan Head, the BBC correspondent for this region, who explains why the Thai King is so revered here.








My deduction (the man dressed as an elephant gave it away) was that The King was attending a function to do with a Thai animation film, Khan Kluay 2. The blurb at Movieseer says: ‘Khan Kluay 2 is set after the victory of Ayudhya against the invasion of the powerful Burmese Empire when Khan Kluay is appointed as King Naresuan's royal elephant and services the king in many battles.’

Friday Photo

And finally...

Chinese New Year series 2

I just can't understand the rules of whether it is or it isn't okay to take pictures in shopping malls. Some have signs up and some don't.

You'd think it'd be easy then to know, no?

It's not. I was 'told off' in Emporium the other day and then despite there being lots of guards around yesterday in Siam Paragon (same owners) nobody told me off.

Anyway, yesterday afternoon I went out 'under cover' to hit some pics for the Chinese New Year series. (Of course being told not to take pictures never stops me. I'm just a stupid farang, right?) Siam Paragon was fabulous. I saw Chinese dragon dancers. Before I came to Thailand, I'd only ever seen these, year after year, on Blue Peter.

And, finally, a very happy birthday to my sister!

Chinese New Year series

It’s that time of year again. The fire crackers have been going off intermittently over the last week so we know that Chinese New Year is approaching.

This is the second of the three New Years that Thailand celebrates. 2009 is the Year of the Ox, which is also known by its formal name of Ji Chou. 己丑

Here is the first (of three) in the Chinese New Year series.