Christmas in Bangkok

A great deal of effort goes into decorating for Christmas in Bangkok. Of course it's all about getting us to spend our money but I love wandering about to check out the decorations.

Top left: supercool steel tree, outside Emporium (my favourite)
Top middle: Teddy bears, inside Centralworld
Top right: 2D snowmen, outside Eight, Thong Lor
Middle left: gargantuan tree, outside Terminal 21
Middle middle: tinselly pandas, inside Emporium
Middle right: lifesize reindeer, inside Central Chitlom
Bottom from left: tree, Kasikorn bank, Thong Lor
Bottom second from left: gargantuan tree inside Centralworld
Bottom third from left: cardboard cutouts, strangely stylish, inside Siam Paragon
Bottom right: 3D tree outside Amarin

A special Christmas post

It’s a December tradition on Tea Stains that I roll out my Bangkok Christmas pictures.

The collection of the Christmas pictures started for me back in November when I was in KL. One afternoon I made my way to one of the hundred malls, Pavilion, in search of Bookbinders Design. Inside, a lavish exhibition space of ballroom proportions was bedecked with red carpeting, hundreds of yards of billowing gold fabric and a Christmas scene to rival any in Northern Europe – probably even the real one at the North Pole.

Here we were, the third week in November, and already we were knee deep in Christmas hysteria spirit. I made my way up the escalators to the sixth floor to find my shop but first I stopped and marvelled - even in cynicism - for a moment.

I peered down to the ground floor, bemused and I spied this: what looked like a life size display of Father Christmas’s sleigh and a complement of reindeer.

After I’d failed to find my shop I went down to check out the flamboyant spectacle so that I could include it in my Christmas Decoration posts. And really, who wouldn't be moved? Just maybe not quite as I first imagined...

Where I've been...

Sorry for my absence; but perhaps you hadn’t noticed I’d gone.

For the past two weeks The House has resembled Santa’s workshop.

I came back from Kuala Lumpur raring to meet my deadline on Polite Lies, my never-ending novel, instead I found my time wasn’t my own. Father Christmas had outsourced some of his work… to me.

That’s not true. I volunteered. (Why? Why do I do these things? I’ve told Husband I won’t do it again. He laughed and said it defined me… I’m not sure I like that.)

So three weeks work was over and done with a two-hour lunch.


Uh oh. This seemed like a good idea at the time:

I've made a start...

A veritable forest:

And it's all over...