World traveler and shopper extraordinaire Suzy Gershman is back with her latest missive.
Dear Peter,
I know you have a little house somewhere here on the river in Bangkok, and I keep peering out the window looking for it, but frankly, I’ve been very happy bouncing around town in my tuk-tuk and staying at an assortment of luxury hotels.
MY NEW HOOD
I booked into the Sofitel Silom because I didn’t know this part of town very well and it’s an interesting mid-way location, sort of half way from the Erawan Shrine (the center of my shopping world in Bangkok) and half way to the river, home of many fabulous hotels …and your house too.
The hotel is low-profile, but totally deluxe and includes a branch of the chocolate and pastry shop from Paris Lenotre as well as a breakfast buffet with the best croissants in town. There’s an Anne Seminon spa (also from Paris) and you are walking distance to assorted shopping venues, such as Silom Village and PatPong.
Need some hints on where to stay in Thailand? Don’t miss our Thailand Hotel Guide: From Luxury to Budget, From Bangkok to Phuket.
Silom Village is a cutie-pie cluster of tiki huts that looks like what a Trader Vic’s might be if there was shopping involved.
There are about two dozen stores here and the theme is “night market light,” with some souvenirs but also some drop-dead, stunning and very sophisticated merchandise. Look for a store called Sugar for novelty accessories of the frilly kind.
PatPong, as most people know, is the red-light district. There’s a street market down the center of the main alley between the X-rated bars—this market sells horrible fakes and junk and is not worth anyone’s time. I do not care what you’ve heard or what guidebooks say—this is really junky.
The highlight of the visit to this district was the Porn Clinic (honest!), where Dr. Tana Porn gave me US$88 worth of Botox to eliminate a few wrinkles over the bridge of my nose. Walk-in Botox clinics are in malls, sidewalks and street corners all over town.
For more information on traveling in Bangkok, don’t miss our Off the Brochure Travel Guide to Bangkok, Thailand. Peter also broadcast his radio show from Bangkok, so check out Thailand Culture, Bangkok Locals and Travel News – Hour 1 – Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio.
MY NEW MALL
In an effort to make sure I did new things rather than just keep up with old favorites, I forced myself to go to the Pantip Plaza, which is the IT center of downtown. I had never been there before because I don’t know much about motherboards and am neither a techie nor a Trekkie. Silly me!
This mall had a woman selling home-made perfumes with the same scent as big name brands ($4), a vendor with Skype phone handsets ($15) and zillions of gidgets, gadgets and whatnots … as well as DVDs and programs. Note that prices for DVDs are much higher than in China, if you care. They sell legal and illegal copies; note that legal ones have a hologram on the outer package.
OLD , BUT NEW
I returned to The Peninsula Bangkok, as I always do, since no trip to Bangkok is complete without a few days there. There’s a new chef (working with executive chef Philip Sedgwick) so we arrived to a welcome VIP set-up of carved fruit in a papaya carved longboat—astonishing!
Then we joined the Peninsula Academy—something I had never done before—and took a class from the head florist, Moy. He brought us to the Flower Market and took us back to the hotel to practice husking lotus blooms. The flower market offers colors and textures you might never see elsewhere; we also happen to be in the rainy season, so there’s orchids galore and bunches of them cost about US$2.
The Peninsula Academy is a well-established program offered by all Peninsula Hotels, it’s just new to me as I never took out the time to do it. Most of the offerings are cultural but some also involve shopping, eating and/or cooking. After the flower class and lunch in the hotel lobby, there was a tea tasting of 12 different Thai teas and a special lesson—at my request—on how to make Thai iced tea, which I adore. (It’s done with condensed milk and is therefore fattening!) We finished all this up with a spa treatment which had to be carefully re-orchestrated at the last minute.
Great insider information in Ask the Locals Travel Guide: Bangkok, Thailand.
The ESPA at Peninsula Bangkok is world famous and under normal conditions they could walk on my back or roll me under an elephant—I know it would be great. Alas, after my Botox treatment I was told not to put pressure any where above my neck for five days. I could not lay face down and so ended up with an excellent body scrub, moisturizing rub and foot treatment.
Botoxy Bises,
SuzyKG
By Suzy Gershman for PeterGreenberg.com. Visit Suzy on the Web at www.suzygershman.com and join her on a shopping research tour of Vietnam this fall! She’ll be scouting locations for her spring tour from November 5-13, 2009, complete with her trademark shop & show lectures, market visits, food tastings and cooking lessons. For more information, contact Sarah at srlahey @ gmail.com.
