Thursday, November 10, 2005

Chinatown


Chinatown as the name suggests is the part of town where a lot of Chinese came to live and now call home. They have transformed it into a district that would not look out of place in any major Chinese City.

You know straight away you are in Chinatown, all the shop and street signs change, instead of being in Thai, they are in Mandarin. There are two main long streets, and between these run a warren of small streets full of markets. The Markets sell everything from food, hardware, dried goods and of course fake goods. Chinatown is a large wholesale area for all the fake goods, if you go to Chinatown, you will get some goods cheaper than you would get in the centre of Bangkok. The watch in the picture is a very good copy of an Omega, this retails for around £30.

Chinatown is most famous for its Gold Shops; most of the shops on the streets are jewellers. Gold is taken very seriously in Bangkok. All the pieces are the same price, they are sold by weight. The gold is 23.78carat, nearly pure gold. The weight is in units of “Baht” one “Baht" is 15.5oz of gold and at the moment costs 9100bht (£130) Quite expensive. The gold I bought in March only cost 8000bht. The idea is you buy as an investment or even an insurance policy. You buy when it is cheap or you have money and you sell when it is expensive or you are skint.

Some of the Chinese restaurants are fantastic, I guess very authentic and very reasonable. The food that is sold by the street vendors is equally nice and a fraction of the cost.



Chinatown isn’t the easiest place to get to and can be overwhelming with so many people in one place trying to make a living. Try to visit it though, the experience is worth it.

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