With a long weekend (gotta love that Buddha bloke) and time to kill in between various domestic chores and work, we decided to take (yes, another) shopping trip out in the city centre – this time to Pratunam market, within a stones throw of the famous Pantip Plaza on Petchburi Road.

There are two Pratunams – one inside a high-rise building filled with neon-lit booths and tiny one-man shops selling cheaply manufactured clothes, leather goods, and other cottage industry items. Once you’ve been to one shopping centre/market in Bangkok, it feels like you’ve seen them all.

Sure there are a few exceptions, like the gentrified sterility of The Emporium, which is as close to an upmarket western-style shopping mall as you’re likely to get in Bangkok, with all the usual overly-inflated prices for brand name items etc – the only difference being that this is probably the only place in Thailand where a Louis Vuitton handbag is the real deal and not a cheap chinese fake.

There’s also the aforementioned Pantip Plaza, Bangkok’s very own tech market, with five or so floors of hardware, digital cameras, laptops, and software, both genuine and not so genuine. The teenage guys who sell pirated movies and cheap pornos can be quite aggressive in their marketing, and any shopper who spends more than an hour there will go to sleep that night with the cries of “hullo sirrr, sexxxy movieee, deeeveeedeeee?” still ringing in their ears.

The other Pratunam is really where it’s at though – a sprawling, tentacled maze of back alley shops and stalls, with lane after lane disappearing into the darkness from the main street, alive with crowds of young women on shopping sprees and old men selling cheap food, lottery tickets and other more arcane items.

At the end of the day the goods on sale at Pratunam are not really that different from anything you could buy in Chinatown or Chattuchak, but most items are cheaper, and bargains can definitely be found if you buy in bulk and haggle hard (but always politely and with a smile on your face).

Most of the stuff for sale is cheap plastic junk, gawdy home decorations, out-of-date clothing that while fitting most thai women wouldn’t get past the shoulders of your average farang teenager. MyTGF picked up a pair of hipster pants for 150 baht (AUD $5.00) and some cheap ear-rings for 10 baht each, so the day wasn’t a complete waste for her.

Me? Well, as tempting as it was to finally lash out and buy that “same same but different” t-shirt I’ve always wanted, I kept my wallet firmly in the back pocket – “Farang kee ngok” as MyTGF jokingly calls me all the time. Translation: “You’re a cheap bastard who never spends any money on himself” – which is completely untrue.

I bought three bottles of Heinekins on the way home.

I also thought I’d do something a bit different for this blog entry, and I’ve added a little Flash photoBook of pics I took at Pratunam on the weekend. Enjoy.

View the FlashBook here (opens in new window).