MBK Center & Siam Paragon Malls – A Shopping Experience in Bangkok Thailand

It is extremely rare that Lindsay and I would ever seek out a “Mall” when traveling internationally.  We love to shop through local markets/shops but going to a Mall is usually the last thing we want to do.  However, after reading the recommendation of our Lonely Planet guidebook we decided to go and explore the MBK Center and Siam Paragon malls in Bangkok which were definitely an experience in themselves.  We happened to be traveling through Bangkok during the “hot season” and the heat, noise and traffic of the city was exhausting.  Not only were these malls a welcome break from all of this but they were also quite an experience.  The first mall we visited was Siam Paragon which is a beautiful building full of marble, glass, fountains, escalators, etc.  This mall was full of all the high-end retailers.  We cruised around for awhile in this mall and Lindsay ended up getting me a watch from Kenneth Cole that I wore for years.  This mall was great but was not terribly different from many of the upscale malls in the U.S.  Next we went across the street to the MBK Center mall and were greeted with a much different experience.  This mall was absolutely huge (probably 8 stories or so) and was jammed back with local Bangkok teens living it up.  The mall was full of every shop you could imagine and actually felt more like an indoor market then it did a shopping mall.  We walked around for hours looking at everything you could ever imagine.  We happened to be running out of memory cards so we headed up to the electronic section to buy some cheap, almost certainly stolen or knock off, memory cards.  We also frequented the cheap and clean food court on numerous occasions when we were hungry and tired from running around Bangkok. :)  If you ever find yourself in Bangkok don’t forget to visit its malls which are a welcome break from the chaos of the city and a great place to get a good deal on almost anything.