This post, I would be featuring Central World in Bangkok. During year end and beginning of the year, one can really feel the festive mood. It is this time that many tourists would arrive during the holidays. If you visit shopping malls like Central World or Siam Paragon, the service staff would be able to converse in English.
Short video about Central World:
Central World Food Court
During meal times, the food court is packed with customers, many who are foreigners.
The foodcourt in Central World is huge and have an abundance of food available. The food court uses a self service cashless method of payment.
There are two ways of paying: first is through the various online payment platform in Thailand such as Promptpay and TrueMoney using mobile phone app to scan the QR code.
Foreigners and tourists may not be familiar with this so the next method is to go to their self service machines, put in cash to get a slip to use it to pay for food. When the food is served the staff would scan the slip. You can obtain the balance from the machine by scanning the slip and choosing to refund.
If you encounter any problems, you can always ask the Information staff as well as the staff who are serving food. The staff can converse in English.
Frankly the food are priced higher than outside…. however you do enjoy the comfort and would not encounter any language barrier. Read also: Should you eat in a food court or savour the street food?
Bookstores, calendars and Planners
For many years while I was still in Malaysia, I would visit Thailand almost on every year end because I would go to bookstores like B2S or SE-ED to buy a Thai calendar and planner for my following year’s planning. Now that I have been staying in Thailand for sometime, I am able to buy these items which become my indispensable planning tools. View posts on my planning tools over the years.
By the way, Asia Books located in Central World sells books that are in English. They have a couple of other outlets in other parts of Bangkok as well:
Display and fairs throughout the year
Below is a display area by a company that sells cookies in a beautifully designed tins… the company is called GPR Gold Cookies. Even though the display would be gone, the designs are so beautiful that I wish to share it here:
As always, beautiful craft and souvenior items would catch my eye so cannot help but to take more pictures of it. I found their Facebook page which have even more pictures (note: Another company that also have biscuits and cookies in beautifully designed tins is S&P…. you can view post and a video in this blog post).
Year End/ Beginning of the Year Festive Holidays and Moods
During year end holiday seasons, there are many tourists who would visit Thailand. The Christmas decorations would be elaborate and one would be able to experience the festivities here.
Central Shopping complexes can be found in major towns around Thailand. While the decorations is not so elaborate the further it is from major towns like Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Phuket, the festive mood can still be very much felt when visiting Central Malls.
