Bangkok’s legendary Pantip Plaza

[reader]

From Coconuts Bangkok

The glory that was Pantip Plaza, circa 2008. Photo: Sergey/CC BY-SA 2.0

Zig-zagging up and down escalators to compare prices on hard drives and video cards while weaving past hawkers chanting “sexy movie, you buy.” Shopping for hardware, pirated software, and VCDs at Pantip Plaza was once a Bangkok rite of passage.

That era formally ended two years ago, and now the former IT mall on Phetchaburi Road’s next chapter is reopening as a “wholesale food department store” called AEC Food Wholesale Pratunam.

Pantip Plaza (really Pantip Pratunam, as there are also Pantips in Ngamwongwan, Bang Kapi and Chiang Mai) had been dead for about five years. It was wounded by the transition to online shopping and died after a THB300 million (US$8.7 million today) renovation that took two years, during which 80% of its IT tenants left and visitors fell 60%. When it fully reopened in 2016, they did not return.

The owners of the 67,000sqm space have lurched between plans since. Asset World Corp. first announced in late 2020 that it had partnered with Chinese investors to turn it into the succinctly named “AEC Trade Center – Pantip Wholesale Destination,” some kind of marketplace it thought would lure online sellers looking for physical space. That plan didn’t survive the pandemic

Yesterday, Asset World (AWC) announced that with its partner Yiwu (“the world’s largest wholesale market for miscellaneous goods from Yiwu, China!”) that the new AEC Food Wholesale Pratunam will be some kind of wholesale food marketplace when it opens later this year. AWC CEO Wallapa Traisora used the words “hub” and “synergy” enough times to doubt they are really sure what it will be. But with the nation’s largest corporate conglomerates signed on; from CPF and ThaiBev to Thai Union, Betagro, and Tipco; it really doesn’t have to make sense to make money.

Asset World is the property arm of TCC Group, which like Chang-making megabrewer Thai Beverage, is owned by billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi. Its property portfolio includes the riverside Asiatique mall and Gateway Ekamai.

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From Coconuts Baangkok

Thai brewfan ordered to pay massive fine for saying he liked a beer

An ardent beer fan and advocate for reforming the nation’s draconian brewing laws was sentenced to jail time and a hefty fine today, all for posting a photo of a beer he tasted.

The court said he “enticed” others to drink. Artie said that he negotiated the penalties reduced to six months and THB150,000. But he also must pay additional fines of THB5,000 per day for refusing to “correct” his posts as ordered. 

The suspended sentence means he will remain free if he abides by the court’s requirements. The police said that if he commits another offense within a two-year probationary period, his term will be enforced.

Artie’s page, which has more than 70,000 followers, shows that he has continued to post similar photos of craft beer, with some of their labels blurred. He also uses his platform to promote opposition parties challenging the government in next month’s election.

Artid “Artie” Sivahansaphan, who uses Facebook to talk about his love of Thai craft beer culture, announced this morning that he was originally given a sentence of eight months in prison, suspended, and a THB200,000 fine for illegally promoting beer by simply posting about one that he tried and liked.

“I just posted a photo of beer,” he told Coconuts. “I made a page about craft beer, and posted a picture of this beer, and what it’s about, which is really normal. But in this country we have laws that prohibit us from talking about alcohol.”

[TMax]

Was a bit sad to see the demise of Pantip, have been there many times buying goods 

[PeterRS]

Sad both about the demise of Pantip Court and the verdict on the man who promoted craft beer. Thailand Beverage Company is a huge monopoly that controls up to 90% of the Thai whisky market as well as owning Chang beer. It owns a vast tract of land around the Queen Sirikit Convention Centre and no doubt in other parts of Bangkok and other cities. It does not want other alcoholic beverages sold in the country and uses its muscle accordingly. The Thai government therefore places major taxes and restrictions on imported alcoholic products.

Kloster beer was regularly sold in the country till the early 2000s when it disappeared from the shelves. Chang had started sales in the mid-1990s and did not want competition. So Kloster and Carlsberg soon vanished. Carlsberg eventually returned after a decade in the wilderness.

[vinapu]

9 hours ago, PeterRS said:

Thailand Beverage Company is a huge monopoly that controls up to 90% of the Thai whisky market as well as owning Chang beer..... It does not want other alcoholic beverages sold in the country and uses its muscle accordingly. The Thai government therefore places major taxes and restrictions on imported alcoholic products.

 

I actually am strong believer and actually practice what I preach that while travelling one should drink local beer. Very, very rarely I break that rule and only for beer imported from my own country. And I find Chang quite drinkable, thank you very much

[PeterRS]

20 minutes ago, vinapu said:

I actually am strong believer and actually practice what I preach that while travelling one should drink local beer. Very, very rarely I break that rule and only for beer imported from my own country. And I find Chang quite drinkable, thank you very much

I rarely drink beer. If I do then it is usually at the Ratsstube restaurant in the Goethe Institut off Sathorn Soi 1 where they serve a range of very fine German beers. If @vinapu ever travels in Iran - an amazing country with amazing people and stunning cities and scenery - I doubt if he will have more than one of the local alcohol-free beers. I found it quite undrinkable!

[vinapu]

2 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

 If @vinapu ever travels in Iran - an amazing country with amazing people and stunning cities and scenery - I doubt if he will have more than one of the local alcohol-free beers. I found it quite undrinkable!

I did, yes alcohol free beer was undrinkable but that goes with alcohol free beers everywhere. Beer without alcohol is like church without God.

But in Iran , at least then there was no imported  alternative so I simply skipped beer and was contend with black tea for length of stay.

Not that it was impossible to get drunk - on my first night and on main, crowded street of Shiraz I was stopped at least two times and offered moonshine. On of those guys was visibly drunk already.

Other than that I wholly agree with your assessment of that country , great people and scenery although I never lost from my sight fact that those great and hospitable people to a great degree support nasty and despicable regime. 

[PeterRS]

5 hours ago, vinapu said:

Not that it was impossible to get drunk - on my first night and on main, crowded street of Shiraz I was stopped at least two times and offered moonshine. On of those guys was visibly drunk already.

So true. My guide's parents lived in Shiraz and his father made a very passable red wine. He gave me some in a bottle of what had been vegetable juice. He just asked me to rinse the bottle thoroughly before I disposed of it!

5 hours ago, vinapu said:

Other than that I wholly agree with your assessment of that country , great people and scenery although I never lost from my sight fact that those great and hospitable people to a great degree support nasty and despicable regime. 

My assessment from visiting various cities in 2018 is that the people almost to a man utterly despised their rulers. But they could not then and can not now do anything about them.  Corruption in all political and military circles is rife. I was told the Supreme Leader pocketed US$13 million per day in bribes - although how anyone could know such an exact figure beats me.

Regarding Iran. I do think a knowledge of the past is vital in realising how it has reached this point in its long and often distinguished history. It's fact that the country had  downgraded the corrupt Shah and elected as Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in the early 1950s. But his party nationalised the country's oil industry because Iran was receiving only a fraction of its worth purely because the USA and the UK which ran the industry were desperate to protect their own financial interests. So the CIA abetted by the British organised the coup which got rid of Mosaddegh and the Shah was returned to power. With the Cold War in progress, the USA propped up the Shah who became a total megalomaniacal dictator as time went on. His notorious Savak Secret Police were hated, as was the ostentatious spending on luxuries by him and his wife.

He then turned around and bit the hand feeding him when he led the OPEC oil embargoes which resulted in massive inflation and economic misery in the west during the 1970s. Within the country, he became even less popular. When criticism from the clergy grew intense, the Shah banished Ayatollah Khomeini who thus became a figure around whom the growing number of critics of the Shah could coalesce. 

We all know what then happened. The opposition finally got the Shah kicked out and Khomeini was welcomed back by all in the country. For a time he was lauded, especially after Iraq invaded in 1981 and started the ghastly war that lasted for 8 years. But Khomeini's firebrand form of Islam soon grew thin as the regime became more and more pervasive and more and more corrupt.  But the Ayatollahs by then had a stranglehold on the country and, apart from one short period, were not prepared to give up any of their power. It is all so desperately sad for the people of that country.