Thailand

Menu
  • IanAndWendy.com
    • WineTastingSonomaCounty.com
    • WeTravelWithKids.com
    • Close
  • Map
  • Countries
    • Caribbean
      • Anguilla
      • Antigua
      • Aruba
      • Bahamas
      • Curacao
      • Dominica
      • Easter Island
      • Martinique
      • Puerto Rico
      • St. Lucia
      • St. Martin
    • Americas
      • Mexico
      • USA
      • Costa Rica
    • Eastern Europe
      • Austria
      • Czech Republic
      • Estonia
      • Latvia
      • Lithuania
      • Poland
      • Slovakia
      • Slovenia
    • Western Europe
      • Belgium
      • Denmark
      • France
      • Germany
      • Greece
      • Holland
      • Hungary
      • Iceland
      • Italy
      • Liechtenstein
      • Luxembourg
      • Norway
      • Portugal
      • Spain
      • Switzerland
      • Turkey
      • Vatican City
    • Asia
      • Brunei
      • Cambodia
      • China
      • Vietnam
      • India
      • Korea
      • Malaysia
      • Maldives
      • Singapore
      • Thailand
      • Turkey
    • Middle East
      • Egypt
      • Israel
      • Jordan
      • Oman
      • UAE
    • Africa
      • Botswana
      • Namibia
      • Egypt
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Zimbabwe
    • Pacific
      • Cook Islands
      • Easter Island
      • Tahiti
      • New Zealand
    • Close
  • Travel Tips
  • amazon
  • About Us

MBK Shopping Center

July 02, 2003
by Wendy
food court, gold, jewlery, mall, mbk center, shopping, shopping mall
2 Comments

We went to the MBK Center, a huge shopping mall in Bangkok. This is the Tokyu department store, with some great slogans. We like the "onlooker" bit. English is very popular, but not very accurate.
We went to the MBK Center, a huge shopping mall in Bangkok. This is the Tokyu department store, with some great slogans. We like the "onlooker" bit. English is very popular, but not very accurate.
If you’re wondering wat to do next (these puns just never stop being funny), and need a break from temples, grab a cab over to the MBK Shopping Complex. (Do not walk. The walk ain’t pretty – unless you have a particular fetish for automotive and appliance repair shops). This is a huge AC shopping mall which is sort of a cross between any huge American shopping mall and a Thai bazaar. There is a floor dedicated to jewelry stores (with amazingly low prices on 22K gold jewelry), clothing, knick-knack, handicraft, etc. stores. When you get hungry, check out the food court on the top floor for some cheap eats, or the food court beside the supermarket on the first floor.

There is also a whole floor dedicated to cell phones and cell phone paraphernalia. The top floor has a huge arcade on it, as well as a cheap movie theater with "VIP" seats that look more like lazyboys. Nice. Haggling is expected in the stores, but it wasn’t hardcore, or at least it wasn’t in the real stores. The kiosk vendors were more desperate for sales and the prices could be driven down substantially. There are a few Western chains, but there’s no deals to be had there – for example, Body Shop was about 20-30% more expensive then in the US.

If you get bored of the MBK Center, there are a few other shopping complexes that you can walk to from there – there’s a bunch of them clustered in this one area of the city. But from what we saw, MBK was the biggest and most interesting.

Thai Food Court How-To

This is the food court inside the mall.
This is the food court inside the mall.
Guestimate how much you want to spend at the food court. Walk up to the cashier and buy "coupons". You then exchange these for food at the individual serving stalls. When you’re done, you can exchange any remaining coupons back for cash. 

Do not do what we did, which was mainly to stumble around looking lost. No one we could find spoke English and explain the system to us. So we assumed that it would work like a cafeteria back home: you get your plates, and bring it up to the cashier to pay.

Well, in typical overly generous Thai fashion, the food vendors gave us what we wanted without coupon payment, assuming we would eventually figure it out.  Which we did, thanks to a nice Thai student who explained the whole thing to us in perfect English.

Social Share
  • google-share
2 Comments
  1. Pingback: Ko Samet | Ian and Wendy's Travel Blog

  2. Thailand Travel Deals February 16, 2010 at 10:54 pm

    haha, the Thai food courts can be hard to understand the first times but they are really smart.

    If you liked MBK I guess you would like the Pratunam area and the malls there.

    [Reply]

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

captcha *

Click to cancel reply

Recent Posts

How to spoil yourself silly on a beach vacation
Nov 06, 2015
Old, almost free tech bringing traveling families together
Oct 15, 2015
Losing our wheels in Munich
Oct 09, 2015
A disgusting car seat awaits you in Munich!
Sep 30, 2015
Alphaberry by B-Toys - An electronic singing toy we love to travel with!
Sep 28, 2015

Slideshows

(see all 5 Thailand slideshows)

Videos

Recent Posts

  • How to spoil yourself silly on a beach vacation
  • Old, almost free tech bringing traveling families together
  • Losing our wheels in Munich
  • A disgusting car seat awaits you in Munich!
  • Alphaberry by B-Toys – An electronic singing toy we love to travel with!
  • Fabulous indoor – and outdoor – playground in Siauliai, Lithuania