Bangkok is losing more and more icons
It hurts for the older expats, Bangkok is changing visibly. Capital is winning over small businesses and the bulldozers are wiping out some of the last visible memories. Shame!
For example, the iconic Dusit Thani hotel will disappear in June 2018. The area is being redeveloped, there will be a new hotel, a shopping center, condos and some green space.
Who ever had fun strolling around on the Suan Suan Lum Night Bazaar, close to the Lumpini Park could forget that for quite some time. Around 2021 there will be the mega big 'OneBangkok' project with hideous concrete skyscrapers.
The closure of the Cheap Charlie's bar. The small Soi at Sukhumvit Soi 11 is also being redeveloped. Maybe there will be a new Cheap Charlies's bar in a different location, but the way it once was, it will never be again.
Those looking for the famous cabaret bar Check Inn 99 on Sukhumvit Road at Nana (opposite the Landmark hotel) will unfortunately fall short. Fortunately, a new location has been found at Sukhumvit 33. The owner is now renovating there and the renovated Check Inn 99 will probably open again in June.
The well-known one also closed at the end of February of this year beergarden opened its doors on Sukhumvit Soi 7 after the restaurants on the right side of the soi had already collapsed, just like the bars and restaurants on the left side of the street.
Bangkok seems to be falling prey to developers who mainly want to build hotels, shopping centers and condos because that brings in money.
Unfortunately, not every change is an improvement.
This is very true indeed…
And this also ties into another article on this blog today; “Number of unemployed in Thailand is increasing”.
The peddlers and sellers are increasingly banned with their mobile stalls, because they no longer fit into the "modern" street scene. However, many of them do not have the means to rent or buy a property.
An evolution that cannot be stopped, I fear.
money rules…
Yes Khun Peter, absolutely right.
Precious memories disappear (like snow in the sun)
I lived in Bangkok in the early 90's (Soi 13 Sukumvit Rd, behind the 'Maimi hotel')
At the beginning of '93 'they' started to break things up.
Construction of the BTS line between Ploenchit Rd. and Asoke (Soi Cowboy)
But especially in recent years things are going fast and that's not just in Bangkok, in Pattatya
can 'they' do something about it and what about Korat in the Isan ??
Unfortunately traditions are disappearing and indeed Peter , not for the better.
It is indeed all very sad, but so recognizable.
Fortunately, Bangkok is so incredibly big that it would take another 100 years before all the cozy and characteristic things in that city will disappear for the cool business concrete...
So they will no longer take away my feelings, which is a pity for our children who (will) visit the country.
Time goes on. A new generation moves on. We cannot dwell on everything that once was. They are nice memories. The new one will also have something beautiful in it. You just have to be open to it.
Our fathers and mothers also did not like all the changes. We don't know any better.
If we had stayed with the old, most of us would never have ended up in Thailand.
Spent many hours at Charlies with its traveling trains and improvised toilet behind the bar, a true icon that attracts a very mixed audience from all over the world. I understand that the whole side street is going to be renovated, so also the authentic hostel on the other side. Too bad, but that's how things go in a (fast) developing city and actually, if you look at the dilapidated apartments in that block, it couldn't be any other way.
The 60+ have lived through times that the younger generations can only dream of. The 70s and 80s were undeniably the most wonderful of times…and not just in Thailand. That zeitgeist will never come back.
If I compare Thailand with when I came there for the first time in 1978, I immediately stopped talking just so that it has become a different world…..How relaxed everything was back then….much more open space…much more freedom and happiness…also the mentality of the people can hardly be compared.
It makes me sad…..and some young people will say….yes everything used to be better we know that….I don't claim everything was better but we can compare and then I tell you….in the case of Thailand it was then 30 times more fun than now in all areas.
The Beergarden in Sukhumvit Soi 7 is still open, just been there last week. The area will indeed be redeveloped, but the latest reports are that the Beergarden will return to the same place, but in a smaller form.
Would there also be a need for all those hotels and department stores?
It could well turn out to be an empty concrete wasteland, because a city where there is nothing to experience other than department stores, is not worth visiting either.
I am not a cultural pessimist. I also don't believe that everything was better in the past. Some things disappear, some things persist, some things reappear over time, in a different form or in a different place.
I grew up as a child without TV (at least the first few years), no telephone (certainly not a mobile one) and no computer. With my brothers and sister and with my parents we played many evenings and weekends games (Mans don't get annoyed, Stratego, Monopoly, Risk) or we played cards (ricks, jokers, canasta, bullying). Playing games is coming back and not just on the internet. Bangkok even has two cafes where you can play board games in the cafe, with friends or family. You can rent and play them there, but also buy them.
That underground atmosphere of Thermae, meeting place of 'everything dirty and dirty' until the early morning, still remains for me a nostalgic memory of the 70s and 80s
Later the 'coffee shop' moved above ground on Sukhumvit between soi 11 and 13, if I'm not mistaken, and slowly turned into a meeting place for japanese and young thai girls of fun and especially young because that's what japanese like.
In my previous response, 'remnants of the nightlife' is a better characterization of the visitors to the old Thermae than 'everything that is dirty and foul', although of course they are not mutually exclusive.