Thailand’s Computer Paradise

Posted by Greg

June 10, 2008

Last time I was in Canada, I was - somewhat futilely, I admit - searching for those little keychain license plates with names on them, but with Thai names like Tin, Pik, Nok and so forth. It’s no surprise that I couldn’t find any. The clerk asked me what I was looking for and I told her, mentioning that I live here, which she was pretty impressed with. I had to stifle a laugh, though, when she asked me very seriously, “So, is Thailand like… civilized?” For many, Thailand is a jungled land, where elephants traipse through the cities and natives sleep on moss. Many would be surprised that Thailand actually has access to cutting edge stuff, and most of the time, the best place to go to get it is Pantip Plaza, a Mecca for computer geeks everywhere. Just don’t expect everything to be 100% legit…

Pantip, located on Petchburi Road, is a strange looking building from the outside, a Roman-Gothic bath house looking thing with huge columns at the front door. You’ll know you’re there when you start to notice guys walking around carrying computer towers, monitors and bags that say “IT Somethingorother” on the side. I still remember the first time I walked into Pantip - my jaw nearly fell off of my head. It’s 6 floors of simply everything to do with computers or electronics: motherboards, monitors, power cables, PC or Mac, cases, mods, microphones, printers, blinking lights, fans, keyboards, hard drives, speakers, webcams, CD’s, DVD’s, lasers, scanners, sound cards, USB media… name a thing that’s got electricity coursing through it’s silicon veins, and you can find it at Pantip.

You can also find clothes, knick-knacks, add-ons, accessories, perfume, a few banks and even a cafeteria or two, which offers surprisingly good Thai grub.

Pantip is also known for its healthy stock of pirated software and media, all of which is pushed by semi-aggressive touts who wave you over and yell “Sexy movie! Software! Music! DVD! You, sir! Come look!” Everyone I know has their favourite kiosk here - it’s like finding a muffin shop you really like; you get to know the guy.

Myself, I had to pick up a new hard drive, as my music collection was pushing the boundaries of my wimpy 160GB drive I’d had for a few years. So, let’s take a little tour through Pantip to see what I saw.

As soon as you walk in, you’re looking up at several floors of blinking shining lights, as crowds of people scurry back and forth buying their gear, and even a few watching the seemingly endless parade of exhibitions on the main ground floor (below left). The day I was there, it had a neat contest between two teams who each built a robot that was trying to pick up paper cubes and dump them in a box, complete with scantily-clad cheerleaders (sorry, no pics).

Along with all the computer stuff is an insane amount of peripherals - mouse pads, backpacks, cables, stickers, keyboard mods.. the list goes on. This store (above right) was selling all types of laptop bags, plus a few cool vinyl labels that you stuck on your laptop to give it a touch of sass (I chose a golden dragon in an impulse buy).

What you have to do at Pantip is wander, and shop for the right price. Most of the places are good, and seem to offer the same stuff for similar prices, but every once in a while you’ll get a place that will try to rip you off. Most of the places will have pieces of paper with printouts of their prices taped up above their counters (below left); lines of zombified customers march slowly by these, taking in the prices on everything from video cards to laptop hard drives. See a price you like? Hit the counter and ask for it.

I stopped for a quick lunch (above right) - some khao soi gai, a delicious, tangy chicken noodle soup, and continued shopping. Past stores selling stacks of DVD’s (below left), legions of school kids looking at the latest pirated games to spend their allowance on, salarymen buying the latest bluetooth headsets, the small rooms just out of sight that are crowded with men flipping through books of porn DVD’s (which are technically illegal to sell, but the shopowners have a sophisticated system of spies in place that silently raise the alarm whenever the police run one of their weekly show raids; you’ll see an entire both go from packed with merchandise and people to an empty husk covered with a dusty curtain in about 20 seconds). If you head back into the dingy bowels of Pantip, back where the crowds thin out and the shops get smaller and smaller, you might even run into a monk or two (below right), which is a jarring site for most Westerners.

After a while, I settled on a place that seemed to have what I needed - an external hard drive with a case so that I can take my music with me if I need to. A 500GB Seagate drive with case included ran me about $4,000 baht ($130US). I nearly bought some cheap ink for a friend’s printer, which you can buy in refill bottles here, along with the syringe needed to refill your printer’s toner cartridge (printing companies haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate it when people do that - they don’t want you to know that toner ink costs more than raw human blood from the Red Cross, and waayyyyy more than water, alcohol or gasoline). That’s a case full of fake-but-just-as-good-as-new toner ink below.

If you’re in the mood for some electronics shopping, or you’re visiting and want to pick up some good deals on pirated software (which you shouldn’t do, it’s illegal and immoral and you’ll go to hell, don’t do it), or even if you want to see a bizarre and interesting cross section of Thai society, then Pantip is the place you need to go.