My New Digital Toy!!!

Yes, that’s right. I have a new Digital Camera! I bought it a few hours ago here in Bangkok, after a full day of shopping and comparing prices. Shopping is so exhausting! After all my price comparison here on Sunday, where I went to the IT Mall and to MBK, I decided to try a new place today that everyone recommended to me as the best place to buy anything tech-related…Pantip Plaza.

Pantip Plaza makes the IT Mall look rather pathetic! It’s 5 full floors (plus a mezzanine level) of technology!! It’s pretty amazing, and in a way has that sort of indoor market feel that MBK has. There are stores and little stands selling everything from printers and cameras, to full laptops and every computer component imaginable! Of course it also had a large amount of pirated software and DVD’s as well. I don’t know how many times I was walking around and some salesman would say “sexy movie?”

But alas, after several hours (and an A&W root beer float) exploring all of Pantip Plaza, I didn’t really see any great price differences on the camera I wanted between the different stores. I was looking for the Canon PowerShot A610, and everyone there had the price around 11,000 baht–close to US$300. I thought I’d remembered seeing the camera cheaper on Sunday at MBK, so I decided to return to my old favorite to check it out.

I was right. Amidst all the stores and stalls, I found this one store called Power Buy that sold it for 8,590 baht–around US$225! All the had left was the display model, which is fine. I also bought a 1 gigabyte SD card for it for 1,000 baht–around US$25! So it was a very successful day!

Other than that my day has been rather uneventful. I’m staying at another youth hostel this time, but it’s much nicer than the last one I stayed in that I hated. My other intention for coming here was to drop off my absentee ballot at the US Embassy, which I did (and it was really packed with people trying to get visas) .

Other than that I’ve been continuing checking out the shopping here by coming to Emporium, this really fancy smanshy mall where I’m writing this from. On the Sky Train on the way here I did overhear a fairly loud break up by two people who spoke English! Not something you hear every day…especially in Bangkok!

Right, well my time is running out. Tomorrow I head to Kanchanaburi and some friends from school are meeting me here and we’re going together. Should be fun, so check back for updates!