Siam Paragon Shopping
Siam Paragon operates since December 2005. It is a quite large shopping complex conveniently located at the Siam Square main skytrain (BTS) station. We go there about once a week, so the review of Siam Paragon featured below, is based on our day-to-day experience of visiting and shopping there.
Getting a full overview of Siam Paragon is rather difficult, since any view is obstructed by the awful skytrain pillars in front of the building. The entrance at street level brings you into the food court and within easy access to the Gourmet Supermarket. More convenient is the wide connection (really spacious) with the skytrain station. To move about the large shopping complex, you will find escalators in front of you. Walking about 100 meters in a rightward direction (follow the arrows) brings you to the elevators.
Siam Paragon has a basement (with food court, as mentioned) and as far as we could figure out 5 open floors. Each floor has retail shops (we do not quite know whether ‘retail’ is a proper word for some of the huge shops we saw) running parallel to the street, and access to a department store, called Siam Paragon Department Store, that is located towards the center and the back of the building.
Different levels at Siam Paragon
Ground Floor : Gourmet Market. Actually the Gourmet Market at Siam Paragon is about the size of a standard soccer field. It indeed has a lot of gourmet foods for sale, besides regular supermarket goods. Initially we were much impressed by the things on offer, and we considered the prices appropriate. A second visit a few weeks later made us realize that actually quite a lot of the gourmet stuff is rather pricey and more expensive than say at Emporium.
The bakery at Gourmet Market (operating under the name Le Boulanger) unexplicably is way below par (unless you like orange or pink colored sandwich bread). So if you buy an expensive salad (see below), you are advised to buy your rolls somewhere else.
A useful comparison is the salad bar which most supermarkets in Bangkok feature. Foodland sells at 10 baht/100 grams of salad, Tops Supermarket sells at 15 baht/100 grams and the Gourmet Market at Siam Paragon charges a whopping 25 baht (discounted to 20 baht)/100 grams. Of course, with higher prices come somewhat more exotic fruits and vegetables to choose from.
MF (Mezzanine Floor?) : Beauty Hall (the largest collection of perfumes and make-up stuff we ever encountered) – The Luxury
First Floor : Fashion Venue – The Lingerie Salon
Second Floor : Paragon Men – Sports Mall Global
Third Floor : Read & Write – Paragon Kids
Fourth Floor : Power Mall Ultra – Paragon Living
source :: http://www.thaiwebsites.com/siamparagon.asp
