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River City is Bangkok's oldest 'antiques' mall, and still the
best destination for serious Asian art lovers to go. When I
first came to Bangkok in the late 1980s, the mall had a lot of
shops selling cheap souvenirs, tacky French Empire
reproductions, and some rather dodgy 'antiques'. Over the years,
the mall has been updated several times. Newly remodeled inside
and out in 2010, the latest re-work seems to have seen the last
of the tacky and dodgy stuff cleaned out. There are still a few
souvenir shops and too many tailors for my taste, but once you
get past these, there's an absolutely stunning array of Asian
art on display for sale.
The really fascinating shops are
on the third and fourth floor. There's a wide variety of Asian
art, from old maps to Buddhist works to more recent everyday
items from the last century. River City is a really great place
to browse, but if you're going to buy you better know what
you're doing, or have enough money for it not to matter that you
ended up with an expensive reproduction rather than a real
antique.
Not everything on sale is an antique. There are
also some shops sell good quality Benjarong as well as other
Thai handicrafts. The large central atrium plays host to regular
events, and there is also an auction house with monthly sales.
River City is open every day from 10:00 am to 10:00 pm. The
easiest way to get there is to take their free boat from the
Taksin Bridge pier, below the Skytrain station. Most riverside
hotels will also take you to the mall in their boats. See the
River City web site for more information. |
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