Zig-zagging up and down escalators to compare prices on hard drives and video cards while weaving past hawkers chanting “sexy movie, you buy.” Shopping for hardware, pirated software, and VCDs at Pantip Plaza was once a Bangkok rite of passage.
That era formally ended two years ago, and now the former IT mall on Phetchaburi Road’s next chapter is reopening as a “wholesale food department store” called AEC Food Wholesale Pratunam.
Pantip Plaza (really Pantip Pratunam, as there are also Pantips in Ngamwongwan, Bang Kapi and Chiang Mai) had been dead for about five years. It was wounded by the transition to online shopping and died after a THB300 million (US$8.7 million today) renovation that took two years, during which 80% of its IT tenants left and visitors fell 60%. When it fully reopened in 2016, they did not return.
