Soi Blingla Photo Album Above
SOI BANGLA is rapidly becoming Soi Blingla. Big changes are underway in Phuket's Sin Central.
Going, going, gone are the low-rent - yet at the same time high-rent - bars. Coming soon are upmarket retail outlets and refined drinking and carousing establishments that will change the character of Phuket's most famous stretch.
Expect more franchised outlets. Expect more shopping and less sin (at least, less sin on display for tourists.) The forecasts after the tsunami that the Jungceylon shopping mall would trigger the makeover of Patong are coming true.
At Soi Bangla's eastern end, the old Baan Sukothai Resort has been razed after bidding goodbye to its final guests on August 19. The property is not being replaced.
Sources told Phuketwan today that a big new glitzy retail plaza is going to arise from the real estate rubble.
And that probably also accounts for the green screening now adorning the front of the Ocean shopping mall on the other side of the road.
Bangla, prepare to be transformed. Here comes Blingla. Get set to shop . . . but not for the age-old purchases, booze and sex. Both could once be bought along this strip, retail or wholesale, and even enjoyed on the premises.
Not for much longer. Largest and latest of the transformations is down Soi Seadragon, where dangling laborers on a soaring concrete and steel skeleton hint at fun on many levels. There's not a skerrick of thatch or bamboo to be seen.
The days of accommodation being found right in the heart of the action in Patong appear to be gone forever. The place is being f-ed over. (F being for franchise.)
Take-away eating establishments have flourished, but the concept of taking home anything else is rapidly disappearing.
Thanks to thorough policing, the iguana touts appear to have disappeared. Other traditional signs of lawlessness are likely to follow.
Some of the bars further down the strip have even stopped allowing hostesses on the premises. The old Soi Bangla is being well and truly f-ed over. (F for family-friendly.)
A copy-goods vendor who sells from a small wall in an alcove in Soi Bangla helped to explain why it's becoming Soi Blingla.
Her vertical patch of turf, about four metres by two metres, costs 50,000 baht a month to rent. In the alcove with her is another wall of pirate goods, plus a tour desk, both being rented at similar cost.
If an open space earns its ''owner'' 150,000 baht a month, one can only imagine how much people are prepared to pay for real shops, how much goes to various ''partners,'' and how rapidly the price of everything in Soi Bangla is being inflated.
Just as well the tourists keep coming, and just as well that the income stream will never stop. Bling, bling, blingla.
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It's to late to look at history, the money has already been spent. Here's history none the less. Las Vegas and Times Square both tried to clean up their acts and become family friendly. After a short while they missed the money, and went back to the tried and true method, selling sin. The only thing that changed was an increase in prices.
Phuket, as I see it, will not be able to go back to its previous ways without a major campaign, and a huge drop in pricing. For the record, I live here, do not go to Patong, and only see the island of Phuket, not just Patong, becoming a commercialised and expensive Singapore. Thanks but no thanks!
Posted by Ed Money on October 12, 2010 16:36