New Mcdonalds At Thapae Gate

[Ulysses G.]

True to an extent but the problem is most of the concrete box shop houses that make up Chiang Mai had no character in the first place,

That is it, exactly!

[damian5000]

I'm still pissed they replaced the red brick with concrete about 2 years back.

The West is here to say. Better McDonalds than another Brit restaurant or Starbucks. Though we could probably use some competition for Starlight.

[Ulysses G.]

Spotlight?

[Ulysses G.]

I'm still pissed they replaced the red brick with concrete about 2 years back.

Now, I can get behind that.

[WinnieTheKhwai]

True to an extent but the problem is most of the concrete box shop houses that make up Chiang Mai had no character in the first place, someone pointed out in an earlier post Chiang Mai should have started preserving its heritage in a better way a long while back, it's past the turning point now. That concrete monstrosity of a hotel won't become anymore of an eyesore because of a McD's infront of it.

Um, Amora Thapae is a concrete monstrosity. Imm hotel, while made mostly from concrete posts & beams, looks rather nice to be honest. And most of it is hidden from the street view anyway.

It looks better than 90% of the usual crap architecture going up around you. Some pictures were posted a couple pages back.

As much as I'd like to rant at McDonalds, this architecture thing won't fly. Sorry.

[gotlost]

You have Foxy.

[Ulysses G.]

I'm told that the building that houses the McDonalds in the Night Bazzar was designed by the McDonald's Corporation. it is not such a terrible design.

McDonald's in Chiang Mai Written by Albert Seer Sunday, 08 March 2009 14:31 McDonald's

Yes believe it or not the golden arches are even in Chiang Mai. The first one opened in Night Bazaar and it has flourished on the city with some of the best food in the world. It is not that it is cheap but that it is so addictive that westerners can not stay away. It is far more expensive than most local restaurants as is the case with most western chain fast food places that have located in Thailand.

Chiang Mai Pavilion Foolr 2, 145/26 Chang Khlan Rd. A. Muang Chiang Mai 50100 Thailand Telephone: * 053-818511-2 Fax: * 053-81851 (thats right across from starbucks coffee in night bazaar)

http://www.northernthailand.com/test/chian...chiang-mai.html

[gotlost]

I went buy Starbucks at Thapae Gate today I was noticing the decor of the building. I think that it is designed quite nicely and enhances the area. Its the shop houses that are within a stone throw that are a disgrace either fix them or tear them down. As for the new IMM hotel with McD's pretty good looking building. Now where are going to put that new go go bar?

[middlepath]

As far as the decor/design in some Southern California some cities would make fast food establishments build to blend with the over all code of the city. Such as in Santa Barbara where the code in one neighborhood was mission style painted Padra Brown. McDonalds built in the mission style. No Arches and was Padra brown.

Maybe Mcdonalds could blend in here in CM and make one look like a shop house with whitewash and black mold.

[richard10365]

McDonalds in good location finally. I am happy to see more globalism moving into the city. I will definitly eat there! It is a prime location to make a profit. I am sure McDonalds is paying a lot of money for that location. I think more of a commercial look would be preferable to the farang bar culture that has been there for so long.

I do understand how some people don't like change. But with globalization, cultures will merge and profit will be made. Eventually, in a thousand years or so, we will all be very culturally similiar......if we make it past 2012!

[getgoin]

I went buy Starbucks at Thapae Gate today I was noticing the decor of the building. I think that it is designed quite nicely and enhances the area. Its the shop houses that are within a stone throw that are a disgrace either fix them or tear them down. As for the new IMM hotel with McD's pretty good looking building. Now where are going to put that new go go bar?

I agree with you. It is one of the nicer buildings in the area and they did a great job with the design, slightly colonial.

It probably takes a lifetime of living in a trailer and guzzling cheap beer to think that dilapidated, whitewashed cement shop houses would be more aesthetic. An educated person would think that that kind of person would relish a Micky D's at Thapae Gate.

[harrry]

Well I am in big trouble. I went to Airport Plaza and they have the Chocolate mud muffins which are delicious warmed in a microwave servied with their soft serve icecream.

Cant say anything about the coffee but it looked good but decided to have a second muffin instead.

Tapae will be much easier to get to if they have them.

[Donnyboy]

Really? Where are you getting your data? Many of the large chains buy their beef from large producers. Micky D's Thailand buys Australian beef.

and where does the grain come from to feed the australian cows?

According to that film 'Australia', with Nicole Kidman, they also have free-range cows in Oz.

Most cattle in Australia are free range and why wouldnt they be has anyone looked at the size of the country ? There are "feed lots" too some meat specially raised for niche markets such as Japan. On my small farm my cattle were pasture fed with supplements of my own grown corn through winter.

id be surprised if there was any green grass pastures left in Australia right now. Any rain to speak of yet?

[thetravellingcat]

By eating/drinking at McDonalds you're just the lowest common denominator and a fresh statistic ready for heart disease and a whole shed load of health problems. There is nothing unique about McDonalds, they do not care about you or your health. All they care about is "taste".

McDonalds and the fast food industry spend millions on "food feel" "taste" and "texture" all to give their products that "melt in the mouth" effect. Yes ignorance really is bliss when it comes to McDonalds. Just thinking about the animals that have to be bought into this plane of existence just to satisfy human "taste" is so sad. Don't get me started on the environmental impact.

[Ulysses G.]

That is really groovy, but it all goes back to you anti-McDonald's types REAL message. All of your data points to forced vegetarianism for the entire planet.

A hamburger is no more unhealthy than spaghetti carbanara, lasagne, curryworst, bangers and mash and so on. Political correctness has done a lot to take away our rights and privacy , but do you really think that you can imprison everyone who refuses to switch to tofu and soymilk as their main source of protein? I'm sure that you food fascists would love to try.

The Food Fascists

by Wendy McElroy

"Hitler was a vegetarian, don't you know.

He was also an anti-smoker...militantly so."

~Joel Mabus

People who are surprised by the vigor of the recent push toward a Fat Tax on junk-food have not been paying attention to an important political trend. Julia Child called it "food naziism." Others call it the real food movement; it advocates taxes, in one form or another, on "unhealthy" food choices in much the same manner as sin taxes are currently imposed upon tobacco and alcohol. The tax advocated is not always a direct one. Sometimes it consists of imposing government policies that would discourage certain agricultural or mass processing practices.

The cover of

Real Food for a Change – a recently published political manifesto that masquerades as a book on health through food – declares, "[T]he simple act of eating can: boost your health and energy, knock out stress, revive your community, clean up the planet." The authors' arguments slide from almost trite observations about the value of fresh produce to an explicit cry for food "justice." Thus Chapter 4, "Avoid Gassy Foods," segues into Chapter 5, "Set the Table for the Future," which calls upon local governments to exert greater control over the food supply and public health policy to ensure a just future. It is a future in which unhealthy food choices will be discouraged by government policy, if not outright prohibited.

Such people constitute a food police who wish to censor what you eat in much the same manner as their more intellectual counterparts wish to censor what you read. Their purpose is the same. They wish to keep you pure.

The term "food police" became prominent in the news some years ago, especially when applied to the

Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) . Established in 1971 by scientists affiliated with Ralph Nader, the CSPI's focus has shifted over time from anti-nuclear advocacy to public policy on food. For example, the CSPI was a leader in the fight against the use of the fat-substitute olestra in potato chips, which erupted a few years back. To some observers, CSPI's stance on olestra must have seemed counterintuitive. The organization is one of the voices that has made phrases such as "artery-clogging fat" commonplace in modern dialogue.

The anti-olestra stance becomes perfectly predictable, however, in the context of CSPI's political mission: to use food and people's health fears to control government policy. Their vision allows no room for a mass-producing corporation like Frito-Lay to provide food solutions, no matter how well-tested. (After all, this is the same organization that made the sensational announcement carried far and wide by mass media: a substantial percentage of teenagers receive twenty-five percent of their calories from soda pop. Their subsequent announcement that the data had been overblown by one hundred percent received barely a mention.) Nor does the scaremongering CSPI's vision allow for individual choice. Indeed, the mission is so powerful that CSPI does not balk at the unPC cultural imperialism involved in condemning certain ethnic cuisines. It attacks the heritages embodied by food served in Italian, Chinese, and Mexican restaurants seemingly with no awareness of the cultural arrogance of this position.

Under the logo of a happy cartoon-potato and a happy carrot giving each other the high-five, the CSPI calls for ramming these vegetables down the throats of the public. Consider a June 1^st Press Release that proudly declared, "Health advocates at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and Yale University recommended in a paper in the June issue of the American Journal of Public Health that soft drinks and snack foods be taxed to provide funding for nutrition and health campaigns." The CSPI's Nutrition Action Healthletter is reported to have almost a million member-subscribers who, presumably, support such Twinkie taxes. The new report cites a report drafted by Michael Jacobson, executive director of the CSPI and Kelly D. Brownell, a professor of psychology at Yale University, who recommend a one-cent tax on every pound of snack food and every twelve ounces of soft drink. The report skips over the fact that the "anti-McDonald's" tax is a levy on human beings not upon faceless corporate America, and that the people most affected will be the poor who spend more of their money on food – especially fast food.

Kelly Brownell's co-authorship of the report is no surprise. Brownell, a director of Yale's Center for Eating and Weight Disorders – has become prominent as the research muscle that backs up and, so, legitimizes the food fascists' political agenda. In 1998, for example, during a push to tax everything from tobacco to beer, Brownell was widely quoted as saying, "To me, there is no difference between Ronald McDonald and Joe Camel. Are we going to have legislation tomorrow? No. But we have to start thinking about this in a more militant way." The Boston Herald quoted Brownell as condemning our society as a "toxic food environment" in which 300,000 people die each year of obesity-related diseases. Astutely, the Herald observed "Brownell's plan [to tax unPC foods] takes a page straight out of the playbook used against the tobacco industry." No wonder the professor won the 1998 Nanny Award presented each year to the person who has "shown outstanding initiative, creativity and determination" in protecting us against ourselves.

In quoting Brownell on Ronald McDonald, the New Republic asked, "Is it really such a crazy idea?" The New Republic had apparently picked up the quote from an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, which warned against a slippery slide. If public policy can be based on the idea of hamburgers causing cancer, how long will it be before people sue because of illness rooted in the special sauce? The New Republic countered that the Wall Street Journal was making a false assumption: namely, that "the human mind is like the canine mind; once legislators get a taste of blood, they won't know where to stop." If the drug war – another moral crusade against ingested substances – is any indication, the Wall Street Journal's assumptions are impeccable.

Fortunately the PC food agenda has stimulated some backlash within other areas of the political correctness. Jody Abrams of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance accuses the likes of Brownell of denigrating fat people. She refers him to the growing body of evidence that concludes "It's less about the number on the scale and more about exercise and what you put in your body." As long as the PC pundits are feasting n each other, perhaps the rest of us will remain free to chomp the chimichangas and General Gao's chicken that have been singled out for special condemnation by the culinary imperialists.

July 13, 2000

http://www.lewrockwell.com/mcelroy/mcelroy16.html

[gotlost]

[Earl]

incidentally does anyone think that the starbuck's at tha pae gate is anything other than an absolute eyesore? one of the most attractive things about this city is its ramshackle and authentic architecture mixed with various thai styles and different boutique hotels, guesthouses etc. a cookie cutter corporate coffee shop looks horribly out of place there, as will the golden arches.

I think the The Starbucks is a really nice looking place and they did a great job on the design. It was an ugly shop house.

I agree.

[Donnyboy]

By eating/drinking at McDonalds you're just the lowest common denominator and a fresh statistic ready for heart disease and a whole shed load of health problems. There is nothing unique about McDonalds, they do not care about you or your health. All they care about is "taste".

McDonalds and the fast food industry spend millions on "food feel" "taste" and "texture" all to give their products that "melt in the mouth" effect. Yes ignorance really is bliss when it comes to McDonalds. Just thinking about the animals that have to be bought into this plane of existence just to satisfy human "taste" is so sad. Don't get me started on the environmental impact.

yup totally agree, give me whale sushi anytime

[harrry]

By eating/drinking at McDonalds you're just the lowest common denominator and a fresh statistic ready for heart disease and a whole shed load of health problems. There is nothing unique about McDonalds, they do not care about you or your health. All they care about is "taste".

McDonalds and the fast food industry spend millions on "food feel" "taste" and "texture" all to give their products that "melt in the mouth" effect. Yes ignorance really is bliss when it comes to McDonalds. Just thinking about the animals that have to be bought into this plane of existence just to satisfy human "taste" is so sad. Don't get me started on the environmental impact.

yup totally agree, give me whale sushi anytime

Protect the krill ......boycot G reenpeace

[trainman34014]

By eating/drinking at McDonalds you're just the lowest common denominator and a fresh statistic ready for heart disease and a whole shed load of health problems. There is nothing unique about McDonalds, they do not care about you or your health. All they care about is "taste".

McDonalds and the fast food industry spend millions on "food feel" "taste" and "texture" all to give their products that "melt in the mouth" effect. Yes ignorance really is bliss when it comes to McDonalds. Just thinking about the animals that have to be bought into this plane of existence just to satisfy human "taste" is so sad. Don't get me started on the environmental impact.

yup totally agree, give me whale sushi anytime

They should think a lot harder about 'Taste' and 'Texture' because it all tastes like crap.

[noise]

Been out of town for a while and just saw this thread. Skimmed down through page one and found no one answered Ulysses G.'s question from the original post. Seeing the tone of the added posts, didn't read any further.

I find the coffee at McD's very good. In fact, so good that I bought their discount book that allows, believe it or not, discounts on coffee and muffins, etc., at all locations. I, for one, will enjoy this new site.

[jackr]

i don't think you know what the words 'authentic' and 'character' mean...

I know what StevieH is saying regards character and authenticity. Them Golden Arches is part and parcel of the slippery slope toward the norm and loss of uniqueness.

True to an extent but the problem is most of the concrete box shop houses that make up Chiang Mai had no character in the first place, someone pointed out in an earlier post Chiang Mai should have started preserving its heritage in a better way a long while back, it's past the turning point now. That concrete monstrosity of a hotel won't become anymore of an eyesore because of a McD's infront of it.

Yes, but in this context, what it looked like is neither here not there, it's what it's going to become... the norm.

[anonymouse]

i don't think you know what the words 'authentic' and 'character' mean...

I know what StevieH is saying regards character and authenticity. Them Golden Arches is part and parcel of the slippery slope toward the norm and loss of uniqueness.

True to an extent but the problem is most of the concrete box shop houses that make up Chiang Mai had no character in the first place, someone pointed out in an earlier post Chiang Mai should have started preserving its heritage in a better way a long while back, it's past the turning point now. That concrete monstrosity of a hotel won't become anymore of an eyesore because of a McD's infront of it.

Yes, but in this context, what it looked like is neither here not there, it's what it's going to become... the norm.

Yes I get what you mean by the norm but if the norm before was a load of run down shop houses and if in the future the norm will be a plethora of western chain stores either way it doesn't bring charm or atmosphere to the area.

[harrry]

[Yes I get what you mean by the norm but if the norm before was a load of run down shop houses and if in the future the norm will be a plethora of western chain stores either way it doesn't bring charm or atmosphere to the area.

Back in the time time the moat was built the area would probably be just shacks and slums occupied by camp followers and their ilk while all the important stuff was inside the moat. Not much has changed has it?

[anonymouse]

[Yes I get what you mean by the norm but if the norm before was a load of run down shop houses and if in the future the norm will be a plethora of western chain stores either way it doesn't bring charm or atmosphere to the area.

Back in the time time the moat was built the area would probably be just shacks and slums occupied by camp followers and their ilk while all the important stuff was inside the moat. Not much has changed has it?

I think that most Asian cities if they did have any charm lost it pretty quick with the rapid industralisation that came to the East. Most of the Cities that have retained any charm normally have been colonised at some point and it's the architecture of the colonists that gives character, eg Vietnam and Laos with its French architecture. I've also been impressed with some of the Chinese Heritage towns like Lijiang and Dali.

I believe its the moat and the city walls that giveChiang Mai its unique character not its buildings.

[harrry]

I believe its the moat and the city walls that giveChiang Mai its unique character not its buildings.

I think it is the people. Now to head to Maccas for a coffee and muffin to mix with them

[cmsally]

According to older Chiang Mai residents, the site of the new Imm Hotel and thus McD's was actually a temple in the past (at least 50 yrs ago)

Not quite sure what happened to the temple and how it got knocked down but it is why they believe nothing seems to work on this site. ie everything seems to be a dismal failure business wise.

[Ulysses G.]

That whole area is a bad luck spot including the Top North Hotel and Bar Beer Center on the other side. There were graveyards at one time and the gate blocks the ghosts from entering and exiting frequently and so on.

Bookazine just went out of business right next door and it is rumored that the new tenant is another fast food place, but not burgers.

[Ulysses G.]

McDonalds at Thapae Gate had a big opening party tonight for employees and according to the signs it will be open for business tomorrow: Tuesday 22 December.

[WinnieTheKhwai]

Awesome!!

Will write up a detailed report as soon as I get a chance to visit.