Newspapers At Central Bangna

[pjbradley]

As anyone who tries to buy English-language newspapers (other than The Nation or the BKK Post) at Central Bangna knows, the moribund management at Asia Books offers only one or two copies of titles like "The Wall Street Journal Asia." If you arrive, say, after 1p, chances they've sold the single copy and you're out of luck. While this situation has been going on forever, AB's management does nothing about it; they make a government bureaucracy look like a model of innovation and dynamism.

To the rescue, from an unlikely source, is the new Phra Pitiya bookstore on the fourth floor, appropriately just above Asia Books. The store carries only Thai-language books, with even the store signage all in Thai, but it sells English-language international newspapers, as well as the two local publications. Even if I arrive early enough at Central so I would likely get what I want from Asia Books, I go straight to Phra Pitiya to buy my newspaper out of principle: I want to reward them for their customer service and support an alternative newspaper source.

I thought any folks living or working in eastern Bangkok would want to know about this.