All aboard for the Bang Kapi Mall

Once again, I wake up around 2.45 am and am wide awake. It’s too early to get up, so I read until around 6.30 am, when I feel that it's at least a respectable time to quietly start moving around the apartment.

R and I have decided to take the canal boat again, but this time in the other direction from yesterday. Today, we want to visit the Bang Kapi Mall. After breakfast of a scrambled egg roll and a yoghurt, we head out towards the University Pier. It’s Thursday, and we make a pit stop at the morning market, where I get a fab iced coffee, and R buys some delicious fried fish pieces. We also look for the little old lady who sold us the Issan sausages previously, but we can’t seem to see or find her. It’s sort of fun trying to locate the stalls that we like, as they are all in different locations now from the last time we were here.

Then it’s off to the Prasamit pier, and before we know it, we are on our way to ‘The Mall Bangkapi’ pier. This is a longer journey than yesterday, but it is a lot quieter, and we easily get a seat. Then the fun really starts as the boat whizzes at speed (and I am not exaggerating) along the canal. We laugh that people would pay good money to have this exciting, bouncy ride with the water splashing up the sides as it moves swiftly along its course. It’s a great way to travel and such a bargain at only 20 baht each (less than £0.50).

Before we know it, we have arrived at our destination. We’re a little early for the mall, as the malls don’t tend to open until 10 am. However, that is not a problem for us because we know there is another Makro nearby (which will be open), and we are on a mission to get a special cake.

Makro (Ladprao)

This Makro is much bigger than the one in Sukhumvit, and we enjoy having a wander around it. We also managed to pick up a small ‘birthday style’ cake, which will be perfect for what we need. As we get to the checkout, the kind cashier informs us that some other brownie-style snack cakes we have bought are on special offer. It’s buy one, get one free – more cake, that’s all I need! There is a good Lotus food court right beside the Makro also, and you can buy a food card from the automated machine to use in here. We’re not hungry as we have already had breakfast and some fish at the morning market, so we pass on this.

With our cake haul secured, we head back to the Mall, which is now open.

The Mall Lifestore, Bang Kapi

The Mall Lifestore at Bang Kapi is like a lot of other malls in Bangkok – it’s HUGE! We do our usual of heading to the top of the mall and then working our way down. Funnily enough, I used to do that every month in my work building when carrying out my monthly inspections – but this is a better alternative 😊

The top and roof part of the mall has a children’s Mega Harbourland play area, which again is huge (as the title already alludes to)! This covers an area of over 12,000 square meters and also includes an ‘AQUA WORLD’ theme. It was reasonably quiet when we were there, but as the mall had just opened, I guess it would be a lot busier as the people start to arrive.

We continued on our merry way until I spotted a massage chair. Now this looked very new, and in the interest of experimental science, I had to give it a go. Ten minutes of gentle relaxation for less than 50p is a must when you are on your feet a lot. It was very enjoyable – not too rough, and I was rejuvenated to continue onwards.

For lunch, we headed to the Gourmet Eats food court on the ground floor. I think you will have worked out our usual pattern by now. We enjoy having access to a wide variety of options at very reasonable prices. As early retirees who are living off a modest budget, that is one of the ways that allows us to stretch our budget and experience the things we do. Compare and contrast with our daughter and her school pal – well, they are blowing their budgets on different types of experiences with the fancy cafes and restaurants, but hey, we would probably have done the same at their age.

I decided to go for a Vietnamese beef pho dish, and R went for a chicken Khao soi (creamy chicken curry with noodles). Both were delicious, and the total came to less than £5.50!

Day 4 , 27 Nov, 2025

It has all the usual stores, places to eat and things to see, so I won’t cover those in much detail here. We did do a little bit of shopping and bought a few items from Uniqlo, Decathlon and Mr DIY stores, where they have a large selection, and the prices are excellent. If interested, you can learn a bit more about the Mall from a Bangkok YouTuber (Global Travelmate) that we follow below:

Floorplan of ground level of The Mall at Bang Kapi

After lunch, we made our way back home via the canal boat, and I had another swim and nap. We didn’t go out again in the evening as we had plenty of food items in the apartment, so it was a relaxing evening watching some telly via R’s laptop.

Today’s route

Bangkok, Thailand