Visiting the Tailor

Apparently the thing to do when visiting Bangkok is to make a visit to a tailor for a custom-fitted suit or dress.

We arrived in Bangkok this morning at 6 am local time after an overnight 11-hour flight from London. We will only be in the city of Bangkok for 3 days so our first stop after checking in at the hotel was to a tailor. Our guide escorted us on the sky train which was full of locals heading out for a Saturday of shopping. Mr. T, as our guide is called, showed us how to navigate the train system in case we want to go out on our own. I guess we could manage it now but I'm not sure I'd want to try it. At least all the signs are in both English and Thai. The stops are also announced in both English and Thai so that helps.

We enter the tailor shop and immediately are seated on comfortable sofas and offered cold drinks. They are happy to see us and look at us with dollar signs in their eyes. Chris has decided to get a couple of dress shirts and suits. Ryan, who will soon be entering the career work force, will have some shirts made as well. We are handed catalogs to look through to see what we want. Our obvious question is pricing but there is no straight-forward answer when going the custom route as it depends on what quality of cloth is chosen. There is also the confusion of pricing in the local currency. Thirty Thai Bhat equals about one US dollar so we are looking at spending thousands of Bhats. Yikes.

Ryan is whisked away to select the colors for his shirts from among the bolts of fabric lining the walls. He decides on one white and one blue. Meanwhile, Chris is having a tape measure placed in precarious positions all over his body to be fitted for his suit. A quantity discount deal is offered and 2 silk ties are thrown in for "free". We've never had custom tailored clothing made so we hope we are getting a good deal. The shop will send a car to pick us up from our hotel later this afternoon to go back for the first fitting. That sure seems fast. I'll keep you "posted" on how it goes....