Early Paragon advertising and the Bangkok Post
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"The Glorious Phenomenon Begins 2005" - July 17, 2003
At long last, the official Siam Paragon website is up. It's a slow flash site. The English has been cleaned up, but is still filled with flowery praises for the project. Remember, the design is an "unprecedented architectural masterpiece" and the Paragon is now not only the "Pride of Bangkok," but also the "Heritage of Thailand."
What happened to the Insider column in the Bangkok Post? - April 25, 2003
Several people have asked what happened to the beloved Insider column in the Bangkok Post. When 2Bangkok.com first mocked the Paragon website (someone has mirrored the original Paragon website here), we also challenged the local press to do the same. The Insider took up the challenge and poked fun at the English used on the site.
2B learned that the Insider article resulted in a warning from powerful people involved in both the Post board and the Paragon development not to make fun of the Paragon in the future. Then doing the Insider column was "not fun anymore."
The Insider was offered a new job within the newspaper that conveniently made it not possible to continue the column. The Paragon website has since been revamped, replacing the odd English with an extremely slow loading Flash animation complete with background music from The Lord of the Rings ("Full information would be available on April 2003").

A shopping center is the "Pride the Bangkok"? - August 24, 2002
The original Paragon website is a single 1.38MB page where no superlative is too extreme: "THE PINNACLE EVOLUTION of the Millennium Lifestyle." There are some great graphics of the new building though. The Post also had a huge Paragon ad on Friday--the most elaborate insert we have ever seen. It is surprising that they would spent the money on the ad, but not have a single line of readable English in it: "The world of men's desire of technology & sports, auto gallery & digital world," "The global retail entertainment phenomenon on the gems location of Bangkok," etc.

All this screaming, in-your-face promotion has become a bit much. There may be many things that could be considered the "Pride of Bangkok," but a shopping center is not one of them. The local English papers are full of breezy columnists who like to poke fun of stuff like this. We wonder if we will see any jibes at the expense of the free-spending and influential Paragon backers.

September 17, 2002 - UPDATE: Yes, every columnist in town it seems ended up making fun of the bad English in the Paragon newspaper insert and asking why they did not hire a proofreader.

(Diagram: The Paragon)
No setback: The Paragon in relation to the existing Siam skytrain station
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