1. Economics
August 5, 2015

Two snow parks have opened in Bangkok over the past year, and they look very surreal

By City Monitor Staff

Thailand doesn’t get a lot of snow. Actually, to be precise, it has had no snow at all before and after its single recorded snowfall on 7 January 1955 (and besides, it sounds like that was really rain mixed with hail). This means locals don’t get to experience snow, and all the accompanying merriment, unless they go abroad.

Until now.

Over the past year, not one, but two “indoor cold weather venues” have opened up in Bangkok to service locals’ snow and ice needs. Snow Town and Harbin Ice Wonderland, the two venues, contain ice sculptures, sledding hills, and frozen slides, but also an array of other random frozen things. 

Here’s a girl making a snow angel in a combined state of excitement and shock:  

And a set of ice pagodas: 

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Ice steps, plus a giant icy bauble:

And an ice slide:

(We’re a little mystified as to how visitors have such impressive snow gear to hand, in a city where 16 degrees celsius counts as “very cold”. Bangkok’s coat manufacturers must be having a field day.) 

The real problem here, of course, is that even icy, snowy cities don’t have ice pagodas or icy flights of stairs, which doesn’t really seem fair. We wouldn’t be surprised if “cold weather venues” popped up in other places too – although, as the venues are essentially enormous freezers, we can’t imagine that would be a very positive step for the environment.

All images: Getty. 

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