Inside the Grand Station

I had a half day off the other day, so I decided to visit Bang Sue Grand Station to check it out. The station opened at the end of last year with no pomp and very little circumstance. Bang Sue Grand Station is set to replace Hua Lampong as the main rail station in Bangkok, and will be the central hub of the brand-new Chinese-built bullet trains which are expected to go online in the next few years. 

For now, however, it's a stop along the MRT (metro) and the new red line which runs north towards Don Mueang airport and is scheduled to replace an old rail line which once ran that direction. The new grand station opened last year, but was promptly coopted by the city government as Bangkok's central COVID vaccination center.

I hope that I can take a trip from this new central station sometime this year. I'd love to visit the far north or deep south via train from this new grand station! I arrived at Bang Sue MRT (previously the terminal of the Blue Line, but nowadays a trans-line hub).

Signs showed me the way towards both the Blue Line and the new Red Line, which I have yet to ride. Maybe I'll take a trip up to the old airport via Red Line sometime soon. It might be a fun way to spend a few hours, and the new red trains sure look nice.

I have to admit, I was a little disappointed when I took the escallator up from Bang Sue MRT station to the Grand Station itself. It currently looks big, bare, and empty - like if the Chaengwatthana Government Complex was a train station. I always said that this new Bang Sue Grand Station looks like if Hua Lamphong and Suvarnabhumi Airport had a baby... and that's exactly what if feels like.

From the outside, the station looks so much like a modernized Hua Lampong, but inside is stark, modern, and empty... like Suvarnabhumi. In fact, it was totally empty! There were no coffee shops, fortune-telling kiosks, minimarts, or shops like Hua Lamphong has! 

I mean, I know that Hua Lamphong is over a century old and should be updated, but it's got a sort of style and timelessness that Bang Sue lacks.

I'm willing to give the new Grand Station the benefit of the doubt. Right now, it's being used as a government vaccination center, and I get it. Maybe in a year or two, businesses will move in, and it will begin to develop a charm and atmosphere of its own.

Time will tell!

In any case, I can't wait for Thailand to keep developing and expanding its transportation network. I think that's awesome.