Tick tock Thailand! Watch hunting and wrist spotting report!

I'm in Bangkok for work and spending the weekend in this gritty, noisy, and fun city. It reminds me of a 1980s vision of what a futuristic city would look like. Brutally ugly, hulking cement structures, densely packed buildings, video billboards everywhere. Japan is usually the token futuristic city, but Bangkok is the grittier and uglier (in a nice way) version of it.

Bangkok doesn't have a great variety of watch retailers and it's the usual line up of Rolex, Tudor, Patek, with the odd JLC and IWC thrown in. A few grey market dealers, but it's mostly the usual Rolex show. There is one boutique that focuses on independents and less mainstream brands called Pendulum. They have independents like Moritz Grossman, H Moser, Nivada Grenchen (!) And others like Zenith and Blancpain.

There was one watch that caught my eye, the Moritz Grossman Backpage. Interesting concept, but one fatal flaw.

First, the good points - the gear train, balance wheel, barrel are all exposed from the front. You know how people say, "the movements so beautiful, I'd wear the watch backwards!"? Well, here you go - a backwards wearing normal watch! The triple snailing on the barrel is so shiny it reflects light that will blind you, no joke. The hand engraved balance cock a la Lange. Anyway, to the fatal flaw. Can you see it? I'll wait...

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The time. You can't read the bloody time. The hands are blued against a blue minute track and the hands needed to be dauphine hands that reflects a ridiculous amount of light to stand out. Still, a nice watch.

The other watch I am currently considering, which they had there is the H Moser Endeavor Perpetual Calendar with a grand feu enamel dial. Beautiful enameled, fume dial with gradients of blue.

Case is made of a blue/grey metal, tantalum. Super hard and durable and I've only seen two watches with tantalum cases - FP Journe's Chronometre Bleu and this one. The side of the case has a concave design, very nice. You must be wondering how is this a perpetual calendar - that little stubby central hand shows the month. 12 months in a year, 12 hours in a day. If it points to 5pm, it's the 5th month, may (different pic bc the month pointer was hiding in first pics). A clever way to kept the dial super clean as the enamel blue color with the hammered look is the main attraction.

Anyway, moving on. I'm at a coffee shop in Thong Lor, which is hipster territory. I see a young lady with two other blokes and she has a steel bezel black dial Daytona. Looks great. I keep walking by and the guy across has a panda Daytona, nice! The third guy topped both of these grail wearing young'uns with a FP Journe Elegante on a blue rubber strap. I thought that maybe the Daytonas might be fake because... Thailand. But, ain't no Chinese copycat manufacturer going to even try to make the Elegante. I wanted badly to give the guy a nod of approval or say something, but my wife was with me and she'd roll her eyes.

Above is a pic of me trying on the Elegante. It's a quartz FP Journe by the way. Just because he wanted to. One of the world greatest living watchmakers made a quartz watch and a banging one at that. It has a tiny little micro rotor looking piece that detects if you're wearing it or not. It goes to sleep mode and stop the hands if there's no motion. That way, the battery can last 8-18y depending on how often you wear it. Oh and when you pick it up, the hands will go directly to the current time.

Final report is Central World, which had a watch festival. Lots of seikos, g shocks, edifices, citizens, etc. Tried to find the Seiko 5 sports with snoopy, but alas no luck.

Always fun to watch shop in boutiques and walking around. Bangkok is a fun city to visit if you guys haven't been. Don't expect too much in terms of watches, but not too shabby.