the Castle Mall & Water Park
drone video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnHV4ZVXxpo&t=6s
The Castle Mall entertainment centre was a sprawling complex sitting in front of the picturesque tropical hills of Kanchanaburi, central Thailand that housed a shopping centre, cinema, amusement park & water park. It opened in 1995 and for a period was one of the best known family entertainment centres in the region. Unfortunately, the fun didn’t last long.
The reasons for closure seem to vary, however what is sure is that heavy local competition popped up in the form of the popular shopping centres of a Big C retailer, a Kanokkan mall, and a new Robinson’s department store. These well established retail chains put up too much of a fight for the Castle Mall to withstand. This, combined with the death of the owner’s wife and a notoriously lazy staff led the owner to lose interest in continuing operations. The amusement parks and mall closed in around 2005, with only the run-down Hot Pot chain restaurant and cinema surviving. However, both shut their doors as well a few years later in 2011 and 2013, respectively.
What remains is a lot of rubble. The pools in the water park are covered in bright green algae & filled with random car tyres. There us still a (knockoff) statue of the genie from Aladdin sitting behind one of the pools. It's creepy. The roof of the main mall building is missing a large section leaving it open to the elements. It actually provides some nice lighting for dramatic effect. There are a lot of broken display cases that would have, at one time, been worth some decent money. The escalators look to be a death trap and are marked off with what looks like crime scene tape, although it seems to be little deterrence from those who have climbed up the rusty, jagged steps.
Nowadays, the mall hosts an open air furniture store on what was formerly the lower level parking garage. The only inhabitants of the mall seem to be a few vagrants staying in the back side area near the water park entrance, local teenagers looking for a place to hang out, and, oddly, teams of BB gun enthusiasts.
I actually had a brief scare as I was flying my drone while standing in the parking lot in front of the mall. A truckload of men rolled into the parking lot wearing military gear and balaclava head coverings and carrying what looked like automatic weapons. Thankfully, they ignored me and rushed into the mall on an ambush. They were arriving as the ‘terrorist’ faction of a BB gun club, running an assault on the perimeter that the ‘counter terror’ forces had set up inside. It was certainly unexpected and a bit of a shock at first, but I met the guys after their match & they were all pretty nice & easy going folks. The place is a good site for BB gun battles, however you do want to watch your step.
A very dark event occurred at the abandoned amusement park in 2010 according to a Thai news site which posted a gruesome story along with a (thankfully) blurred image of a dead man. A 45-year old deaf man from Bangkok named, Mr. Surachet, murdered his wife and then committed suicide at the mall site. His wife was found in his car with her throat slit. Mr. Surachet drank poison, stabbed himself in the neck, and, to make sure the ‘job’ was done, somehow managed to crush his back with a large cement pillar. He was a paranoid individual with mental health issues and, according to the article linked below, thought that his wife was cheating on him with a foreigner. She had left him in Bangkok and returned to her hometown of Kanchanaburi. He brought her to the mall under the premise of talking through their problems, when all along he had murder on his mind. The police wouldn’t confirm 100% in the article that it was suicide, though they felt it was highly probable, given the evidence at the scene. I enjoyed exploring the complex, but I got the sense that it was not the kind of place that you would want to visit after dark. The interior, especially in the back near the old supermarket, is very dark, even in the daylight, and there is a plethora of broken glass, sharp metal and wood chips, and unstable surfaces around which to navigate. Also, I ran across a few intoxicated individuals wandering around the premises & shouting randomly, and though they are likely harmless, it’s not worth taking the risk to wander around an unfamiliar and sketchy place in the dark, especially alone. http://www.komchadluek.net/news/crime/45551
Read MoreThe Castle Mall entertainment centre was a sprawling complex sitting in front of the picturesque tropical hills of Kanchanaburi, central Thailand that housed a shopping centre, cinema, amusement park & water park. It opened in 1995 and for a period was one of the best known family entertainment centres in the region. Unfortunately, the fun didn’t last long.
The reasons for closure seem to vary, however what is sure is that heavy local competition popped up in the form of the popular shopping centres of a Big C retailer, a Kanokkan mall, and a new Robinson’s department store. These well established retail chains put up too much of a fight for the Castle Mall to withstand. This, combined with the death of the owner’s wife and a notoriously lazy staff led the owner to lose interest in continuing operations. The amusement parks and mall closed in around 2005, with only the run-down Hot Pot chain restaurant and cinema surviving. However, both shut their doors as well a few years later in 2011 and 2013, respectively.
What remains is a lot of rubble. The pools in the water park are covered in bright green algae & filled with random car tyres. There us still a (knockoff) statue of the genie from Aladdin sitting behind one of the pools. It's creepy. The roof of the main mall building is missing a large section leaving it open to the elements. It actually provides some nice lighting for dramatic effect. There are a lot of broken display cases that would have, at one time, been worth some decent money. The escalators look to be a death trap and are marked off with what looks like crime scene tape, although it seems to be little deterrence from those who have climbed up the rusty, jagged steps.
Nowadays, the mall hosts an open air furniture store on what was formerly the lower level parking garage. The only inhabitants of the mall seem to be a few vagrants staying in the back side area near the water park entrance, local teenagers looking for a place to hang out, and, oddly, teams of BB gun enthusiasts.
I actually had a brief scare as I was flying my drone while standing in the parking lot in front of the mall. A truckload of men rolled into the parking lot wearing military gear and balaclava head coverings and carrying what looked like automatic weapons. Thankfully, they ignored me and rushed into the mall on an ambush. They were arriving as the ‘terrorist’ faction of a BB gun club, running an assault on the perimeter that the ‘counter terror’ forces had set up inside. It was certainly unexpected and a bit of a shock at first, but I met the guys after their match & they were all pretty nice & easy going folks. The place is a good site for BB gun battles, however you do want to watch your step.
A very dark event occurred at the abandoned amusement park in 2010 according to a Thai news site which posted a gruesome story along with a (thankfully) blurred image of a dead man. A 45-year old deaf man from Bangkok named, Mr. Surachet, murdered his wife and then committed suicide at the mall site. His wife was found in his car with her throat slit. Mr. Surachet drank poison, stabbed himself in the neck, and, to make sure the ‘job’ was done, somehow managed to crush his back with a large cement pillar. He was a paranoid individual with mental health issues and, according to the article linked below, thought that his wife was cheating on him with a foreigner. She had left him in Bangkok and returned to her hometown of Kanchanaburi. He brought her to the mall under the premise of talking through their problems, when all along he had murder on his mind. The police wouldn’t confirm 100% in the article that it was suicide, though they felt it was highly probable, given the evidence at the scene. I enjoyed exploring the complex, but I got the sense that it was not the kind of place that you would want to visit after dark. The interior, especially in the back near the old supermarket, is very dark, even in the daylight, and there is a plethora of broken glass, sharp metal and wood chips, and unstable surfaces around which to navigate. Also, I ran across a few intoxicated individuals wandering around the premises & shouting randomly, and though they are likely harmless, it’s not worth taking the risk to wander around an unfamiliar and sketchy place in the dark, especially alone. http://www.komchadluek.net/news/crime/45551
