Thonburi’s cool new creative hub, Chang Chui, opened last weekend (Jun 23) to impressive crowds—almost 20,000 people in one day, if what the PR told us is to be believed. Problem is there’s only parking space for 300 cars. Naturally, it didn’t take long for people to complain online.

Two of the main outlets for outrage were Pantip (where else?) and the satirical ฉันเป็น "hipster" Facebook fanpage, where Bangkokians spoke of congested traffic along Sirinthorn Road and Taling Shun Railroad brought about by illegally parked cars taking up full lanes of traffic and even concealing bus stops.

On ฉันเป็น "hipster", a tongue-in-cheek post about hipster behavior at Chang Chui opening with the line, “Please use public transportation. Don’t cause any more of traffic,” unleashed a wave of comments .  

“The truth is...this place caused a real f*cking traffic problem. The road was so f*cked up yesterday. Those car owners were real selfish, man. All the people who live in that area are complaining about this,” read one comment.

“I saw no parking space and the traffic was damn f*cked up even the people who used the bus had to get off way before it reached the bus stop,” read another.   

Over on Pantip, a thread started by a self-proclaimed first-time poster also brought out disgruntled motorists: “This bad traffic caused by the launch of Chang Chui caused me so much trouble. I live in Bang Gruay and I have to travel on Sirinthorn Road, at the front of Chang Chui, as well as the road along Taling Shun railroad, at the back, and the traffic along both is a big pain in the a**.”

Some responses were not kind to management of the new opening. “This is such a Thai-style thing. Just getting something done without considering the consequences,” read one comment.

“The owner of this business seems to be a real sloppy and irresponsible as we can see from this incident. Dear Chang Chui owner, you are running a big business. Can you at least just run it maturely? Also why don’t police do anything about this? All the cars just park on a lane of the road. This is insane and super obvious,” read another.

Other posters were slightly more circumspect. “Well, you could sense this kind of thing was going to happen. Look at its name, ‘Chang Chui!’ [chui meaning sloppy in Thai]

Chang Chui representatives confirmed with us that there’s parking space for 300 cars on-site under the expressway and beside the fence.