The guy with the photobooth business (and a date in Phrom Phong)

Before cramming into photobooths and leaving with strips destined for your fridge became standard Bangkok practice, someone had to make it happen.
That someone is Pea Sarit – Chula architecture grad turned actor turned co-owner of Sculpture Bangkok, the photobooth operation with ever-changing themes dotting the city.
But rewind a bit. Born and raised in Bangkok, Pea pieced together a life between blueprints and spotlights long before the booths took over. In 2014, Nadao Bangkok's Hormones: The Next Gen came calling, landing him in Season 3 of the cult series Hormones and kickstarting an eight-year run with Nadao that lasted until 2022.
Now, whilst Sculpture Bangkok turns fleeting moments into grids upon grids of frames, we're turning Pea's day-stretched-into-night into paragraphs.
Here's Phrom Phong at Pea’s pace.

10am – Real Grocers for Brunch

'I don't really function before noon,' Pea says flatly. But Real Grocers on Sukhumvit 39 opens at 9am and specialises in bringing people back to life anyway.
Pea orders a pesto pasta with fresh orange juice. 'Morning juicing for a body boosting,' he says. 'Not really a coffee-caffeine guy!'

A carb-heavy pasta choice at 10am might be unconventional breakfast territory, but it makes sense when you're fuelling up for a photobooth business that generates a steady stream of 24/7 logistics. Bookings, collaborations, pitches. Pea toggles between his pasta and his screen, picks up some calls and mentally bookmarks others for later. But he's not diving in, not really. There's a protective buffer around these morning hours, self-imposed but firm, even when your business occupies half the city's prime real estate.

The genius of Real Grocers, which dominates our conversation, is right there in the name. It's actually a grocery-cafe hybrid. Bread, milk and all the fridge essentials downstairs. Upstairs is a studio space you can book for shoots. Pea has done sessions here before, running downstairs between takes to grab snacks.

'It's a whole vibe here,' he says. 'Breakfast, groceries, content creation. Very Sukhumvit. Very Phrom Phong.'

And it is.

12pm – Branch checking

Slight detour to the Siam area. 

Sculpture Saloon sits inside CentralWorld – a pop-up outpost catching the shopping crowd who might never stumble onto the standalone booths scattered across the city (though that's increasingly unlikely), or the newly opened Sculpture Museum on Siam Square Soi 3.

Pea does a quick walk-through. Checks in with staff. Eyes the queue – there's always a queue. Snaps a few photos, half for Instagram, half for quality control.

'We wanted it everywhere. Not just one place you have to seek out. Just… around.'

And right now Sculpture Bangkok is, quite literally, around.

 

1pm – EmDistrict for exercise (sort of)

'I'm gonna tell you a secret about mall wandering,' Pea says. 'Sure, one reason is to splurge. But we also get free air-con while getting exercise. I'm mostly here for the exercise, I promise!'

The EmDistrict – Emporium, EmQuartier and EmSphere all connected – is where Bangkok's aesthetic lives. And Pea, who's spent his life in front of cameras and now creates spaces for other people's moments, pays attention.

He's clocking storefronts, how brands arrange things, the lighting. Fashion's always been his thing. Now he thinks about spaces differently too – what makes people want to step inside, what catches the eye.

Today he's not buying much. But the time spent looking is considerable. We have hours before dinner anyway. Eventually: a shirt at COS in EmQuartier.

 

4pm – Vinyl and Wine to decompress

 

Still in the EmDistrict universe – just walking the skywalk over to EmSphere now.

'Why leave when you can stay suspended above traffic?'

Pea settles into Vinyl and Wine on the Em Wonder floor. The kind of place where you can actually hear yourself think at this hour. Right now it's quiet, though later the live music starts and suddenly everyone's three drinks deep into a different evening.

Four dishes arrive with wine. 'All for me!' he announces, then immediately laughs. 'Kidding. Calling my wife and friends to join.'

Set toast comes first – proper bread, good butter. The kind of deceptively simple thing that signals whether a place knows what it's doing. Then tuna tataki, seared just enough that the middle's still cool and silky. Pasta with proper beef ragu, slow-cooked and rich. Pork chop steak with baby broccoli.

A bottle of Rare red to go with it all. Not a quick glass. A whole bottle.

The food's good, the wine's working and for now this corner is ours.

 

10.30pm – Paper Plane Project for dinner and downtime

This is where Sukhumvit's creative types migrate when the laptop battery's dying and home feels too small.

Paper Plane Project is on the 40th floor of T-One Building. Up here, chaos below turns into tiny light patterns. Traffic sounds disappear completely. Distance does that.

Nine in the morning until half-one at night – the place shapeshifts around the sun. Morning people hunched over oat lattes, attacking inboxes. Night creatures still going at eleven with whisky sours. Same space, completely different film.

Shared work tables for the collaboratively minded. Grab-and-go corner for the perpetually busy. A menu that gave up choosing between brunch spot and cocktail bar, so it just became both. You could move in here if they'd let you. They won't though. We asked!

The seating situation offers options: straight-backed chairs at communal tables if you're here to actually work, or sink-in couches in corner-ish spots for a little privacy. Long bar where bartenders perform small acts of alchemy. Massive space that somehow dodges that echoey airport-terminal feeling. Lots of sophisticated timber, never log-cabin cosplay.

 

Pea's wife Primrose joins us – the other pea in the pod. She and Pea have been doing their own thing all day – different errands, different parts of the city – and now they're syncing back up at the same spot before calling it a night. We've claimed one of the standalone bigger tables. We go for the açai-yoghurt cocktail. Fine choice. But if you're keeping score – and the internet definitely is – the matcha-azuki coffee is the real move. It's achieved minor celebrity status, kind-of.

The surrounding tables: vaguely familiar faces. That photographer from somewhere. Someone's co-founder. The girl who's always at fashion week.

 

Food starts its parade. Crudo with seasonal kosho. Deep-fried zuke that's become Pavlovian at this point. Iberico pork dumplings in warm broth. 

 

Shio ramen we’ve ordered so many times in one sitting we know it’s consistently good.

We're sitting there, cameras pocketed, notebooks abandoned. Party time – Pea's weekday edition – looks like this: commandeered couches, amber lighting, warm food, drinks on a long pour and faces you're actually glad to see.