In a country where local kids and adults alike often wear the shirts (usually fake ones!) of Barcelona, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal shirts, it is a mystery to many why Leicester City has it’s very own section in a couple of Suvarnabhumi Airport’s sports shops in Thailand.

The reasons for that were explained in last years blog when I wrote about my frustration at not going through Bangkok’s main Airport despite having been in transit in Thailand’s capital city a fair few times. Even though I didn’t manage to visit, I still cobbled together an article using pictures sent by mates who have passed through the airport and been bemused as to why there was Foxes merchandise everywhere!

Having known about the shop(s) for many years now, I finally got to see it all with my very own eyes during transit to and from Phnom Penh in Cambodia back in August. There are two shops selling all this merchandise (in a corner of a shop simply called SPORTS) with one in each of the West and East parts of the airport concourse and I managed to  visit them both.

On my latter visit I spoke to the store manager and asked who exactly buys such merchandise! He told me that the Chinese tourists buy a lot of it not that they know of the team or anything. They don’t buy the replica shirts but do pick up the many t-shirt designs which may explain why there were only a couple of shirts on sale in the place.

Our mascot Filbert Fox could be purchased in either the Leicester kit or in traditional Thai dress. A nice way of helping strengthen ties between Thailand and the club you might think! Well that may have been the case but sadly the off-the-field activities of three players on an end-of-season tour to Thailand didn’t help that!

The sex and racism scandal was front page tabloid news in the UK and led to them all being sacked. One of those players involved was the former manager’s son and is considered by many to be one of the reasons why Nigel Pearson departed at the end of June too with some suggesting he thought his son’s punishment didn’t merit the same as the other two.

* On our penultimate day in Cambodia I was delighted to see some fake Leicester shirts for the first time on my travels around South-East Asia where such shirts are common place albeit usually only the big European teams. However, a shop in Sorya Shopping Centre in Phnom Penh was selling Leicester ones and so I bought one for my wife (shorts were also included!) for a fraction of the price ($4.40 or £2.90 if you prefer!) that it cost to get the real one. Many of my Twitter followers actually said they thought the fake one was better!

Click here to see the original ‘Leicester City Shop In Bangkok Airport’ blog entry

Click here to see ‘Okazaki 20 Leicester City shirt spotted in Tokyo’

Click here to see ‘My Leicester City Memorabilia’ 

Click here to read my story about the infamous 1983-85 LCFC away shirt