Where to Find Boring Household Stuff?

My new apartment was furnished but I still needed to get bedding.  I also wanted to get a rice cooker and coffee maker.

I have been to MBK which is by my old apartment dozens of times where there is a department store called Tokyu.  Tokyu is a 5 level store with everything from a grocery/deli to clothes to houseware.  The stuff at Tokyu is expensive (for Bangkok standards) and not all that great.

I was looking at sheets, pillows, etc. at Tokyu and it was incredibly overpriced.  Sheets were over $30 USD and they weren’t even that nice.  I was feeling frugle so I decided to wait a day to get the sheets and go to Big C which one of my friends Gary recommended to me.

It’s Kind of like a “Low-End Target”

I got to Big C after being in this humongous traffic jam (everyday traffic) and when I walked in it immediately reminded me of old school K-Mart stores of the early 1990s.  It was disorganized (for Thai standards) and filled with mostly generic crap.  All the bedding looked like Ross Dress for Less rejects.  I’m talking Garfield bed sets, pink flowered bed sets, bright purple and brown bed sets w/ ruffles on the pillow cases, etc.  This angered me because I know I have to either go back and spend too much at Tokyu or try to find another store.

Big C was just like the other discount stores like Target and Walmart in the USA as they had some brand name products and some generic versions which were often 1/4 of the price.  I tested my fate with a generic rice cooker and coffee maker instead of a panasonic version which cost 4x more.  I made sure to get a rice cooker which has a vegetable steamer on the top so theoretically I can cook rice and vegetables in my apartment to eat healthy instead of eating greasy friend noodles or rice.

My Big C experience lets me recommend Big C only for people who live in Bangkok and need to stock the house of bulk items you would normally get at Costco (there are none in Thailand) such as toilet paper, bottled water, rice.  Anyone visiting Bangkok for the short term, Big C is a complete waste of time as nothing you can buy in the entire store would be worth bringing home compared to any store in MBK or even on the street.

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