Soon

18 January 2009
Sunday

Thailand's Answer to Costco or Sam's Club?

The other day we drove to check out "Tang Ngee Soon Superstore" on the outskirts of Udonthani. No, the attached photo is not the store. The photo is from Maehongson and I just wanted to share it.

Shopping for groceries in Udonthani is an adventure especially if you are looking for foreign foods. There is not a single source for falang needs. The large supermarkets are Big C, Tesco-Lotus, and Tops. Big C is a sort of Thai K-Mart and we pretty much avoid it.

Tesco-Lotus is a British company that has grocery stores around the world. They are on the verge or at least were on the verge of entering the US market before the economic crisis hit. We sometimes shop there but because this is Isaan they have a great deal of Lao food cooking inside the store. This might not be a problem if the store had a properly designed ventilation system. In the meat and fish section of the store, they are always deep frying some Lao food that is very spicy. There are no fume hoods or fire protection system above the deep fryers. The pungent and irritating fumes permeates the entire store. I find it to be unpleasant and prefer not to shop there. Many expats avoid the store because of all the loud music. The store does have some foreign foods for sale. However it doesn't always have the stuff that we are looking for. The store's fruits and vegetables leave a great deal to be desired.

We normally shop at Tops. The Tops store is located on the third floor of the main shopping mall in the city center. The store is much smaller than Tesco Lotus but carries just as many and for some items (frozen turkey) more foreign foods as Tesco Lotus in a more appealing environment. The problem with Tops is that many other foreigners shop there so the foods that we all buy are not always in stock. Once you have finished shopping you have to carry your groceries down two fights of escalators through a crowded mall and across the main street of 4 lane traffic to where your vehicle is parked. Tops's fruits and vegetables are even worse than Tesco Lotus.

Duang buys our fruit and vegetables at one of the main markets in the center of town. This market is a labyrinth of booths selling prepared foods, fruits, vegetables, and all sorts of dry goods. The fruits and vegetables are excellent. However there are no imported or foreign foods available there. Because it is in the center of the city and carries local foods, parking is very difficult to find in the narrow crowded streets bordering the market. Inside the market, the narrow aisles are congested with people. Duang warns me about being aware for pick pockets so it is not one of my favorite places to shop. Duang usually goes there once a week with her son and girlfriend to shop for our needs. She ends up spending around 500 baht ($15 USD) a week.

Carrefour, a large French based grocery company is building a large store near our home. I am hoping that it is similar to the store where we did all our grocery shopping in Pattaya. It had a great selection of foreign foods, great meats, seafood, fruit, and vegetables - a one stop source for all our needs. Time will tell.

Any how we checked out the "superstore". It is very convenient to our home and the road is wide and not congested to get to it. The store has a large parking lot with plenty of space for me to park the truck (I am still not comfortable in pulling into narrow spaces driving on the right hand side of the truck).

The superstore is huge. It is a large warehouse structure very similar to a Costco or Sam's Club in the USA except that it is much cleaner. In Thailand labor is very cheap so stores can afford to maintain large cleaning staffs.

The superstore had all the dry goods as well as brands that we normally buy each week. The prices were also cheaper than what we typically pay. Unlike Costco or Sam's Club, we did not have to buy jumbo sized containers or bundles of the product.

There were many foreign products. However the store had no fresh fruits or vegetables - I suppose that they realize that they can not compete with the local markets.

The meat section of the store consisted of a small upright freezer about the size of the soft drink refrigerator at a small pizza parlor in the USA. The freezer had small packages of frozen hamburg patties, two types of sausages, pork chops, and beef steaks from an English butcher in Pattaya.

The dairy section consisted of two similar sized refrigerators. One contained packages of processed cheese slices, about 8 small packages of three types of cheese, and Kraft's Thai equivalent of Velveeta cheese. The other case had yogurt, and fermented milk products.

The dry goods section of the store was excellent and all the prices were cheaper than we pay elsewhere. M&Ms were 17% cheaper at the superstore. We ended up walking out of the store with 5 plastic bags of groceries for $20 USD.

I guess our shopping regime will now be Superstore + Local Market + Tops. Hopefully this will only be until Carrefour opens up - soon.

I have a little joke with Duang. I often tell her that something will happen "soon". I then remind her that in English "soon" means "in a short period of time" but in Thai "soon" means "zero". I tease her about whether I am speaking English or Thai when I say "soon". She has caught on and now will ask me if I am speaking Thai or English.

So it may be with Carrefour, they are rumored to be opening "soon"

Life in Isaan is very rewarding and I can not complain. However when we were in Bangkok at the end of December, we got to go to a "real" grocery store in the basement of Paragon Center. It was heaven. It would have put many grocery stores in small US towns to shame. All kinds of spices, cheeses, meats, seafood, bakery goods, and foreign foods!

Perhaps soon we will have the same here in Isaan.