Japanese 
English 
Most souvenirs from Bangkok do not survive the year. The elephant trousers go in a drawer, the fridge magnet loses a leg, the wooden frog ends up at the back of a cupboard. Nobody sets out to buy something disposable. It just happens, because the shops nearest the tourist streets are stocked from the same warehouses and there is not much to choose between them.
We make bags in a house on Sukhumvit 71, so treat this as a biased guide. It is an honest one about what lasts and what does not.
The test that sorts it out
Pick the thing up and ask whether you would use it at home if it had no story attached. Not display it. Use it. A bag you carry to work, a pouch that lives in your handbag, a case your laptop actually goes in. If the honest answer is no, you are buying a memory with a short shelf life.
The second test: could you buy the identical object in the next shop along? If yes, it was made by the thousand, and there is nothing wrong with that, but do not pay a premium for it.
What to look for
Cloth beats wood and metal. Textiles travel flat, weigh nothing, and do not break in a suitcase. Thailand and the region are good at cloth in a way that is genuinely hard to find at home.
Look at the inside. Turn the bag inside out. A lined interior with finished seams took somebody twenty minutes. A raw edge with fraying threads took two.
Ask where it was made. Not to catch anyone out. Ask because the answer tells you whether the person selling it knows. If they can point at the room it came from, that is a different kind of purchase.
What things cost
A printed canvas tote is around 980 baht, the larger one 1,380. A laptop case is 1,200. That is more than a market stall and less than a designer shop, and it is roughly what handmade costs when nobody is paying for a shopping-mall lease.
If a bag is 200 baht, somebody was paid very little to make it. That is worth knowing before you decide it is a bargain.
One-of-a-kind is a real thing, and it is checkable
Our kimono bags are cut from vintage obi, the wide silk sash worn with a kimono. One length of cloth makes a handful of pieces and then it is gone. That is not a marketing line, it is a limitation: when a fabric runs out, that bag never comes back.
The way to check anyone’s claim of one-of-a-kind is simple. Ask to see two of the same. If they can produce a stack, it is not.
Buy the thing you would use
The best souvenir we sell is not the most expensive one. It is whichever piece somebody picks up because they can already see themselves using it in Berlin or Osaka or wherever they are flying back to. The Thai letters on a canvas tote are a nice reminder of a trip. The tote being a good tote is why it is still in use three years later.
Come and look
We are at 259/80 Soi Pridi Banomyong 13, off Sukhumvit 71, Monday to Saturday, 9:30 to 17:00. Thai souvenirs are on the first floor, the kimono bags and the jewellery are on the second, and there is coffee in the courtyard if you want to sit and think about it. BTS Phra Khanong, then about ten minutes on foot.
Delivery inside Thailand is 60 baht flat, and we post worldwide if you would rather not carry it.
