How To Buy Dog Items from Thailand
A pair of vintage toy poodle ceramic mugs from Oyster and Things.
It's no secret that there are plenty of cool and cute stuff in Thailand especially when it comes to clothes and accessories for your dogs as well as dog-themed items. People who don't have the time to travel and buy the items personally either use freight forwarders or pasabuy services.
Freight forwarders can be tricky if you're not familiar with using them while pasabuy services can be unreliable, risky and time-bound. This guide is about using a freight forwarder like Buy&Ship so you can get your items quicker and skip the need to use a middleman.
While I was casually browsing Instagram I discovered a vintage homeware store called Oyster and Things. I was looking through some of the photos posted by a visitor and saw they were selling two ceramic mugs featuring a toy poodle that looks like our toy poodle Melbourne.
I excitedly messaged them on LINE and asked if the items were still available to purchase. Luckily, they replied saying they were the last two pieces and I could buy them. I asked them to include shipping to a freight forwarding address in Bangkok. The two mugs were ฿ 360 each plus the shipping ฿ 180 for a total of ฿ 900 (Php 1,566.56).
Transaction breakdown by Oyster and Things.
Freight Forwarder
The freight forwarder I use in Thailand is Buy&Ship. They have a warehouse in Bangkok where they accept items for forwarding to the Philippines. Before they are sent to the Philippines they will be consolidated in Hong Kong and then forwarded to your address in the Philippines. The only downside with using Buy&Ship is that there is no option for sea freight.
Payment using GCash
Usually when it comes to online transactions I use PayPal. But stores in Southeast Asia these days usually have terminals that can generate QR codes for Alipay. In the Philippines you can use GCash to pay for Alipay purchases in the same way you would do abroad.
Alipay QR code generated by Oyster and Things.
The seller sent me a photo of the QR code on LINE then I used the GCash app on my phone to scan the QR code and pay. The payment went through and the amount was deducted from my GCash wallet.
Payment using GCash to Alipay
Delivery
I was expecting the items will be delivered by courier but they opted to use GrabExpress instead. The items were delivered on the same day after I completed the transaction.
You need to declare items that will be sent to the Buy&Ship warehouse by adding the tracking/shipment number and the details of the items in the package such as item category and value. If you did not declare them you will receive an email from Buy&Ship stating that you need to declare the shipment. After that my shipment appeared in my Buy&Ship dashboard.
Buy&Ship shipment details
I was then able to ship the items to my address in the Philippines for Php 1,660. I chose DDP (Deliver and Duties Paid) since there are no taxes to be paid anyway. I paid the delivery fee via credit card. The delivery is door-to-door, taxes are included (if any) and there is no need to go to the post office or deal with the Bureau of Customs. It took about a week to arrive and was delivered by Ninjavan.
