Singhto and the Glasses Caper

These have seen their better days.

A couple days ago my wife woke up in the morning and looked on the bed side table for her glasses. They were no where to be seen. I knew I has set them there the night before as I removed them from her face after she fell asleep watching her favorite soap opera. A little later she called to me from the kitchen. She found her glasses. 

They were in some pretty bad shape as you can see from the picture. A friend of ours had proudly brought them to her. He is our 11 month old Bang Kaew dog, Singhto. Who do you think ate the glasses? Is this the face of a guilty suspect? You tell me!

Well my wife is now wearing a spare pair of specs and she has to go get some new ones soon. I can tell you one thing she won't be getting them at a famous blue and white shop with 8 stores in the city of Mukdahan. Too expensive. - Khun Rut

Is this a guilty face?

Update!!!! The Top Charoen Mystery

What is going on with Top Charoen in Mukdahan????

Update!!!! I found another location hiding in plain sight just down the hill from Mukdahan School. Don't know How long its been there but that brings the grand total to 8. Note: there are only 6 7/11 stores in Mukdahan. Guess there are a lot of people with a lot of money that have bad eyes here. - Khun Rut

Original Story....
There is something going on in Mukdahan with Top Charoen. Let me start by saying that Mukdahan is not that big of a city. Probably the population is about 50,000 or less. This will give you some perspective. When I first moved here there was one Top Charoen Optical franchise in town. There were several other places where you could get eyeglasses made but Top Charoen was the most well known brand in all of Thailand for this service. For a long time there was just this one location. When Tesco/Lotus opened there was a small Top Charoen shop inside of Lotus. Then about 3 years ago a new branch opened near the main entrance to the Indochina market. Things stayed like this for a long time.

Then rapidly, within the past year, more branches started opening rapidly all in a very close area. Just down the street about 70 meters from the original location another store opened in an old magazine shop and about 50 meters further on is another shop on the other side of the street. so within about 150 meters there are 3 branches on the same road. if you stand at the top of the street you can see them all. Two blocks south of the branch near the Indochina market on the two more locations are once again on the same road. One is on the Indochina Market itself and the other is on the Mukdhan - Don Tan Road.

I don't know what is up with this but there are way more Top Charoen stores than this city needs. I have my ideas but an not sure. Is this happening in any other cities? I would love to hear it until then I will just chalk it up to a mystery. I have included a map of all the locations so you can see how close they are together. There is also a gallery of all the locations. I included every one but the one in Lotus since you aren't allowed to take photographs in their stores.

As I find more locations I will update the page in hopes of unraveling the mystery.


View Top Charoen Mukdahan in a larger map

Below is a gallery of the Top Charoen Branches in Mukdhan. Click on a thumbnail for bigger images (I hope you like shocking blue and white.)