Need to improve my awful Thai matress

[csmith]

OH .... matress .... thought you said Mistress ... ummm but all the comments would still work :-)

[DrTuner]

Had the same problem and wife bought a camping set from Lotus. Surprisingly the 2" mattress from that one makes a decent topper. Cost was about 1500baht for queen size, if I remember right. Yes, mattresses here are awful. I guess they are trying to emulate sleeping on the floor of a wooden house on stilts.

[Sheryl]

I whole-heartedly sympathize. the Thais have a preference for rock hard mattresses which to me are torture. (I also can't see why, if one wants concrete hardness, bother to buy a mattress at all.)

As for staying at hotels with good mattresses, if one defines this as not rock hard, they barely exist in Thailand.

I solved my problem at home by buying nice foam mattresses in Cambodia, where they are plentiful and cheap. For travel, I use an air mattress as some have suggested. Not ideal but far better than the hotel mattresses. You can adjust the firmness by how much air you put in. I never stay in a Thai hotel without it.

They can be hard to find in stores but easily ordered online from Lazada. May take some searching on their site, as I recall their search function turned up nothing and I finally located it in an odd section, might have been garden or something like that.

You need a manual pump with that, BTW. Has to be bought or ordered separately.

[Sheryl]

P.S. Found it in lazada http://www.lazada.co.th/intex-airbed-35ft-twin-99x191x22-cm-no68757-blue-406865.html

It's on sale at much reduced price so good time to buy.

There's another one for 500 baht but smaller width (72cm vs 99)

As for pump, can't guarantee but this one looks promising http://www.lazada.co.th/ucall-small-air-pump-cms-7503-black-569233.html has a variety of attachment sizeds and mentions use for air mattresses

When I ordered the mattress it arrived in just a few days. You will need an address where you will be for at least that long to get it online.

[GF47]

Yes I think air mattress is the way to go, since I plan on traveling around the region, with the camping set as a temporary comfort that I may have to leave behind.

I had heard about the Thai mattress thing beforehand, I just didn't think upgrading would be so difficult and hadn't planned for it. Hopefully this thread will help others.

[HooHaa]

Mattresses here are astoundingly bad and also astoundingly overpriced.

Having bought a Sealy mattress for nearly 20,000B that I didnt get on with I ended up at Ikea where I bought one of these for 6000B and just put it on top of the expensive Thai one.

http://www.ikea.com/th/en/catalog/products/60272253/

The end result is fine.

If I was buying another sprung mattress I would just forget all the Thai shops and get one of these:

http://www.ikea.com/th/en/catalog/categories/departments/bedroom/24828/

"If I was buying another sprung mattress ..."

If you were asking for a "sprung" mattress that probably explains the problems you've had.

I bought a Thai mattress and after 10 years still feel no need to replace it.

I doubt you'd be in a position to say "Mattresses here are astoundingly bad and also astoundingly overpriced." based on your personal experience any more than I could say "Mattresses here are excellent" based on my personal experience. Farang love to take an incident or two and immediately blow it up to encompass everything and everyone in Thailand. I've slept, on occasion, on some pretty crappy mattresses back in Farang Land, but didn't immediately generalize my experience to say that farangs are incapable of producing any good mattresses.

As much as Thai bashing is tiresome and offensive, and I am very often in agreement with you, you got the wrong end of the stick with this rant.

Cheap thai mattresses are <deleted>, plain and simple. This isn't about Thais and Thailand, this is about crap mattresses.

[stgrhe]

Index has some good but pricy mattresses so I would suggest IKEA and the mattress they call "Sultan". Buy also a top mattress for extra comfort.

Edited August 26, 2015 by stgrhe

[chingmai331]

I do need eyeglasses. When i first saw the headline of this thread i read 'I need to improve my awful Thai mistress.' Had good laff.

[ignis]

Post # 2, agree.... Buy an air bed and put that on top, bought mine from a Thai Auction site 630 baht was the winning bid, came with foot pump... much better + can put as much air in as you want [very soft - rock hard] notice they have them in Big C for 1,900 baht.

will buy a new mattress next year, Ikea looks good, 'Novag' Pocket Sprung King size about 12,000 baht.

[jerojero]

Buy a new one. Duh!

[MeanUncleBuck]

As someone pointed out previously,you can learn to sleep on the floor.

I had back problems when I moved in with my good lady mostly due to a mattress with the consistency of porridge. Instead of buying new we put blankets on the floor and we sleep there.

NO more back problems at all. Im not even sure I could go back to sleeping conventionally.

In the immortal words of Mrs Nik , "up to you!"

What about blanket burn on your knees?

That's not sleeping is it. The OP didn't say he had trouble using the mattress for activities that could give one's knees blanket burn; he only mentioned sleep.

[Sheryl]

The issue I think is not "cheap" versus quality mattresses but rather that Thai mattresses tend to be rock hard. More expensive ones are not better in this respect. For those who sleep well on very hard surfaces, no problem. But for those who cannot, and for whom this causes great aches and pains, it is a big problem.

[ByblosYuNaiSoi]

Hi,

For the same problem, I went to an upholstery shop near Khlong Toey, and had them make a foam topper. Cost me about 1500 THB if memory serves, but it wasn't much compared to the other options you mention, which I looked at too. I took the measurements of the mattress and they made two singles which I put together for a king. (They didn't have a piece big enough for a king, and transport would have been tough).

NOTE: if you choose this option, get very soft foam. You will already have a super firm foundation. I made the mistake of not getting it soft enough, so the solution was imperfect (though still a vast improvement - no more sore shoulders and back).

I still have one in Chiang Mai, if you want it (LOL) Will sell cheap. The other I didn't take due to space restraints and lucked out on the best mattress in Asia at my new apartment.

Good luck!

Edited August 27, 2015 by ByblosYuNaiSoi

[facthailand]

Latex is a terrible solution for Thai climate and memory foam even worse.

If you go to a local mattress shop, they have mattresses stuffed with shredded coconut husk. Our ordinary mattress was comfortable for 15 years. B1500 then.

However, we special ordered and got a six-incher. Heavy as sh.t to rotate but no sweating. BLISSFUL sleep! B3,000.

Anybody who buys an imported mattress here has too much money!

[jadee]

Latex is a terrible solution for Thai climate and memory foam even worse.

If you go to a local mattress shop, they have mattresses stuffed with shredded coconut husk. Our ordinary mattress was comfortable for 15 years. B1500 then.

However, we special ordered and got a six-incher. Heavy as sh.t to rotate but no sweating. BLISSFUL sleep! B3,000.

Anybody who buys an imported mattress here has too much money!

good advice, thanks. I wondered what the Thai mattresses were stuffed with and whether they were any good. So doesn't the husk smell after some time? just curious

[robblok]

I bought a natural latex mattress recently real big improvement to my normal one. I sleep a lot better now. The shop is operated by the wife of one of posters on Thaivisa. I must say fast delivery and good communication. I am quite happy, they sell toppers too.

But, you don't seem willing to tell us who it is that offers such good mattresses and fast delivery. Why?

Nobody asked and I thought it might be against regulations to post it as the person is not a sponsor.

http://latexinnovations.com/

user Vibe i believe. if you do a search you can see a whole topic on it.

Glad you like Mams product Robblok. She has been selling quite a few as of late. Tries her best in regards to customer service, and has not raised her price for many years even though the factory has raised the cost 3 times. Natural latex toppers can turn any hard mattress is to a comfy one. It really is a nice material to sleep on. "Disclaimer- Mam at Latex Innovations is my wife...."

Yes i loved the product, it was a real improvement over my last mattress. I went for a mattress not a topper as i had to replace the old one. It was so hard to find a good one here as you never know what you get from the shops.

If i had not bought it at your wife's shop I would have gone Ikea, as I have bought 2 mattresses in Thai shops both 25k up and both crap.

[jacko45k]

Most of my beds do not have a box spring, so you are sleeping on a mattress on a board!

I just bought a good quality mattress, at Homeworks, and yes it was expensive. I rotate it weekly and sleep okay with it, any guest gets the old one in the spare room which is far less comfortable.

[Ghostnigel]

Where would you get a air bed in central Bangkok? And I guess I'd need a bicycle pump? I'm asking because things like that seem hard to come by around here

Please don't take this as a flame.... BUT, you don't appear to be very imaginative. Outdoor & camping outlets. Online stores. I'd almost venture to say there's nothing you can't buy in BKK if you're serious about it.

I'll give you a hint..... Let Google be your friend.

Cheers..... Mal.

I agree with what you say....but, we need people like him on here, to make us look clevererer....its entertainment.

To be honest, same as Willymuii said,, why should we do the work for him. There is not much that cannot be found somewhere on the internet, as you know....