Modern Stores

We did not want to leave you with the impression that all shopping was done in small store in our local neighborhood. We went to Bhat Bhateni (pronounced bought but tinni) which is the Nepal equivalent of WalMart. There are probably 6 to 8 of them in the greater Kathmandu metro area. That metro area has about 2 million people. We often go to this store for hard to find items, household goods and because it is easier than walking all around the neighborhood looking for an item that may or may not be available in local shops.

Bhat Bhateni  large selection of dinner ware. We had to buy some additional bowls and one plate. The plate was to replace one that Scott had destroyed in the microwave.

Bhat Bhateni has a good selection of appliances. We actually just bought a small gas range that has both a stove top and an oven. The electric utility here is a government owned company called the Nepal Electricity Authority. They are a monopoly. They only supply electricity to you for part of any day. They will often shut off power before the scheduled time. When we are baking something in our electric ovens and the power shuts down you can loose what ever it is that you are baking. Actually a day after we got the gas range our partner couple was baking bread. The power went off unexpectedly so they hurried next door to our apartment. We fired up our new gas oven and completed baking the bread. Hurray!!

They even sell exercise equipment at Bhat Bhateni.

Lots of food and packaged dry goods. Yes that is Lear on the right.

That is Lear at the end of the isle. One big difference between Bhat Bhateni and WalMart is that there is a lot of staff. They might even have one store employee on every isle. That is in part because labor is cheap. Nepal's biggest export is people. The Nepali work all over the world to earn a living and remit money back to the family here in Nepal.