Walk through the gemstone market in Chantaburi.

[chrisP]

34° in the shade, 90% humidity. Many boothes and stores closed. Relatively little going on. Many buyers at their tables had little to no customers. What is noticeable is that there are significantly more cut stones on offer than rough stones and the stones are only evaluated with a lamp and in a few cases with a magnifying glass. What I also noticed is that the vast majority of sellers are women and the buyers are men.

I actually wanted to look for rough tourmalines, sapphires and zircons. I would have had to rummage through kilos of material at several boothes. Not in the mood in this climate. There are also sellers who offer raw and cut stones by the lot. Not for me either.

To get me started, I stopped at a larger booth and bought 2 small stones for 300 baht each. I was relatively sure that the green stone was a tourmaline, but I had no idea about the greenish-yellow stone. Communication only with the calculator, the saleswoman no English and I no Thai.

Next I was stopped by a Thai woman who wanted to sell me 2 large lots of sapphires. The stones were cut and dark blue. I declined with thanks and walked on. She then very kindly stopped me and showed me a lot of cut tourmalines. When I shook my head again, she came around the corner with a single stone. Armed only with my "Gemfish" in the middle of the sidewalk, surrounded by other people, I took a closer look at the good piece. A few hair-like inclusions, but these do not detract from the overall visual impression. On the contrary, the inclusions gave me a certain certainty that it was a genuine tourmaline. Open, beautiful pink. Weight indication missing. Purely by feel >5 ct, the cut really good. Hid the inclusions very well. I was interested.
Universal language calculator was used again due to lack of language skills. The seller's first offer was 32,000 baht. Counter offer from me 10,000 baht. This went back and forth for a while. We then agreed on 12,000 baht. It was a funny back and forth. I was happy, she was happy. I think she knew that with a professional buyer she would only have gotten a maximum of 10,000 baht. That was just the farang surcharge for me.

I'm only telling you about the prices because nobody ripped each other off and we met as equals and as a little warning for people who can't negotiate. Then you're screwed. I had previously practiced at fruit markets, flower markets and clothing markets in Bangkok and had learned the "1/3 rule" there. I have to admit, I found it difficult at the beginning too.

[Barbra Voltaire, FGG]

Grand pics, ChrisP!

[chrisP]

Thank you very much. My Chinese mid-range cell phone with German brand optics does a good job, at least at short distances.

Apart from that, the weekend in Chantaburi was really modest. Arrived on Friday, Saturday only rain, Sunday market, Monday public holiday, everything closed and Tuesday on to Hanoi. If you want to look on the bright side, my unintentionally bad timing saved me a lot of money. But I'll get rid of my money in Sri Lanka or in Tanzania at the latest.