Bangkok Markets, Part 1.

Yesterday, while wandering around, I came across a market for hardware geeks. Unlike Akihabara in Tokyo, this one doesn't specialize in new equipment. This one is for people who like to build things, and for people who want their broken consumer electronics fixed.

I found myself standing in front of a display window of capacitors. Around the corner and down the street there was a row of electronics workers sitting at tables set up on the sidewalk. They were working under umbrellas, repairing things. There were guys soldering parts onto circuit boards. Some guys were testing with multimeters. One guy had a huge reel of wire and doing windings from scratch.

I turned another corner and saw a guy with a stack of used car stereo units. It looked like he was repairing them, as he had one open and was testing something. I thought, "Hey, I should have brought him mine!" until I remembered I couldn't get the damn thing out of the car, and neither could the car thief who broke my locks getting in and left car radio frame bits around the footwells. I'd have thanked him if he had, because I really want this radio taken out so I can replace it with something that works. Besides, even at Thai labor rates I'm sure the radio isn't worth fixing.

Anyway, I thought of all the hardware geeks I know when I walked around the market.

Bangkok Markets, Part 2.

I was wandering around this morning trying to find the moneychangers down in Pahurat, the South Asian neighborhood here in Bangkok, to check the rates against what I'm getting from the banks. I didn't find any of them. I may have to wait until I get to Little India in Singapore, where I know where to look.

Anyway, serendipity struck, and I walked through both Pahurat and Sampeng markets looking for a moneychanger.

Pahurat and Sampeng markets are sewing heaven. Pahurat is one of those buildings that is bigger on the inside than on the outside, and Sampeng seems to go on for miles. (It only goes on for blocks, actually.) Shops selling buttons, zippers, ribbon, and notions of all kinds, and some finished clothing.

And fabric. Fabric as far as the eye can see, which admittedly isn't very far because everything is so tightly packed together.

Over lunch at a food stall, I realized that I had a lot of friends who would have a blast here. And then it occurred to me that a lot of them would probably want to see the Morning Market in Vientiane, and maybe the silk in Chiang Mai, and maybe Little India in Singapore, and so on. And there was the weaving in Luang Phabang.

There are a lot of fabric markets here, some of them for tourists, and some for local people. Pahurat and Sampeng didn't have many tourists. I think a lot of people locally either make their own clothes, or buy fabric to have them made, since labor is cheap.

I don't know the first thing about fabric or sewing, so I wouldn't be able to give any detailed help about the material. But I imagine I could bring people to the markets and say, "Look! Fabric!" :)

Bangkok Markets, Part 3.

And for something very different, although this isn't strictly speaking, a market:

On the way back from the World of Fabric I found myself walking along the Street of the Gunshops. More gun shops than I've ever seen in one place. I hadn't seen so many firearms on display since getting back from South Africa.

Guns from all the famous names, like Walther, Beretta, Smith and Wesson, Glock, and Browning were there in the window cases.

I realized as I was windowshopping that you can deduce quite a bit about local weapon restrictions from what's available in the shops. For one thing, while there were all kinds of handguns, longarms seemed to be limited to shotguns and small-caliber rifles. Rifles appeared to be bolt-action and lever action, and those with box magazines looked like they fired .22 Long Rifle ammunition. On the other hand, there were some handy-looking pump-action shotguns with folding stocks and short barrels that I'm sure would be quite illegal in the States.