Bangkok Scenes

Thailand has a market for pedal-driven sewing machines. Any touristy block will have at least one Singer clacking away as smoothly as an oldtimer reminiscing about when he was young and his grandmother did the mending on the exact same model. Which makes sense, given how recently the power grid materialized and how unreliable it remains. It's just odd to see big city traffic and neon advertisements alongside technology from a couple centuries back. Get a block off the touristy stretch and every other storefront/shophouse has one visible, if not in active use.

And what makes it so very Bangkok:

Two Americans could just about squeeze past each other on the sidewalk, so there's just a row of hawkers and two directions of foot traffic. A line of umbrellas leans into the street to keep the sun off, and a few boards keep chairs and tables from falling through holes in the sidewalk.

First is an old guy sewing polo shirts. He has a lot of Chinese ancestry, and is of an age a kid would call ancestral. He reaches to his right, where he has neat piles of green strips of pre-cut fabric. As he finishes, he passes the shirt to his right, where a lady of an equal age--maybe his wife, maybe the one who does the cutting?--sews on buttons and little embroidered patches of either a horse or alligator. She passes the completed shirt to her right, where a somewhat younger lady--maybe a daughter, a sister, a cousin, hard to tell if there's a full generation between--folds it and slips it into a plastic bag that goes on her display table in either the Lacoste or Polo pile.

"Two hundred Baht, two hundred, good price for you. Okey, okey, for you, good price, one-ninety. One ninety, is Polo!"

I've been able to conduct a number of transactions entirely in Thai--"How much? Okay, I'll take one. I'm from Nakonsrithammarat. No, really, I'm a teacher. Oh, before that? Califorinia. Yes, I love Thailand and spicy food is delicious. In a bag, no rice, thank you. Here you are." Of course, I sound like a southerner, so I have a hard time getting through, but there's much nodding when I say where I'm from.

I was especially proud of myself for a negotiation with a DVD hawker. I talked him down and held firm until he broke into English and said, "Okey, okey, I give to you."

I was so proud.

The first disk was in French. The second Chinese. The Third was Korean, I think. The rest were Thai. It made for a good laugh.