On shopping

It's time to bolster my wardrobe.  Last term, I got away with a lot being the one farang not living and working in aircon.  Now there are three of us, and we are under a considerable amount of scrutiny.  Instead of wearing polos and American buttondown tees, I'll be wearing slacks, ties, and long sleeved shirts (this is very important in Thailand: you look nice in short sleeves and tie, but you'll never be sharp without sleeves).  I figure it'll slack later on and I'll be able to wear the ever-shiek cowboy getup (anyone have an extra bolo tie you could send?) but for now, when temperatures and the pressures to establish solid precedents are at their highest, the prospect of one day going back to cooler, breathable, cotton pants--which have either elastic or string-tie waistbands in my wardrobe--does little to offset the swelter around the rivers of sweat.

It's easy to find a tailor, and sometimes a fairly cheap one, which the BIG farangs in the EP do.  I know I want to bring home a traditional, Thai-style shirt, and I'll admit that part of me likes the eventual novelty (sooner rather than later, pray everyone and everything that is holy), but I just don't want to go there.  

And while I don't expect to find pants that actually fit--the 30X30 pants I brought slide straight off without unbuttoning--I figured that a country of generally small and skinny people would be a good bet for finding clothes for the skinny, especially in the Thai-owned and inclined department stores.

Well.

I started at Robinson Ocean, the most Western-friendly--and expensive--option.  I found one pair of 30-inch black cotton, one pair of 30 inch khaki, each unhemmed blanks from an American designer (so produced in a neighboring country, shipped to the states, and redistributed, most likely), with prices inline with a US department store--not such a good option.

Second stop: Tesco-Lotus, the local Wal-Mart.  The smallest dress pants were solid polyester and, while sized in some very foreign units--18 or 49, I can't remember which--about 32 inches around.  Cotton started four digits up.

Stop three: a seconds shop specializing in American and British brands.  Most items were 250 TB: now we're talking.  BUT, the one small shirt was 575, and the only smallish pants were navy blue polyester about the shade and texture of my high school band uniform.

Stop four: Lucky Department Store, a very Thai establishment that carries such almost-original-quality brands as Levy Stress and Dickles.  Finding the men's formalwear was an endurance challenge, and once I was there, nothing had a size.  Evidently, what's supposed to happen is one of the cute young clerks comes and takes desires and measurements and provides appropriately sized garments of the desired style.
What's to say?
When I stepped into the section, the chittering knot of clerks dispersed like a covey of flushed quail.  When I did corner one and asked, in Thai, "Do you have these [khaki pants] in really small?  Maybe 28 or 30?"
Her eyeballs went from deer-in-headlights to dog-under-carwheels.
"No, no, no have" she said in English.
"Any cotton for me?" in Thai.
I left before the puppy-dog eyes ruptured.

Stop five: Saha Thai, owned and operated by Thais, for Thais, without the nods at Westernization that make for worthwhile novelty/absurdity.
This one has to work, right?  Just think of all the skinny little guys in high school, the fact that my stature, if filled out, would be abnormally large for Thailand.
As I walked around, I struck gold: a small long-sleeved shirt for 250, 30X30 cotton khaki pants for 299, and a leather belt for 229.  I also realized why I had such bad luck finding small dress clothes: while American department stores have a smaller selection of boys' dressup clothes, it's still possible to find something smaller than 30X30.  And even if the selection of fabrics is limited, you generally have a choice of khaki, black, navy, and charcoal pants with matching shirts.
Thailand is a different story, witnessed in SahaThai: young men buy either casual clothes (with local predilection toward death metal and Harley shirts) or school uniforms.  For nice occasions, they rent formal Thai wear.  By the time you're wearing a suit and tie, you've gone through your growth spurts and filling out periods, and, as I think about it, Thai men are not the whippets their sons are, but tend to be strong and solid.  Where, filled out, I'm more of a triangular shape with broad shoulders and chest, Thai guys rarely have the disproportionate shoulder girth; someone with a size 40 coat would wear at least size 38 pants, more likely 42 or 44.
So I snatched the smallest shirt, pants, and belt I'd seen, also some of the cheapest, and went looking for a register.  And met a wall of about 6 floor clerks firing fully-automatic blasts of Thai at me.
My turn to turn deer in headlights as they started gesturing at the shirt, pants, and belt, and gesticulating at each other.  As the argument intensified, I turned dog-under-wheels.
And handed back the garments and left.

New game plan: go to one of the custom tailors and see how prices compare with the farang-friendly Robinson.  If they're comparable, what the hell, right?  And if not, at least Robinson has the American brands, which hopefully are made with the same quality as they are stateside.  Consider: the boxers I bought in March have come unhemmed.  I haven't worn the boxers I bought in August for a few months because the next wash will liberate the elastic band, and a good fart would separate the component halves.  The boxers I brought are not much the worse for wear.  So maybe paying American-end prices for American brands might not be such a bad idea in the long run.