No, no, no. You CANNOT have four chairs!”
“But I need FOUR for my family.”
“We are WAAAAY overweight. You can only buy TWO chairs!”
Hence, the Phang family members bickered over the purchase of teak stools in Mae Sot, western Thailand.
Brother Ming wanted four, Mom wanted two, second sister and third sister wanted two each, and I coveted two.
How could one not fall in love with Thailand’s wooden crafts? In Chiang Mai, we bought eight boxes of souvenirs.
Now we were in Mae Sot, a Thai border town. On the other side is Burma.
To say that Rim Moei Market in Mae Sot is a shopper’s paradise is an understatement. We eventually packed another seven boxes of goodies from Mae Sot alone.
Unlike the famous Chatuchak Market in Bangkok, Rim Moei has good ventilation. We could spend a whole day shopping here.
Your hot flushes come not from menopause, but frenzied shopping. Since it’s right next door to Myanmar, Mae Sot has jade and other precious stones for sale.
We also browsed at the tiny market on the banks of Mae Nam Moi river. We saw locals carrying heavy sacks of produce sourced from Burma. Their “bridge” is a wooden boat strategically placed across a narrow tributary of the river. Porters need only walk over it.
They had onions, dried red chillies, garlic and dried shrimp. Three large bags of garlic only cost 100 baht (about RM10).
We saw Burmese ladies, their faces yellow from the cooling powder of tanukha wood, squatting on the roadside selling mud-caked crabs caught by the river and home-made salted fish.
Chillies, onions, etc from Burma sold cheaply in Thailand.
The local people have also found another ingenious way to make money – by ferrying people across the river on huge rubber tubes.
The Thai-Burmese Friendship Bridge spans the Mae Nam Moi river. Crossing it to Burma is free, but to come back to Thailand costs 500 baht (about RM50) per person.
Therefore, a few Burmese rather take the risk with illegal “runners” who own these giant floats to transport people across the river.
“Customers” sit on the rim of the tube, their feet dangling in the water. When there are two or three passengers, the runner, who is the steersman, lies on his belly across the tube and paddles with his hands to get the tube into a swift current,
He then allows the tube to drift downriver. When the tube nears the Friendship Bridge on the Thai side, the runner paddles furiously to reach calmer waters. His passengers alight, and wade ashore, lifting their longyis (sarongs) as they go along.
The adventurer in me was tempted to go for a ride. But mom and dad feared I would end up in jail.
So I resigned myself to the activity of the day – shopping.
On the road to Bangkok, we stopped at rest areas to shop even more. There were stalls selling pickled garlic and leeks, deep fried strips of pork, dried mango slices, sweet anchovies with peanuts and a bewildering array of delicious foodstuff.
Bangkok, itself, is the perfect place to combine eating with shopping.
We salivated over bananas and tapioca boiled in syrup, and large pots of sweet potato, sago and yams topped with thick coconut milk. We threw cholesterol-caution to the wind and tucked in.
The famous Chatuchak Market is a shopping paradise full of tourists and locals picking out great bargains. But it was too hot under the awning.
We loved the big shopping complexes offering silks. Go to large, reputable shops where silk blouses in beautiful pinks, reds, purples and blues grab your attention. Second sister bought three.
Pure silk ties of all shapes and designs come in lovely boxes, making them the perfect gift to take home. So brother bought 10.
In such a shopping heaven, nobody was surprised when we checked in at the airport with 22 shopping boxes.