Motorcycles are all about, weaving in and out of traffic and leaving their signature VROOOOOMMM and trail of exhaust fumes behind them. As we walk the short distance from our hotel in the center of the gem district to the trading floor it is apparent that the political upheavel in Bangkok is taking its toll. The street scene is bare and what would have been a bustling market is slowed considerably. There are a fraction of the normal street vendors selling fried chicken, fresh flowers, and pork-on-a-stick. The main trading floor is very quiet and I am one of only a handful of foreigners here.
There are a lot of empty chairs and the number of brokers walking around presenting stones is unusually small. As the daylight pours over the rows of desks and the buyers and sellers chatter in Thai, small pockets of action are seen as sellers gather around a foreigner and his Thai dealer. In a flurry a dozen or so parcels of stones are presented and rejected in rapid succession. “Too expensive” the Thai dealer tells the broker after a short exchange with her client and a brief pause to translate his English. “Too dark”. “Big window”. As quickly as the crowd gathered it has dispersed. A false-start has dashed their hopes- both buyer and sellers.
This trip marks my sixth year of buying in Chanthaburi; my first was 2004. As time passes the challenges of meeting on quality and price are no less difficult. Dealers are scrambling to sell a stone and make a buck as are foreign buyers. Everyone- owners, brokers, and buyers- looks for an angle. Every headline extolling the beginning or end of this economic cycle or that seems to have some meaning for us all. China is booming- surely they are eager to buy at higher prices. Europe is in a shambles as is America; this must bring prices back to earth. One successful Thai sapphire dealer told me that she has been waiting for a great year since Saddam Hussein was ruling Iraq and she has yet to see one.
Not everything is so grim. Melanie and I had a great show in Tucson and the sales were much better than expected. Orders have been very strong since we arrived here. Some local dealers in Chanthaburi are still selling enough to sponsor the local soccer team, or so it would appear. 
The overarching question is when the global economy will recover from the credit market implosion and subsequent drop in colored stone demand. One can only speculate, and wonder whether the coming Chinese real estate market correction or the American commercial real estate market will be the next shoe to drop.
The local calibrated sapphire factories seem to be in a holding pattern. Some have closed, as could be predicted, but the larger operations are working toward whittling down inventories while neither adding nor paring their workforce. To buyers like me it seems to be business as usual for the big dealers but the smaller ones are having a difficult time.
Some local industry seems to be booming but the money poured into projects like this new apartment complex is likely to be generations old. As the struggle in Bangkok seems to indicate, Thailand is a country where people of great wealth and those with nothing live an uneasy coexistence. The land of smiles may preach a Buddhist “mai pen rai”, or “nevermind” kind of attitude, but the bloody conflicts tell a different story.
As the wealthy urban elite comes to grips with its role in the conflict there seems to be as much denial as there is awareness or reconciliation of these different lifestyles. Red shirt protestors are rural, poor, and wanting. The elite’s prime minister Abhisit is still in power as of this writing but this may not be true in a few hours or days. Rhetoric is tossed from both sides but root causes are not examined in any media article that you will see in Thailand. Poverty is not discussed nor is the utter lack of any social safety net. The red shirt hero was a reckless spender who worked the masses with impossibly cheap promises and pocketed giant sums of cash while he spent the government’s money.
But the furnaces are continuing to churn out stones and the skillful cutters here in Chanthaburi continue to shape them. The buyers still come even if in a reduced number. The trade is alive here owing partly to capital investments from the elite and partly to cheap labor from those that side with the red shirts. 
Rough stone is still coming from Africa and money is still coming from the West so likely things will continue in this town for a while longer. But as the tables at the market are colored by ruby and tsavorite garnet, the atmosphere here seems colored as well. As in history, politics, and business there are the pervasive colors of blood and money.
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