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FEATURE STORY
Scene from Mai Hong, Thailand. Photo by Stan Dromey.
An intrepid jewelry artist made the trek to a border town in Thailand to buy his stones.
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Our adventure began in the shopping Mecca of Bangkok, Thailand, one of the world’s most important centers for the gem and jewelry trade. This, however, was not our ultimate destination. Working from the relative safety and comfort of Thailand, our quarry was Burmese rubies, sapphires, jade, and maw sit-sit (a rare composite found in the jade fields). Burmese rubies are considered the best in the world, with their sapphires second only to the famed stones from Kashmir.
A constant flow of these materials is smuggled across the border of Myanmar (formerly Burma) and then legally traded in Thailand. Over the last decade or so, the border towns have been where the dealers from Bangkok go to buy their stones. The towns of Mae Sot and Mae Sai are dominant over the other border towns in the gem trade, with Mae Sot being the most important. Mae Sot is said to have a large Thai-Burmese gem fair every April, though I was unable to find out the exact dates. Recently, direct flights to Mandalay, Myanmar, have had an effect on the border trade, though it is still a thriving business. Not wanting to travel in a dangerous country laid waste by a corrupt military dictatorship, our choice was the border markets of Thailand. Armed with a loupe, a gram scale, my partner Stan Dromey and his digital camera, and a priceless copy of the Lonely Planet Guide to Thailand, I headed to the border, the long way.
HEAD FOR THE BORDER. After asking around and a fair bit of negotiation — we settled on a price somewhere around $50 a day — we hired a driver/guide with a van and again headed northeast to the Myanmar border. Then, heading south along the border, we finished our four-day, 500-kilometer journey through breathtaking, winding mountain roads, tropical jungle, hill tribe villages, terraced rice paddies, and banana plantations to our final shopping destination of Mai Sot. On day two of this leg, the first signs of a gem trade began to appear, in the picturesque mountain town of Mai Hong Song. Here we found cut and rough Burmese sapphires, rubies, and jade along with a smattering of other materials such as garnets, amethyst, and emeralds that were most likely of Indian and African origin. In one jewelry case a there was a sobering discovery — a mottled, deep blue piece of what was most likely glass with fragments of kiln brick still attached to one end. Some of this material was cut and polished; it had an artificial look, but to the dealer insisted it was real. For the unsuspecting tourist, a possible swindle.
In the area, there are three main markets for gems: Central Mae Sot, a border market six kilometers west at the Thai-Myanmar border, and the Myanmar town of Myawadi where foreigners are allowed to purchase one-day permits to cross the border. Travel is restricted to the town only and you must be back to the Thai border crossing by 5:00 p.m. Limited by time, with only a day and a half before our flight back to Bangkok, we concentrated on the central Mae Sot market. Here the typical dealer is housed in a communal storefront with a couple dozen others dealers each in a space of around 6 x 4 feet. A few dealers had entire storefronts of their own, while the rest of the traders roam the sidewalk, pitching their stones to potential buyers. Show a bit of interest on the sidewalk and you’ll quickly be surrounded by eager traders. What followed was an exhilarating day-and-a-half of sign language, laughter, joking, making new friends, and hunting for and finding bargains on both cut and rough materials for my coveted new cache of precious cargo bound for my studio in Colorado.
I made my purchases with these self-imposed rules:
The next day, both wired and tired, we flew south via Bangkok to the southeast section of the country to Ko Tarutao National Marine Park (yes, it’s the same place that Survivor Thailand was filmed). Here with an American-Thai husband-and-wife team as guides from a company called Paddle Asia, we spent the week island-hopping in sea kayaks, combing the beaches looking for more interesting materials and design elements for the series of pieces to be made based on this trip. Sitting in a beach bungalow at sunrise was the perfect place and time to contemplate and write the first half of this article!
HOME AGAIN. In Thailand we looked at sapphires and rubies that cost anywhere from 15 cents to $5,000-$6,000 per carat. My purchases were rough jade and maw sit-sit, and rubies and sapphires, mostly poorly cut, though well-cut stones were available, and all less than $10 per carat.
Now I needed expert advice. Were my stones heat treated, oiled (fracture sealed), or even dyed — all very common and expected practices in the industry? Of course, it would be nice to have 100 percent natural material, but it wasn’t likely. Also, what to do with poorly cut stones? If necessary, how should I re-cut and polish them? During one of my yearly trips to the Tucson shows, I had the good fortune to meet Ben Ballinger, owner of VR Gems, based out of Thousand Oaks, California. He is an American gem dealer with a Thai wife who lives in half the year in Thailand overseeing their Ching Mai shop where they cut, process, and sell gem materials. I turned to him for advice. Examining my purchases, he declared that all my sapphires and rubies were clean, not heat-treated or dyed, or fracture sealed. I was thrilled.
In my experience, the Tucson gem and mineral shows are the best all-around gem and mineral destination in the world. While it will never be bland, even the most devoted Tucson attendee might want to try something different, to jar themselves out of the routine. I’ll still make my annual treks to Tucson, but I’ll never pass up another trip to Thailand!
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Has the typical gem show become predictable? Looking for something more exciting? How much excitement are you looking for? Would you consider snacking on deep-fried bamboo grubs while bargaining for rubies and sapphires in a language you don’t understand? Well, we did and had the time of our lives.
At last, on the evening of day four, we rolled into the town of Mai Sot. A few decades ago, Mai Sot had the reputation of a lawless frontier town, with most of the commerce supplying the civil war in Burma. Floods or refugees came across the border. Now, a few rather large refugee camps still exist in the area, but Mai Sot is a bustling town built around the trade of goods coming across the border. Among the goods are wood and wood products, laquerware, textiles, immigrant laborers from Burma, and of course, gemstones.
