Busy week

Finally got a chance for an update. We are on our way from Chanthaburi to Bangkok via bus (a four hour, hot and sticky ride)
On Monday  we spent the day with staff of the National Natural History Museum about 50 km north of Bangkok. On the way we passt through some of the areas worst hit by last falls flooding. The area looks mostly cleaned up, the main evidence of the flooding is the huge amounts of flotsam in the canals and the high water marks on walls and houses.
The museum sits on ahuge science campus that is also home to the National Science museum, the national IT museum and a number of science ministries.  During the flood the site  was above water, but some of the staff were trapped by the flood and were there for a month liviving off of fish they caught. The museum is mainly focussed on biology and native wildlife with displays of the various classes of life and thai habitats. We also tuured their collections and prep areas where they were working on new taxidermy techniques.

On Tuesday we rented a van and drove to  the Chanthaburi campus of Burapha University and installed ourselves in the staff dormitories. The univerity has three specialities, marine studies, business and gemmology. Thecampus is situated on a tidal flat and is surrounded by experimental shrimp farms and salt harvesting pans. After aquick tour of the campus and thenew olympic swinning pool, the staff of the gemology department took us to a beach resort on the Gulf of Thailand for dinner. Of course the first thing the four of us did was to kick off our shoes and go for a walk on the beautiful beach. Supper was superb featuring all the seafood the area is famous for. Somehow all the Canadians ended up singing a song. Puala did her version of a Thai song about cracking crabs, Andy followed up with a classic about an itsy bitsy spider, Ralph performed an Acadian drinking song which included blowing raspberrys a part of the chorus (this was very popular). After much coaxing I did a very flat version of Four strong winds, not my best performance.

Wednesday was a very full day. Andy gave a talk on platinum group minerals, we dicussed Cambodian zircon locales with James and Surin, the heaad of the department took us to some local saphire operations to speak with the operators and see the concentration setup. We were also given some very nice research material by the owners of these mines, who were out there getting dirty with the rest of the workers. We were shown several spectacular star sapphires.

Thursday we drove to the Cambodian border to look at ruby deposits. We started by doing some panning in a stream running through a ruby deposit. Gem panning is not loke gold panning. For gold we use a steel pan an look at everything that comes out of the pan, so it can be a long process. For gems, the pan is acually a wicker pan with 0.5 cm mesh. Anything smaller than that is lost not of interest. None of us got any rubies but Surin founs two pinhead sized samples. On the way back to the campus, we stopped at two of the quarries from the previous day. At one quarry we were given some of the concentrate to look thrrough for zircons which are the reason for the trip but are not valued here. At a second quarry the very generous owner (Jabba the miner) showered us with zircons, spinels, garnets  and pyroxenes which are collected as curiosities here but are vital for our work. He also showed us a weeks production from his mine, which was a very good haul consisting mainly of black and blue star sapphires. On seeing how fascinated we were with the sapphires, he invited us to help ourself to some of the low grade stones (low grade but sapphires none-the-less). Just anothe friendly and generous Thai like all the rest. We got back to the campus and had a nice lunch at the local market where I sampled banana pancakes for the first but definitely not the last time.

Friday arrived too early (we all found out about Chang-overs, Chang being a Thai brew with agreat taste but notorious for headaches)
Chanthaburi has a world class gem market every Friday and Saturday. The Burapha Gemology department runs a gem  laboratory in the markets where buyers can identify and certify stones they have bought. We toured the lab and then were given an exclusive tour of a large sapphire cutting operation across the street. Watching the sorters and cutters at work with very simple tools made me appreciate just what was involved  in producing gems. The final cutting is actually done by employees working out of their homes (supposedly so  they can train the next generation of cutters)

We spent the rest of the day in the market watching traders and buyers from all over the world haggle over piles of gems on tables between them. The trade is essentially unregulated, with no records kept, no taxes paid and all transactions in cash.  The operations ranged from rooms full of traders, to independants siting at tables in the alleys. Buyers post notices on the windows saying what they want to buy and what they will pay for it. On a personal note, I purchased a really nice 1.6 ct deep blue sapphire that was mined at on of the mines I'd visited the day before and polished in Chanthaburi. It will make a very nice addition to my beloveds finger on her wedding ring (did you know I'm getting married?)

Tomorrow we leave Bangkok by bus for Cambodia and the rest of our trip. My week and a half in Thailand has been a wonderful experience mainly due to the happy and generous people I have met and worked with.  I hope I can come back someday and see more of this beautiful place, meet more Thais and of course more Thai food.

On to Cambodia!