A Booti-ful Friend

OK so in previous post I trashed Thais for being untrustworthy friends. Fortunately I also noted that nothing lasts forever in Thailand which lets me backpedal from that uniformly negative pronouncement. Phew! I can therefore bestow a much deserved Good Housekeeping Seal of Stellar Friendship upon Ran, longtime purveyor of second-hand footwear at Chatuchak Weekend market (JJ).

In mid May I asked Ran if he had any red cowboy boots. "Come back next week and I'll have them for you," he promised. When I finally returned two Sundays ago, he showed me a fabulous pair from Mexico that he'd rummaged through 56 huge bags of boots to find. Then he categorically refused to let me pay for them. "Money goes out, money comes in," he pronounced, grinning broadly. In a decade of second-hand shopping at JJ, no one has ever given me anything for free!

Since my teens I've dressed myself from flea markets, garage sales, thrift and charity stores. I first discovered the second-hand stores at JJ in the mid 1990s and came upon Ran during my Doc Martens phase (which friends say lasted way too long). The permanently ebullient and slightly paunchy Thai-Indian with long curly orange locks always had an endless supply of Docs in various states of wearability. Whenever I stopped by, Ran miraculously extricated an interesting size 38 pair from amidst the dusty boots, sneakers and Birkenstocks crowded onto shelves and piled on the floor of his dingy three-stall shop. Leopard spots on brown leather, pink flowers on pale blue or basic black...Ran usually managed to find something I'd like.

Initially I focused on apparel more than footwear. Pickings were spectacular before the 1997 baht crisis, partly because most Thais never went near used garments for fear of taking on the previous owner's karma. That left me with plenty of well made and stylish European castoffs for under 200 baht. Prices started climbing once Thai women started second handing, but for a while there were enough interesting French and Italian labels to go round.

Only thanks to Ran, do I understand any of the arcane workings of the second-hand world at JJ. No other vendor would divulge anything about the origins of their stuff or why the quality and quantity of their stocks kept declining over the years. Surely after a decade of selling to me they could have figured out I wasn't a corporate spy! But no, it was their information and they weren't sharing it!

According to Ran, buyers from richer countries like Japan realized the vast commercial potential of the second-hand fad. Instead of sourcing at JJ, they started going directly to the wholesale entrepot at Aranyaprathet on the Thai-Cambodian border. Japanese dealers could afford to pay more than the baht-ravaged Thai merchants and thus got first choice. For end users like myself, this translated into fewer European garments at JJ and ridiculously high prices like 600 baht for a single item!

"You're taking the 'thrift' out of thrift shopping," I railed at the vendors. They just smiled their Buddha-like Thai smiles. Like anyone serious addict, I'd yell and scream for a while and eventually pay whatever it took to score my 'drug.' When European stuff virtually disappeared, I changed my dress style to incorporate the somewhat interesting Korean and Hong Kong gear. Then they too vanished. Recently favorite shops have either closed, downsized or offer abysmally style-free Chinese crap at insanely high prices. Finding one remotely Jennifer-worthy or affordable outfit has become the exception, not the rule.

Until a few months ago, second-hand footwear seemed impervious to the downturn that decimated the apparel trade. Fickle fashionista that I am, I pretty much abandoned Ran and his great deals a couple of years ago in favor of two vendors who offered Camper, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Miu Miu and serviceable no-name brands for around 1,000 baht. Then their shoes prices started rising as the clothes once had. Earlier this year I actually paid 3,000 baht for a pair of barely worn LV sandals!

Now great shoes at JJ have gone the way of great clothes, i.e. out of Thailand. And I've gone back to Ran who, rather than wondering where I'd been the past couple of years, welcomed me back warmly. All the other JJ vendors are grousing about no stock, no customers no money. Ran says business has never been better. He's even invited me to come along on one of his monthly trips to a second-hand wholesale market in a country I'm keeping to myself for now. He says I'm gonna absolutely adore it. Watch this space!