The morning market in Chanthaburi

The market opens without an announcement. By seven the folding tables are already out along the covered stretch of Si Chan Road, each one with a white cloth, a lamp on a clip, and a set of small paper packets. Nobody is selling anything yet. For the first hour people are mostly walking, looking at what is on other people's tables, and deciding where they will sit.

What is striking the first time is how little is said. A packet is opened, tipped out, gone through with tweezers, pushed back. A number is written on a scrap of paper and turned around. The paper comes back with a different number. This continues, or it does not, and either way it is over in under a minute.

What the lamp is for

Every table has the same clip-on lamp, and it is not for seeing in the dark. Under the covered street the light is flat and slightly green, and a stone judged there will look different anywhere else. The lamp is a shared reference — not a good one, but a consistent one, which for a morning's trading matters more.

This is the part that does not survive translation to a website. A photograph fixes one lighting condition and calls it the stone. It is why we shoot the same stone twice, under daylight and under incandescent light, and show both rather than choosing.