The Market Sellers

An hour before dawn, the market people arrive then settle like resting birds beside the Ping river. Girls squat over large straw hats, hats brimful of dried chilies or small freshwater fish. They lay down bamboo mats laden with okra, aubergines, mangosteens and rambutan. They are not from Chiang Mai but are a Thai hill peoples, villagers that have cycled through the night to bring their produce here. Carefully they wrap your choices in newspaper bundles tied with red raffia. They offer this livelihood to us with modest smiles. A daily subsistence parceled with a grace that can be felt as a currency, a simple act of transference. A few coins are exchanged. The barter and haggle of a busy city market is absent here just the affable contact of a hand to hand correspondence. A mutual recognition of the rivers that join us and the oceans between.