Buying Night-Bazaar-Style T-Shirts

[orang37]

Sawasdee Khrup, CM TV Friends,

This year two old friends, with their family members pitching in, did us a wonderful favor of cleaning out a storage space we could no longer afford to rent in the Seattle area: gifting the contents (furniture, clothing) to local charitable organizations, and agreeing to store, and hold, for us a valuable collection of Asian Art, until we can return, and deal with it ourselves, someday.

Between the two families, there are seven children, four adults, and we thought a nice gift would a sampler of twenty-four or so t-shirts with Chiang Mai themes in various sizes, colors, would make a nice thank you gift.

We're guessing that somewhere is a wholesaler, where all these night-bazaar booths-on-wheels selling t-shirts pick up their stuff, and wondered if anyone knew: where that might be. This may be unrealistic: in the sense: this hypothetical wholesaler may only deal in lots of 50, or 100, minimum.

And yeah, we've got good bargaining skills in Thai, so we have no problem "playing Changklan" except for that rogue-bull-apocalyptacator, Kwai Tony, damaging our ears with his Christian-flavored rock-concert-volume glossolalic eschatology.

thanks, ~o:37;

[Sansai Sam]

I have recently seen Chiang Mai and Thailand T-shirts on sale at Carrefour very cheap (60 to 100 baht) with pics of elephants, temples, etc. on them.

[elektrified]

All of those t-shirt sellers that you see on the Sunday walking street market, Meechok Plaza market Mon and Tue, San Kamphaeng Saturday market, etc. will sell wholesale in any quantities on say 5 pcs. on up. Generally the sellers at the Night Bazaar will not sell wholesale.

[KRS1]

Careful, every street shirt i have bought ended up shrinking when inside a western style dryer.

[SadieMBeagle]

I don't think you need to do wholesale; surely buying 24 shirts from one seller at a market will give you a hefty discount? That's what I'd do, anyway. I have seen nice shirts at Sunday Walking Street....shirts with more touristy/funny sayings on them are located just inside Tha Pae Gate, and shirts get less silly/more cool/artsy the further west you walk. I think the best ones (or at least the shirts I like the most) are located all around the intersection of Rachadamnoen and Prapokklao and areas west of there.

[JRA]

Orang37, I as well bought some shirts at the Night Bizaar for a couple friends back home and they were a big hit...and decent quality....I only got four and don't bargin much and bite when I hear what I believe is a fair price...I paid 180 bhat each but again I don't really care for talking them down as low as they go...but they have a nice selection of various shirts and sizes and I believe you could get for less...sometimes you get what you pay for...on both sides of the street the one block south of the McD's is where I found some nice shirts...for reference I have them try on the sizes so I can guage how it will fit the person I buy for

[CPT]

Many of the items for sale at the night bazaar and Sunday walking street can be purchased wholesale in Bo Sang but I am not certain about T-shirts. I have seen other textiles for sale there so perhaps it would be worth checking out. It is a really relaxed, sleepy place during the day with often much cheaper prices than can be found in the city even when not buying in bulk.

Maybe one of the trade promotion organizations could be of help?

Edited April 27, 2011 by CPT

[CobraSnakeNecktie]

even chinatown has much better deals than N.B.. Lots of T shirts for 40 baht each... Probably a lot less if bought in bulk.

Check the T shirt shops on the road going south from big intersection at Gat Luang. That's the intersection with the 7-11 and Chinese Pharmacy.

Going south on that road there are a number of T shirt shops on the east or river side....

[orang37]

Sawasdee Khrup, TV CM Friends,

Many excellent suggestions to follow through on, thanks ! Will post details on where we finally purchase, and what price paid.

Definitely agree that new t-shirts around here are going to shrink on the first wash.

Aside: two months ago we helped two visiting friends of a friend tour Chiang Mai, and asssited with their purhcase of about 22 kilograms of various and sundry (almost all contemporary) arts and crafts, for their shop back in the US. We packed up their goods, and shipped them to them via FedEx 25kg. box.

US Customs held up the incoming shipment at Anchorage, Alaska for four days, for unknown reasons.

Finally, the recipient in the US was able to get through to US Customs directly: all they wanted to know was what "weave" the seven or so "cermonial t-shirts" (seua yan) listed in the manifest were !

[these are cotton loose shirts covered with sacred Pali syllables (Yan), and other symbolic designs, often involving the archetypal yogi-hermit, Lu See, or Ru See, (from the ancient Aryan proto-root "rsi," which becomes, in Sanskrit, "rishi," meaning "forest sage, renunciate, seer, etc."), and, in later periods, has more "elaborate" formalisms in Sanskrit (and an incredible number of interweavings with various Indian mythics; historical episodes)such as: "Agasthya Muni."

You may have seen some of these "seua yan" whose designs sometimes include bestial sex (such as a woman having sex with a horse). In our humble opinion these t-shirts, known to be involved in magical pseudo-Buddhist rituals, are believed to be protective of injury by weapons, curses, as well as inductive of good fortune, etc. The uses of imagery which violate/invert cultural norms extremely, while also symbolically linking to most normative religious symbolisms, just seems to us another typical manifestation of apotropaic magic.]

So, there does seem to be some sensitivity by US Customs to incoming cloth and material.

fyi: my friends were charged US $14 duty on all their forty-one items, listed as having a total value of US $1200 (one exquisitely figured old silver Burmese octagonal highly repousse-embossed box accounting for most of that valuation).

best, ~o:37;

Edited April 27, 2011 by orang37