Off on a morning trip to Ang Sila with neighbour Nik; our target being the factories that produce mortars and pestles.

It is a fact of life in Asia that any successful business is immediately copied by everyone else in the vicinity; such that you find entire streets selling exactly the same thing. I always feel sorry for the poor sod who set up the first stall selling, say, washing machine spares; only to find that his little money spinner diluted over time as every shop around him starts selling the same pulleys, motors and whatever else goes into making a washing machine.

And so it is in Ang Sila. Many years ago, at the dawn of time, someone decided to make and sell mortars and pestles. They sold well, too well, because in no time at all the whole damn town was selling them.

Welcome to Ang Sila. Want to buy a mortar and pestle? You’re in luck. Want to buy a Mars bar? What do you think this is, a city?

Although the place has a reputation for crafting these marvellous artifacts, we completely failed to find anyone making them. Maybe they are all made in China nowadays and shipped in to tempt the unwitting mortar and pestle purchasers who throng to Ang Sila from all over Thailand (although not on Tuesdays according to our onsite market research). But we did find endless shops selling the same goods.

Not content to offer every variation of mortar and pestle, the vendors have branched into other must have household items, such as this:

Quite ridiculous, who looks like that? Oh….

Quite an amazing little kid, whose rendition of a smile….

…..gradually morphed into an excellent impression of someone having a monster shit.

Or maybe it was more than an impression, I know nothing about the plumbing of children.

Our chance encounter with this photogenic crapper more than made up for an absence of factories to photograph. And, as further compensation, we also paid a visit to the local Chinese temple which provided an hour of excellent photo opportunities. But that’s another post.

Photos: Panasonic GX1 with Olympus 75mm lens