Twenty years ago, each morning would see the rough gem markets of Eastern Thailand’s Trat province spring to life with vibrant trade, attracting countless visitors. On bustling side streets, Thai, Cambodian, Indian and European traders would vie for space with local vendors and brokers as glistening rubies were piled high on rickety sidewalk tables.

The ruby industry seemed to permeate every part of the Nong Bon and Bo Rai townships. As you walked the narrow streets you would hear the familiar high-pitched screeching of gem polishing wheels radiating from the surrounding buildings. Cutting shops were an integral part of these towns, from single wheeled shop-houses to large commercial enterprises.

When Burmese rubies stopped reaching the world markets in the 1960’s due to the worsening political situation, severe ruby shortages were experienced globally. Trat’s slightly darker and previously unloved rubies were now in high demand. Ruby mining boomed in a feverish scramble to meet this unfulfilled demand – and so did the local economy.

The money and vibrancy the ruby trade brought to the area was immense. Bo Rai, formerly a poor and sleepy outpost on the edge of Eastern Thailand, was transformed almost overnight. Jobs within the industry itself such as gem cutting, mining, brokering and trading, all proliferated. Bo Rai totally geared itself towards the production and distribution of rubies. Labor shortfalls were met by itinerant workers from other provinces and the population swelled. The service industries mushroomed – maintenance and supply shops, hotels, restaurants, food stalls, bars and the gaudy establishments that characterize such mining towns all tended to the needs of the increasing population.
As if the God’s were heaping riches on the locals, rubies from the nearby Pailin mines in Cambodia started to flow across the border into Thailand, adding to the area’s already good fortune. Desperate for money to fund their communist insurgency, genocidal regime and last stand, the Khmer Rouge had a vice like grip on the Pailin ruby mines. From their rural stronghold, they sent their gems west across the border in return for much needed currency. The added volume of Cambodian rubies accelerated the local economies of Northern Trat province to fever pitch.

Ruby fever, the lust for profit, and industrial machinery stripped this non-renewable product from the ground for 30 straight years at a break neck speed. The boom era eventually had to slow and it did so dramatically. Towards the end of the 1980’s local ruby mines slowed in production as they reached exhaustion. Precious little was left for the future. Compounding the growing supply problems, were the declining prices now felt in the ruby market. Due to the improved political situation in Burma, Burmese rubies were back on the market driving global prices back down again. As the Trat ruby mines withered, miners with diminishing returns and rising costs began to give up and look elsewhere for their fortunes. As the rubies stopped flowing, so did the life-blood of this once booming area.

The local economy sharply deflated over a 5-year period forcing many families to either leave or diversify. Much of the itinerant population dispersed to either the neighboring gem center of Chanthaburi, or to the rest of Thailand. Ironically, out of desperation, many headed for the increasingly abandoned mines and river systems to pan for rubies that may have been missed by others.

Today the two towns are shadows of their former selves. The cutting factories have shut, the market areas are empty and devoid of trade. One or two businesses, unable to read the writing on the wall, stay open by surviving on old stock, a trickle of Cambodian rubies, and the meager offerings of ruby-panners who occasionally find a gem or two. Food stalls colonize the now empty gem trading halls in Bo Rai and the shutters are permanently down for many of the buildings in the old gem markets. However, a slightly unkempt and nostalgic atmosphere of faded glory prevails.

Abandoned mines and equipment litter the landscape from place to place around Bo Rai. Three decades of industrial earth moving equipment relentlessly stripped the ground of both rubies and life alike. Carelessly redposited soil forms barren hillocks covered with shallow rooted grasses, which seem strangely out of place in an otherwise lush and verdant province, home to orchards and fruit plantations.

One mine 6 km’s outside of Bo Rai still maintains a caretaker on the site as if to guard the barren earth and ruined machinery. He told us that commercial production finished 15 years ago.

Another 5 hard years was spent fruitlessly picking over the same ground again and again, and forensically exploring the outer boundaries of the mine. All hope has now been abandoned. Bulldozers and equipment are haphazardly strewn around the yard, and a huge abandoned ruby jigger serves as a lonely sentinel on the hill behind.

On the bright side, Northern Trat has finally shaken off its lawless border region image. The Khmer Rouge with their intermittent fighting and gem smuggling that used to characterize the region until 1996, have now passed into history. The days of violent mining disputes that once saw a staggering 50 murders in one year in the tiny Nong Bon township, have long gone.Agriculture is now making a slow and modest return to a few of the smaller abandoned mines sites. However, reclamation of other wasteland is not happening quickly. Provincial improvements will pass these old mining districts by and the tourist bonanza that will soon descend on the nearby and rapidly developing island of Koh Chang, is unlikely to provide any benefit.

The one saving grace of this area is its high rainfall and rich, fertile soil. With lush and intensively farmed land, local agriculture has prevented total economic implosion by sustaining the fractured economy. Without the groves and plantations of pepper, tropical fruits, sugar cane and rubber, it is likely the towns would of passed into history – like so many of the countless mining towns before them. Where the bulldozer and ruby jigger ruled supreme, water buffalo and their primitive ploughs now prevail.

Photographs by S. Bruce-Lockhart & T. Hetherington.