After a few days occupation of the camp, the market perked up. Already at least half the stalls were full. In the first shop was a hideous old betel-stained hag, surrounded by children and only too clearly once again pregnant, who presided over two giant bowls of curry at five cents a ladle-full; and under her counter were bottles of lao at a dollar-fifty. At all the stalls were ducks’ eggs and the usual Thai tinned meats and fish, but the two unusual delicacies were Ma Mee, and ‘Glop’. ‘Glop’ was a purely onomatopoeic name for a most glutinous form of white jelly made largely from tapioca flour and sugar, which was cut up in squelchy squares that could just be held before they slipped through your fingers and down your throat. The Ma Mee, a proper Thai or Chinese dish, was a mixture of a sort of fine macaroni made from rice flour, with the addition of ducks’ or chickens’ eggs, and onions and peppers all fried together into a very appetising mess for about 25 cents. You could also always find tiny little china bowls, filled with beautiful globules of sago in a sweet, transparent sauce; and in the afternoon there were small, hot pancakes turned out very cheaply by the hundred to be eaten with sugar and lime. It was only too easy to spend your month’s wage in a week in that market.

Among the market personalities, the females were by far the most interesting. There was one really lovely Amazon of a Thai girl who sometimes came to sell fish. She wore one of the enormous brimmed Chinese hats, and just couldn’t be persuaded to look up from her fish and smile; she, nevertheless, impressed all who saw her, but she probably had a Methodist husband, and to get a glimpse of her eyes you had to exert no little skill.

Then there was Lulu, later falsely reported to have been shot as a British agent. Lulu, I fear, was plump and a little passeé, but of all the Thai girls she was most openly conscious of her own attractiveness, could speak English, and was alleged to have known what the inside of planters’ mosquito nets in Malaya were like.

Lastly, at the nearest point to the river, was a shop owned by a mother and three daughters, of which the eldest was a beauty. Her features were pure dusky Dietrich, but she had a scar that ran for two inches along the side of her chin; her eyes were marvellous pools of clear brown water and her smile was slow and undermining. Unfortunately she was always being courted by Nips, and in the middle of our stay some Thais, too, had a fight over this lady and one of them was killed. It seemed a question of a ‘femme fatale’.