The friendly Taxi Driver with the broken MIDO Crystal

Just to give you an impression that it is not always easy to find an address in China Town, even you have the exact address. I have been waiting to take a shot of this nice watch parts shop (an upper class watch parts shop with air-conditioning and the correlated higher prices) across the street and finally gave up. I probably could have waited the whole afternoon for the gap in the continuously flowing metal avalanche.
This is the shop where I found my PUW (Pforzheimer Uhrenwerke) Caliber 910 parts. The shop still has an interesting array of Bergeon and A&F watch parts and also stocks a considerable amount of spare parts. That day, I bought a soldering station.
An interesting anecdote from another trip to that ship. I noticed that the taxi driver was wearing a nice vintage Mido Commander. The watch was from the 70ies and had a nice case back. I also noticed that the crystal had a real crack. On the way to the shop I told the taxi driver that he should change the crystal to avoid humidity getting into the watch case.
I almost had him replacing the crystal immediately, but since he could not leave the car (the parking in China Town is really limited) on this busy road, I offered to ask inside the shop. He must have trusted me, handed me the watch and I stepped into the shop. 250 Baht or ca. USD 6.50 for a NOS Mido crystal. That is half a day's rent for the taxi driver (most of the drivers rent the cars for ca. THB 500 per day) and thus quite a bit of money. He smiled when I gave him the watch back and said he would think that crystal replacement over and now he knew where to find that shop.

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A well equipped watch parts shop at Yaowarat

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