Five Texans and a Stowaway...
Six months ago I returned from my last teaching trip to find the world a very different place. At the time it sounded like my April and May workshops might be shut down, but I was hoping to be back on the road teaching by summer. Now we know that everything has been cancelled or postponed for the remainder of the year, and likely for well beyond that.
Like many of you, I would guess, travel is one of the driving forces in my life, and I have always felt so fortunate to be able to combine that with teaching weaving. And what could be a better way of traveling to other countries and experiencing other cultures than doing it through the eyes of textiles and other weavers? I’m sad to have missed traveling to Bolivia with Andean Textile Arts last month, and I will miss going on a long-awaited trip to India this coming January with Maiwa Handprints.
Since those kinds of trips are out of the question for the foreseeable future, I decided that the next best thing would be to do some armchair traveling through the beautiful books being published by Thrums Publications. If you aren’t already on their mailing list, it’s well worth it just to get their emails that tell you about their books, show you beautiful pictures, and sometimes even offer a free download of part of a book- https://thrumsbooks.com/. I already had all of their books that relate to the textiles of the Andean cultures because of my involvement with weavers there. But now I’m branching out to other parts of the world.
I’ve learned about the intriguing symbology in the Miao embroidery of China, natural dyeing throughout the world, how embroidery is helping to rebuild the lives of women in Afghanistan, and I’ve even gotten to color some Mayan textile designs. Most recently, I just finished reading a wonderful book called Silk Weavers of Hill Tribe Laos. Beautifully written and photographed, it led me through one couple’s experiences traveling and working with textile artisans there over the past several decades. It also took me back to a trip that I took to southeast Asia nine years ago with five fun and intrepid weavers from Texas.
I had taught several times for weaving guilds in Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston, and discovered in the process that those ladies sure know how to have a good time. So when I ran into some of those friends at Convergence 2010 in Albuquerque and they told me that they were planning a trip to southeast Asia in the fall of 2011 I asked if I could tag along. Tracy was living with her family in Singapore for a couple years, and was making scouting trips around the region. She would take care of setting up an itinerary and making all the arrangements. It turned out that their trip was being planned specifically for six people, and one of their group had had to cancel, so they invited me to take over that spot.
As it turned out, another opportunity arose shortly before this trip was about to begin to join another weaving traveling companion to go to a textile conference in Java and then spend a week in Bali. But that’s another story for another time. After spending ten days in Indonesia I met up with my five Texan friends in Singapore for a great dinner at an Indian restaurant and a night’s rest before we flew off to Siem Reap, Cambodia the next morning.
Tracy did a great job of dividing up our ten days in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand between visiting amazing historic sites, silk raising and weaving centers, music and dance performances, great food, and lots of shopping, with a few special experiences thrown in. She also set up our hotel arrangements so that we swapped roommates with each new location and had a chance to room with each of the other five people on the trip and get to know each other better.
Our days in Cambodia began with plenty of time to explore the Angkor Wat temple complex, which is the largest religious monument in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage site. This was easily the most awe-inspiring site we visited, but equally wonderful on a more intimate scale were Ta Phrom, Angkor Thom and Banteay Strey. Visits to the Artisans d’Angkor center and silk farm and the Institute for Khmer Textile Technology gave us an opportunity to see every step of the process from raising silkworms to reeling silk to warping the looms to the exquisite finished weavings. And of course, opportunities to bring some of the textiles home with us.
From Cambodia we flew on to Vientiane, Laos, where we had an afternoon of visiting more temples, a museum, a Buddhist stupa, the Victory Gate of Pratuxay, and the World Peace Gong.
Next we had a favorite day full day of textiles and music. The morning was spent at Carol Cassidy’s Lao Textiles center, where she employs dozens of local weavers to work in various traditional techniques, as well as some intriguing innovations. In the afternoon we visited the Phaeng Mai textile workshop and gallery, where we saw more exquisite silk textiles being created by hundreds of local weavers in traditional techniques. We all were happy to do our share in helping the local economy that day.
That night we attended a special dinner and cultural show at a restaurant in town. The young women dancers are incredibly beautiful and elegant with precisely controlled hand and foot motions that they spend years perfecting. We were spellbound by the traditional music that the band played, and were particularly taken with an instrument called a khaen that is made up of bamboo pipes of varying lengths. Deedee and I searched through the local markets to find one, and both ended up carrying one in our daypacks on the trip home.
A rather long road trip the next day took us through a side trip to the Tham Xang caves and a stop at a traditional Hmong village high up in the hills. We were exhausted by the end of the nine-hour drive, but happy to arrive at a lovely little inn in the World Heritage site of Luang Prabang. If I were able to spend a month or more at one of the places where we spent time on this trip, this would be it.
Each of the three mornings that we stayed in Luang Prabang we got up early to sit outside and have coffee at the cafe around the corner. If we were there by 6:00 we would be in time to see the procession of young monks in their orange robes make their way to the Buddhist center across the street. They carried copper bowls as they walked down the street, and people would come and place rice into their bowls as alms.
Visits in and out of town included stops at the Yao Cultural Center, where we saw artisans at work at various traditional crafts, a cruise in a long boat along the Mekong river with stops at the Pak Ou caves and local villages, and an afternoon at one of our favorite weaving centers, Ock Pop Tok, where were given a wealth of demonstrations and a fabulous lunch. Representatives from Ock Pop Tok attend the International Folk Art Market each summer, and it’s always wonderful to renew our acquaintance on another side of the world.
Although we left Luang Prabang with some reluctance, lots of wonderful experiences were waiting for us when we arrived from our flight to Chiangmai, Thailand. We spent that afternoon at Studio Naenna, which is run by Patricia Cheesman, who has lived in Thailand for many years. Patricia gave us a complete tour of the indigo dyeing process, from showing us the plants, to the preparation of the indigo vats and yarn, and finally a spectacular demonstration of the transformation in color as the yarn is pulled from the vat. We also were shown Patricia’s personal collection of textiles and had an opportunity to collect more textiles in her shop.
When this trip was planned a number of months before it took place, we were originally scheduled to begin our trip in Bangkok. But a series of typhoons caused heavy rains, and flooding made it impossible for us to visit Bangkok. So we changed our itinerary, leaving Thailand for the end of the trip and spending our time in Chiangmai, which is further inland and hadn’t been so affected by the flooding. This turned out to be an unexpected stroke of good fortune.
We were all looking forward to the last day of our trip because of the events that were planned, but what we didn’t know until we arrived in Chiangmai was that that day, November 10, was their New Year and annual Festival of Lights. But first we had a visit to an elephant refuge, complete with an hour-long ride on elephants through the jungle.
We rode two to an elephant, and Laura, my elephant mate, and I both wore yellow t-shirts that we had been given at one of the silk weaving centers. We didn’t know that you are supposed to avoid wearing yellow, and we were called the ‘crazy dress like banana girls’. Fortunately, we had plenty of opportunities to feed real bananas to our elephant, and she wasn’t fooled by the color of our shirts.
We loved every minute of our ride and even took off our shoes so that we could feel our elephant’s skin on our bare feet. After our ride through the jungle we got a return ride on an oxcart, after which we saw elephants bathing in the river and watched them demonstrate various skills they had learned, including painting pictures of elephants.
From the elephant refuge we were taken up the river by bamboo raft to visit two groups of weavers who are refugees from China, the Akha and the Pa-Daung, also known as the Long Neck Karen. The Pa-Daung wear brass rings around their necks and calves and add to them year by year to lengthen their necks.
Returning to our hotel that afternoon we felt that we had already had a full and wonderful day, but there were still more surprises waiting for us. When we got to our rooms we found that the hotel had placed a small bamboo boat filled with flowers and candles in each of our rooms. During the Festival of Lights thousands of people go to the river at night with these vessels and release them into the river as a way of releasing whatever it is you may need to let go of that year.
So we joined in, walking along the river and watching thousands of tiny candles floating down the river in the dark. All along the river stands were set up where people sold various foods and items that you could buy. Most important of these were the stands where you could buy the paper lanterns that have a candle in the center. The lanterns are about 15 inches in diameter and have a series of wires along the base that hold the candle in place. We got one of the lanterns as a group and stood in a ring, lightly holding the base of the lantern. We lit the candle, and as it heated the air inside the lantern it slowly lifted off of our fingers and soared up into the sky. The sight of thousands of these lights filling the sky as thousands more lights drifted down the river is one of the most magical sights I have ever experienced.
As we packed up the next morning to fly back to Singapore, there were some significant challenges in fitting everything into our luggage. Now, I did my fair share of collecting some beautiful textiles to bring home, but I was definitely the lightweight of the group. Those ladies love to shop! I had just one suitcase, while each of them had two, and I was still the only one who didn’t have to pay for excess baggage on the flight home.
My travel companions had another day or two together in Singapore, but I had to fly home the next morning. So we had a special farewell dinner that night and presented Tracy with a gift we had bought to thank her for putting this wonderful trip together for us. I also felt inspired to write a limerick for the event -
Six weavers with shopping compulsion
Found textiles and food to indulge in
They rode elephants and rafts
And bought all kinds of crafts
And went home with their suitcases bulgin’!
