thai silk

[171003] have been fascinated by Thai silk since I was a little girl. e 2003 calendar at http://www.royalthaisilk.net has wonderful pictures of it, especially my favourite yok cloth (pictured in April, July & December). spent my primary school holidays in Bangkok, helping out in a machine embroidery factory in Sukhumvit. it was full of migrant workers from Isaan (northeast Thailand) & e Thai-Burmese border regions, girls who seemed as young as 15 years & kept e factory running around e clock. it was housed in a few shophouses that were linked together & had wooden floors that creaked with each step. all of us lived on e second floor of e shophouses & ate, slept & lived with e constant drumming of e factory machines that made e floorboards vibrate.

also helped out in a shop along an alley in Yaowarat, Bangkok's Chinatown area, that sold machine embroidered iron-on patches produced by e factory. plus another shop near Saphaan Khwaay (Buffalo Bridge?) along Pahonyonthin Road that sold buttons, textiles, lace, wool, thread, pins, thimbles, needles & all sorts of other stuff needed by e seamstresses & tailors that came to us. they would bring along little square pieces of cloth samples & standing on e bales of cloth, we would search for a colour & texture that matched & cut out e desired length. this was where I learnt how to cut & tear cloth, sort buttons into bags of 144 plus 2 extra (to ensure that you never undercut your customers), custom-make cloth buttons & belt buckles, speak rudimentary Bangkok Thai to customers, & count & handle more money than I ever had seen in my life. was about 6+ years old when I first started helping out, & still remember e time when Jiim's mother held up a 1000 baht note & asked me if I'd ever seen a piece of paper worth that much before. at today's rates it is worth around SGD44, but to a 6-year-old, 4 digits was like e biggest number ever =)

[301003 update] another thing I loved as a kid (& still do):



phuang malai are garlands of fresh jasmine flower buds & roses, chrysanthemums & other flowers painstakingly threaded together & used as offerings in temples & spirit houses everywhere in Thailand.

[ filed under: thewonderingstraycat + 9_lives_2003 + art1 + thai1 ]