An ikat cloth from Maria Anselmia da Kunya

Flores, Nusa Tengerra, Indonesia

Mama Maria Anselmia da Kunya from Sikka showing off her own weavings.

The Flores experience starts at the airport in Bali where we board a twin propeller plane and suddenly feel as if we are back in the 1960s. The Lion Air flight has no inflight magazine or Duty Free list but it does have an “Invocation Card”. This lists for passengers of any of seven different faiths the prayers to be said to ensure a safe journey for us all.

A couple of nuns and a tall blue eyed priest are on the flight and remind me of the fact that this island is not Muslim like Java, not Hindu like Bali, but strongly Roman Catholic.

Of course, that’s where it got its name – it has been in the hands of first the Portuguese and then Dutch Jesuit missionaries for a very long time – and it was the Portuguese who gave it the name of Flores.

Diane, Jim and Susi at the top of Kelimutu volcano

Let’s be clear about the reason we’re here – its not for the wonderful scenery and the amazing chain of volcanoes to trek up, its not for the tropical beaches or the diving, we’re not even here to hunt the famous Komodo dragons – no, we’ve come to wrong end of the island for that. We are here to hunt down something else entirely… ikat weaving. I’ve long been a fan of Flores ikat, which I’ve bought from shops in Bali. The colours are delicious – deep earthy browns and reds, just my cup of tea and the cotton is heavy and hand spun. I’ve finally got the chance to come to the place it ‘s made.

Maumere airport is tiny and we’re soon through and delivered to the tender mercies of the taxi drivers and guides who are waiting for fresh tourist meat. Its not long before we are nestled firmly and inextricably under the wing of guide Hieronymus (yes, he says, like Bosch) and driver Vincent (de Paul, no doubt)

It soon becomes clear why there are so many different languages on this island – nobody ever got to meet their neighbours, what with all those volcanoes and jungle in the way.

It is made clear to us that independent travel in Flores is just not for the likes of us. For a start self drive hire cars are out of the question – nobody would let a foreigner loose in their car on these roads. Secondly the public transport is shit. Sorry, let me rephrase that… yes there are extremely cramped and very small minivans, very bad roads, and very slow journeys which, were we 20 years younger and had 3 times as much time (and possibly 3 times less money) we could choose to travel by.

But, (and it’s a Big But) we have only got a week here, we want to get to some pretty remote villages and there are 3 of us. Susi, our Javanese friend from Jogya has come along just for the craic. So we open negotiations and soon realise that we might as well give in to the fact that we are going to have to part with a not insignificant sum to engage these two chaps for the next 5 days.

We next realise that there is only really one road through Flores and we have made the schoolboy error of buying a return ticket to and from the same airport. Never mind… once we get going and experience the state of the roads, the wild standards of the driving and the frequency of the land slides, we are quite happy not to be setting off on an epic journey.

As for the ikat, I am immediately reassured by the number of women I see wearing that beautiful characteristic cloth– worn either slung over one shoulder toga fashion, or bunched up as as sarong skirt. At Maumere market there are plenty to look at, and I keep Hieronymus (our Melanesian Eddie Murphy lookalike guide) occupied while Jim slips off to the textile stall to do a preliminary recce on what’s available and grab a bargain to establish the prices. Susi immediately starts chatting to a lady selling something who comes from Java. This is to be a pattern which is repeated everywhere we go – Susi makes lifelong friends very easily.

Women in Maumere market wearing fine ikat

Before we can leave town for a few days upcountry, though we need a few supplies – snacks for the journey, mozzie spray for the rooms and what else … what about alcohol? Hieronymus, by now known as Hero,  takes Jim down an alleyway to see his mother in law who brews up arak palm wine spirit in her village. He comes back with a big grin and a large 1.5 water bottle full. Cost? about £3.

So well fettled for the days ahead, we set off to the first port of call – Sikka. It’s on the southern coast, white sand, coconut palm trees, a typical bloody paradise. There’s no work here though, only fishing for the men and ikat weaving for the women, so, lovely but maybe not paradise.

In most parts of Flores the women weave their own sarongs to wear. Indeed it is traditionally seen as a pre-requisite for marriage – a boy has to be able to plant enough crops to feed a family and the girl has to be able to ikat and weave to clothe the family.

A few villages though, have gained a reputation for weaving. Maybe the dyestuffs or the cotton plants are plentiful, or the women are particularly good weavers. Sikka village is one of these places, and the guides like to bring their charges here.

In the centre of Sikka is a huge wooden church founded in 1899. The interior walls are painted with the designs of the local cloth – its a strong reminder of the way ikat is part of life here

The small market place is between the sea shore and a very large Catholic church.

At the market, the women are demonstrating – they spin cotton, tie the ikat,show us the local natural dyes and weave. Even the complete textile novice can’t fail to be impressed, and so I am completely bowled over. A quick walk around the village is rewarded with views of ikat in various stages of production. The red dyed warp threads are hanging on washing lines, the tying is being done with thin but strong strips of palm leaf, the cloth is being woven on back strap looms or the women run out bringing cloth to sell. It’s all I could possibly hope for!

If you know me well enough, and have read enough of my blogs, you will know that you don’t get too far before you will be made to read some technical explanation of how a textile is made. Well that’s the point we’re at here. So look away now if you just want an amusing account of exotic travel.

The ikat they make in Flores (and the neighbouring islands) is warp ikat – that means that it is the warp threads (the lengthways ones) which are ikatted. Ikat means “to bind” in Indonesian and that is the essence of the technique.

The threads used to weave the cloth must first be bought or made. If you’ve got some spare cash you may just go to market and buy some yarn. If not, you will have to start by growing and then picking cotton. It looks like cotton wool with big seeds which have to be taken out. Next it has to be fluffed up with what looks like a little bow, and formed into a roll ready for spinning. It always surprises me how similar textile techniques are in completely different parts of the world. I’ve seen women spinning cotton in Laos, Java and Turkey and its just the same. The cotton may be spun either with a wheel or a spindle to make a nice strong and even thread.

The tied yarns are dyed, dried and re-dyed many times to achieve a really deep rich colour.

The yarn may be spun by hand using a spindle

Next, the thread is stretched onto a frame which is half the length of the finished cloth. Bunches of threads are then bound up with little strips of lontar palm. This tied binding acts as a resist to dyes in the same way that wax does in batik. If a tie stays on all the way through it will keep the yarns underneath it white, if it comes off half way through the process, the yarns may be dyed another colour.

The different regions of Flores and even individual villages have their own designs – so women get to learn how to do their patterns without too much head scratching. It’s still pretty tricky to get it right though.

In Sikka and quite a few other places in Flores, the dyes used are plant dyes. Indigo of course and the very commonly used mengkudu (morinda citrifolia) This tree produces a green fir cone shaped fruit which also makes a common remedy for stomach ailments. The roots can be selectively harvested while the tree continues to grow. The bark of the roots is peeled off and then crushed and beaten up into pulp which is then just soaked in water to make a luscious red dye. The addition of various mordants – tannin from other local wood, aluminum from the leaves of the lobah tree (sorry I can’t find out what that is apart from “lobah”) and protein from candle nuts may be added to give various shades of red.

Bunches of warp yarns are tied with little strips of lontar palm leaf.

In Java, the small northern coastal town of Lasem became famous for its red dyes and batik cloths were sent there specially to be dyed, possibly because of minerals in the soil and water. There are places in Flores where the red is wonderful too, the ikat around Maumere and Ende is particularly wonderful and the colours are brilliant. The other plant dyes used are mangrove bark (deep brown or black) and mango leaves (pale green). Turmeric is used for yellow.

Well we can’t leave without buying something here, and in fact we end up buying quite a lot. Once you start you just can’t stop (or is that just me?) But if you buy from one woman it seems churlish not to buy from another.  The cloths are all so lovely and the women are desperate to sell, so it’s hard to leave somebody out. I try to get some of their names, most of them sound Portuguese but the best of all is Mama Maria Anselmia da Kunya who sells me a wonderful cloth with a design of horsemen and cockerels. And she models it so fetchingly for me!

The weaving is done on a simple back strap loom. A plain coloured weft is woven into the patterned warp.

Storm Clouds in Cirebon

Northern Java, Indonesia

The famous “megamendung” storm clouds design

Jim and I got off the plane in Jakarta and straight into the familiar sweaty heat and humidity of Java. Oh joy, we are literate. After the helpless incomprehension of written Thai, it’s amazing how good it feels to be able to read again. The smells are familiar too; the distinctive whiff of kretek clove cigarettes, verdant, damp vegetation, drains and poverty. We’re out of Jakarta as fast as we can make it, to Gambir Station to catch the train to Cirebon, about about 125 miles east. When the train arrives it has traditional batik designs painted down some of the carriages. Only in Java!

This is an eksekutif class train and thus we join the Indonesian middle classes in air conditioned splendour. We have comfortable seats with loads of legroom, a food and drink service, smiling ticket inspectors, and a violent American film to watch. Most of the time we gaze out of the window. It’s always a shock to come here after the neat and tidy orderliness of northern Thailand. Java is hotter, dirtier, shabbier, poorer and there’s just so many people. For every job in Java there are at least 10 people trying to get some little bit of it – there are too many minibus drivers, too many becak drivers with

“Taman arum” another famous Cirebon batik design is painted on the train – a very superior form of grafitti!

their little cycle carriages, too many beggars, shop assistants, ticket collectors, motorbike taxis, market sellers. Java is just one of Indonesia’s 16,000 islands but it is the centre of Government, and culture in many ways. About the same size as Britain, it has 140 million living on it. As I said, there are just too many people!

Cirebon doesn’t look any different from last time I was here, although maybe there are even more cars – the pavements are always blocked with stalls and warungs. A warung is what might charitably be called a “pop up restaurant” great if you fancy sitting on a grimy mat or bench under a dingy 20 watt light bulb eating some questionable food which was made this morning and has had a day’s worth of flies settling on it. Still not everyone in the world has any better options. We are here for the batik.

Becak driver hoping for a fare

Cirebon is famous for its its own distinctive style – “Batik Ceribonan”. Most of it is made at a village called Trusmi, a few miles out of town accessible by bashed and beaten up old minibus. You climb in the back, peer down through the filthy waist height windows and try to make some sort of a guess at where you want to get off and then pay the driver an absurdly small sum of money.

Up a narrow “main street” we squeeze through market stalls, school children (in batik school uniforms!) becaks full of women and their market shopping or empty and their drivers looking for a fare, motorbikes, reversing minibuses, piles of rubbish or building materials and mobile food carts. Eventually we reach the batik shops.

Every type of customer is catered for here. There are bargain basement shops selling shirts for men and shapeless housecoats for women in cheap, imitation batik print, and there are smart air- conditioned salons with VISA signs on the door. These establishments cater for women with elaborate hair dos who emerge from cars with dark windows (so they can more easily ignore the filth) who are looking for something nice to wear for lunch with the minister’s cousin’s wife. Their drivers wait patiently outside.

Batik workers often work in small groups at home

Although a lot of it is printed imitation, there is real hand made batik on sale here in Trusmi. The prices start at a couple of quid and go up to 5 million rupiah or more – enough to rent you a decent house for a year. We want some silk batik scarves for the shop and some cloths in a famous Cirebon design – Megamendung.

A woman with her baby in a batik slendang watches as her husband makes cap (stamped) batik in their home

This evocatively named pattern, it means “storm clouds”, came from China. You will have seen it on Chinese embroideries or ceramics – it’s even on a pattern we are all familiar with – the “willow pattern”. Chinese traders have been coming to this northern coast of Java for centuries, along with Arab merchants and later Dutch soldiers, traders from the East India Company, colonisers and settlers. All of them have left their mark and a study of the batik textiles from these parts is a veritable history lesson.

The Chinese are still here – many generations later they still keep to their own traditions. Being the enterprising sort of folk they are, some of them started up their own batik workshops. We met the present owner of one of these workshops – “Lina’s Batik”, the first time we came to Cirebon in 1986. She and her sister ran a sort of Chinese community centre here complete with a school to teach the children to read and write Chinese characters. Ibu showed me the certificate dated 1927, which her grandfather gained from the Sultan giving his permission to produce batik .

Lina, a 5th generation batik maker with one of her wonderful batik tablecloths.

Lina’s now sells mainly to big stores in Jakarta, but they still make batiked altar cloths for the Chinese neighbours to buy at New Year, and the long cloths used to carry babies embellished with dragons and double happiness symbols. They also make beautiful megamendung cloths in the traditional colours; red, blue and white.

One year I came to the workshop just as two pieces were being finished. They were dyed in a red dye made from the roots of the mengkudu tree (morinda citrifolia) and a blue dye made from indigo. I swallowed hard when I heard the price, and bought one of them – now I wish I’d bought them both.

Heri outlines the storm clouds pattern in wax. The first stage of the process.

To make a perfect megamendung cloth, the parts which will be white and blue are first outlined and then filled in with a thick, strong wax. The cloth is dyed a deep rich red colour. If the dyes are chemical, then this is a quick process taking just a few minutes. If they are plant dyes – or rather the “mengkudu” root dye, then this is a much more lengthy process. The cloth will be dipped and dried up to a dozen times.  Then that thick layer of wax is removed in very hot water and the next waxing process starts. First the red parts and the white parts are protected with wax and the cloth is dyed pale blue (chemical or natural indigo) and the blue layers are built up gradually in this way from the palest blue to the darkest. The more layers there are, the more times the cloth has to be waxed and dyed, and the more expensive it is. Mine has seven layers. Finally all the wax is boiled out and the cloth is finished. No wonder they don’t make more than a couple a year. The blue clouds seem to float and hover above the red background, and all in all its one of my favourite batik cloths ever.

Megamendung designs have been adopted by Cirebon and you can see them on street signs, wallpaper, school uniforms and, of course the trains. There was absolute outrage when it was reported that the perfidious Malaysian were trying to get it patented as one of their own National designs.

Children in Java have a very rich street life!

Anyway back to Trusmi where we have spent a day reminding ourselves how to speak Indonesian, buying, bargaining and laughing with the sales girls in various shops. Just before we are ready to go home, the rain starts. Not just a drizzle or even a downpour but a deluge which forces us to stay for another half hour in the shop where we’re trapped. The road fills with mud brown water, the motorbikes come to a standstill, and soon the kids come out to cavort around and soak themselves.

Welcome to Java! We may be appalled at the poverty, the degraded environment that people live amongst, the overcrowded streets and the level of hassle but I have a feeling that it won’t be too long before we are hopelessly in love with it all over again.

Teak and Indigo – it’s got to be Phrae

Phrae is just a small town in the north of Thailand. It doesn’t get many tourists – certainly not foreign ones anyway, although it does have attractions. The old town is enclosed by the remains of an ancient moat and the beautiful original houses are all made of teak – and raised on massively thick log stilts. It’s teak wood country round here and the lumber (or is it timber?) and the elephants used to move the wood are what made it famous. The people in this part of the world are also invariably friendly and jai dee (good hearted)

A lovely teak house in Phrae

Blue shirts everywhere

Just outside Phrae town (turn left at Tesco Lotus) is the village of Thung Hong. On the very wide, very hot main street, in amongst the usual array of motorcycle repair shops, unhealthy snack and sweet drinks shops and cheap noodle shops, are many shops all selling clothing in a deep, dark blue colour. Thung Hong is famous for indigo.

I first came here about 10 years ago. I had read that Phrae was the place to come for “seua mah hom” . These are the dark blue shirts which were once worn almost universally in the north of Thailand (think Mao shirts). After much questioning of puzzled shopkeepers – me with no Thai, them with no English – I narrowed my search down to this village. I cycled out here along that aforementioned very wide and very hot main road with the highway traffic thundering past, and looked everywhere for the tell-tale signs of indigo; the big clay pots, the dyed cloth drying, the plants growing or even the pungent smell.

Washing line full of indigo

Frustratingly I found nothing except the shops. So I turned off the road and cycled into the back lanes and soon to the open fields. I saw people wearing the traditional dark blue jackets and trousers but I couldn’t find anyone actually making it. On my way back to the main street, I looked across a small river and stopped dead in my pedals…washing lines full of indigo dyed cloth.

Three generations of indigo dyers

I had stumbled upon the Paluang Indigo Home. Behind a traditional teak house on stilts I found to my joy lots of beautiful old clay pots full of indigo dye in various stages of fermentation. Nobody stopped me, so I carried on nosing about, and in an open building at the back there was a young woman block-printing on white cotton. As I got nearer I could see that what she was printing was wax – she was making batik. Even better, she could speak some English, and we started to chat. Now every time I come to Thailand, I come to Phrae, and to Thung Hong village and to the Paluang Indigo House to see Panee and her family.

Panee and her Mum outside their shop

Panee is about 40 now. She was born in the teak house on stilts and her parents and her grandparents were all indigo dyers – many of the massive pots of indigo were started before she was born. You could say she has indigo in the blood.

Panee learnt to do batik at school but thought no more about it. She went away to university and then to work in Bangkok, but after a while she found that the pace of life there was just too frenetic. She bowed to the inevitable, came back home, married a local bloke and settled down to work in the family business.

A new fangled idea!

She soon realised that the business of selling almost indestructible indigo work shirts wasn’t a totally lucrative one and, what’s more, it was likely that the customer base would be a dwindling one. She was looking for a new angle. She decided to think again about batik which in northern Thailand is the preserve and speciality of H’mong women (you remember them from the last blog). She found that the tiny metal triangular tools they use to put the hot wax on are not suitable for the volume of fabric she had in mind.

Teak wood printing blocks

She then had the idea of getting some wooden printing blocks made. As I said Phrae is famous for the teak forests that surround it and teak carving is a traditional skill. She asked a carver in town to make her some stamps which she could use to apply the wax to the cloth. That was the beginning of a new business – wax resist batik dyed with home grown natural indigo from Phrae. The family now have dozens of different designs. In the village today, there are still around 20 families using their own home grown indigo to dye cloth and three families doing batik (and they are all related to Panee’s)

Panee’s cousin doing a batik shift

But what about all those lovely indigo shirts and jackets on sale in the shops of Thung Hong? I’m sorry to say that around 80% of them are made with chemical indigo in a huge factory in Bangkok!

Lovely indigo

Amazing and ancient indigo vats

Indigo (Indigofera tinctoria) is grown intensively in the local area. The plants are at their height in the rainy season (June – September) and at the end of this, the family make their concentrated indigo paste. The dye bearing plants are cut down and steeped in water for a couple of days until the water turns a dirty yellowish colour. Lots of oxygen is added to the vat by beating, whisking, stirring and pouring until the water gradually changes to a deep blue colour and develops a very pretty light blue froth. 

The sediment from this vat makes a lovely sludgy deep blue paste which can be kept to make a fresh vat of dye when needed. With skill (and a little luck) an indigo vat can be kept “alive” almost permanently, it will just need waking up with a little more paste, some lime and wood ash. Panee’s family make about 2-300 kilos of paste a year. Nowadays with their increased business this is not enough and they have to buy in about the same amount again from indigo growers in Isan province.

One Village, One Craft and an OTOP champion

The OTOP Village Champion!

Queen Sirikit of Thailand is a wonderful woman and is a keen supporter of all kinds of Thai crafts. She has especially encouraged traditional textile skills, which are particularly close to her heart. Under her patronage, a very successful scheme, adopting an original idea from Japan, called OTOP (roughly “One Village, One Craft”) has been set up. There are OTOP shops all over Thailand and they’re a very good way to market hand-made craft items. The Paluang Indigo batik is marketed through OTOP.

Panee’s mum is getting a bit forgetful these days but in her prime she proudly carried the title of “OTOP Village Champion”. This means that she was asked to teach other people how to make an indigo vat and how to dye a good deep and consistent colour. She has taught local women from the village, hoards of local high school kids, and most memorably one of the Royal Princesses has had a dip in her indigo vats.

You used to go upstairs in the teak house on stilts to buy things but nowadays there’s a proper shop out front. There are jackets, and blouses, kimonos and men’s shirts and even batiked tissue boxes on sale. Sometimes they may have some traditional “mawhom” work shirts. These are a deep black-blue colour and fastened with ties or cloth buttons, at the front. The size is marked in white chalk on the back. They are extremely hard wearing – made for a time when people had very little cash to spare. Some people in the area still wear them every day, working in the fields or at the market. They seem to last forever and look better and better as they get older – just like a pair of your favourite jeans.

Apart from the

I’m not kidding!

beautiful cloth and the fabulous state of those indigo pots with their light blue froth or deep green water or vibrant blue sludge, one of my favourite things at Panee’s home is the visitor’s toilet. Its indigo blue – now that shows dedication!

A H’mong flea market, New Year and thoughts on the tyranny of embroidery

Chiang Mai Province, northern Thailand

Chiang Mai has a permanent market called Warorot – a market hall and the busy, traffic choked streets which surround it. Open every day of the year – or so it seems, it has temple offerings of incense, garlands and paper money, flowers, fruit and veg, plastic kitchen utensils, cheap clothes and much besides. It’s just like any other market in fact.

The H’mong Market

But go down one narrow side street just wide enough to squeeze a pick up truck between a rail of pleated skirts and narrow shelves of brightly coloured pom-poms, and you will come across the “Talat H’mong” a market run by H’mong hill-tribe people. Its just a small area between the fabric shops, a polluted canal and a busy city street – a few dozen stalls which now seem to have taken root here after years of being a temporary shanty. While I was doing my daily trawl through last week, I even saw a guide showing a group of tourists around, so I guess its here to stay. The reason I’m down here so often, is that it’s full, and I mean full of textiles and costume, old and new, some pretty wrecked but all bright (some may even say garish)

Who are the H’mong?

The H’mong are a hill-tribe who started making their homes in Thailand about 100 years ago coming from Vietnam, Laos and south western China. They made their way into Thailand for a variety of reasons, to escape oppression and discrimination, to look for more forest land and resources but also because they don’t bother with immigration posts and passports in the high mountains. The H’mong are part of the same nation as the Miao (it’s just that they are called H’mong once they leave China). There are over 150,000 of them in Thailand.

They live in the parts of the country which the Thais weren’t bothered about, usually high up mountainsides. They built homes in the dense forest practicing slash and burn agriculture and moved every dozen years or so once the surrounding forest land was exhausted. These days they stay put and the government has built schools in the villages so the youngsters read and write and speak Thai now. They’ve also got agriculture programmes so they can stop growing and selling opium and grow lychees and cabbages instead. In Thailand, the hill-tribes seem to have a better standard of living and face a bit less discrimination than in other Asian countries. They have a particular soft spot for the King and Queen, and I’ve yet to go into any H’mong home without a picture of the King on the wall. That’s not to say that life is rosy – it’s still hard and they are amongst the poorest people in Thailand.

Living with your stock

But back to the market. The stalls are piled high with various bits of embroidery and tribal clothing in more or less distressed, grubby and discarded states. They hoard mosquitoes which wake up and buzz around when disturbed. Amongst these piles live the stall holders – mostly young families with their belongings in plastic bags, with make-shift beds, TVs and bare bottomed babies. They speak to each other in a language incomprehensible to both Thais and foreigners alike. They are almost totally impervious to bargaining and state their prices with sure intent – joking, attempting to build a relationship or expecting them to recognise you are met with incomprehension or a no nonsense coolness. They are there because they have a commodity to sell and you have the money to buy- let’s leave it at that.

I’ve bought some traditional finely pleated skirts which I’ll get washed and made into jackets. They’ve gone up by 20% since last year and it’s harder to find really nice ones. So I make my way through the alleyway to the back where there are some old ladies selling dirty old bundles of costume offcuts. They cackle and chat together and when I gather a few things together, they make me understand that I must not mix up their piles – some belong to one and some to another. They have to be counted and paid for separately. Trouble is although they are pretty sharp about money they are basically innumerate and when it comes to counting my bits and adding it up they need the help of a younger woman.

Every morning the dealers – Thai, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, French, Italian, Spanish, whatever, come down to see what’s just come in. Hundreds of old skirts, hand embroidered apron straps, bits of appliquéd collars, and tattered velvet jackets are stuffed into huge white plastic sacks and brought in and sent out. The stuff comes in from all the H’mong groups of Thailand but also from Laos, Burma, Vietnam and even China. Bunchy hemp skirts with indigo batik and bright orange cross stitched panels from Thailand, purple silk cross stitch from Vietnam, or yellow and pink appliqué from southern China. And sometimes there are ornate embroidered trousers or long coats from the Yao people and jackets and shoulder bags from the Akha. It all gets washed, repaired, and transformed into soft furnishing, bags or garments and ends up on sale in posh shops all over the world – from Bangkok to Bishop’s Castle.

What’s going on?

Overwhelmingly however the trend is moving from old stuff to new and from hand made to machine made. Each year I am disappointed to find that some things which I took for granted have disappeared. The appliquéd “mandala” stars which adorn H’mong jackets were once all hand stitched but are now churned out by the thousand on embroidery machines. Much of the embroidery is now machine stitched and the indigo batik is often printed rather than wax dyed. The rolls of hemp cloth have lost their polished smooth sheen and have become loose and swiftly woven hessian with blotchy dyes. I fear that it will not be too many years before there is really nothing good left to buy, and the old stuff will be in antique shops and museums.

There’s no reason why I should be surprised or even upset at this. Modern 21^st century life has hit the H’mong people like everyone else. The kids go to high school, have mobile phones, and motorbikes, mum and dad want electricity so they can watch the telly and a pick-up truck to get up the mountains to their village homes. These things require hard cash so they want their hours of hard work to have some reward, just like we do.

The reason there are still so many hand made textiles around is that every one has a new set of traditional clothes each New Year and the old ones get traded in. If you have invested hundreds of hours of work in indigo dyeing, batiking, hand stitching and appliquéing a couple of 7 yard long panels and then steaming and starching them into fine pleats to make a traditional H’mong skirt, you would be wanting some decent money for it.

New Year H’mong style

This year we got a chance to see the latest H’mong fashions at Mae Sa Mai village where the eleven H’mong villages of Chiang Mai province got together to celebrate New Year on January 15th. The date is not important, it’s different every year and is set whenever it’s convenient. These annual gatherings have a traditional role in getting the whole clan together. They do competitions (hemp spinning, hand made cart racing, throwing spinning tops), ceremonies, (speeches, the crowning of Miss H’mong 2013), entertainment, (dancing girls, singing  girls, and young lads with electric guitars), eating, meeting up with old mates and getting pissed. But probably their most crucial role is in finding a marriageable partners for sons and daughters. In the days before concrete roads had been built you had to walk over the mountains to a village where more of your clan lived So these annual opportunities to size up possible mates would be very important.

At the 2013 New Year gathering, some things may have changed but the youngsters are still out on the pull. They are dressed up to the nines in spectacular outfits, wonderful hats, plenty of silver and highly unsuitable shoes and that’s just the boys! The costume is important for showing off your (or your mum’s) textile skills, and for showing off the family wealth and also because it shows at a glance which group or branch of the clan you belong to. Nowadays with mobile phones, good transport and high schools, young people can get together much more easily, but we still we saw the traditional ball throwing between rows of young men and women and plenty of couples wandering arm in arm together under a sunshade.

This strange ball throwing thing reminds me of the first time I saw it. We were in Laos, at Veng Vieng back in the day before it became a favourite haunt of the farang gap year brigade. Seamus and Sean were about 10 and 13.

I wanted to see some real, live hill tribe people so we went off on battered push bikes with the local English teacher. He spoke a very small amount of English very badly, which at that time was about as good as it got (and more than our non-existent Laos)

At the end of an exhausting, hot and gruelling ride over rutted, stony, and dusty roads we arrived at some piss poor village and were taken into a house for lunch. We sat on low stools with the men while the women served us sticky rice, bitter greens and hot chillies. Seamus just looked at me with a a look which said “Why? Why are we here? I hate you”.

Then we saw the ceremony – a few dressed up youth performing some desultory ball tossing. Seamus and Sean were invited to join in amidst much shy giggling from the girls. “Ah, bless!” I thought. That night I had a vivid dream. We had inadvertently betrothed the kids to a couple of poor Laos village girls and they would have to stay in the village. That’s what parental guilt does for you!

New Year, H’mong style is really just village Carnival Day in pretty costumes – the costumes however are spectacular. On close inspection many show the hours put in to make them but there is no denying that “bling” is taking over. Flimsy aluminium coins, plastic beads, machine embroidery, glitzy sequins, and printed fabrics are all much in evidence. But not as much as at the New Year ceremony we went to last December in south west China, where there was virtually no hand work on show.

The tyranny of all that costume making

But let’s face it, constantly spinning, weaving, dyeing, embroidering, and sewing could be a chore and a tyranny that not many of us would continue with once other options became available. These other options have now become available to H’mong women too. And I wouldn’t be surprised if every year many of them think “I really can’t be bothered with this any more, next year I’ll save up for some of that printed batik and buy some ready made embroidery instead of trying to get a new outfit made for everyone”.

So, they can pay someone else in the village to do it, or they can buy it ready made in the shops around Warorot market. It may be an imitation but it still looks pretty good.

I tell you, in the ethnic textile markets, as in every other walk of life, things are changing fast.

The end of the road

Well our Great Asia textile journey is all over. We had to come home earlier than we had hoped as my wonderful mother-in -law died rather suddenly. So instead of continuing our travels through Laos, Malaysia and Indonesia as planned, we found ourselves sadly having to help organise a funeral

I have many more Asian textile tales to tell but for now the blog is on hold – my task is now to get back to work, and start earning enough money to fund the next journey. And all that wonderful stuff we bought on the way? … well most of it has arrived home and we now have to sell it!

I believe at least one new talk will come out of it as well.

However I am already thinking about the next journey – there are two possible contenders:

1. The start of the Silk Route. Having previously travelled overland from our local train station in Shropshire to Istanbul and this time from Khiva to Bangkok, the obvious thing is to fill the gap between Istanbul and Khiva. (through Iran and Turkmenistan)

2. The Southern Silk Route or the Tea Road. This starts in Chengdu in western China and leads south through Burma and Nepal into India. Now that things are starting to change in Burma it may soon be practical to have a go at this.

Once I have done all that, it must surely be time to write a book?

I would like to thank you for all the kind comments I’ve had – I’ve had so  much pleasure from writing my blog and it’s very nice to know that people have enjoyed reading it too.

So to finish up I must do

5 things I love about Thailand

1. The people: I just like the Thais, they’re gentle, polite, helpful and so tolerant and easy going.
2. The countryside: amazing scenery and unspoilt beauty – jungles, mountains, beaches
3. The food: cheap, spicy, and wonderfully tasty, what more could you want?

4.  Wats – beautiful and peaceful Buddhist temples to hang out in, no matter how frenetic life is outside

5. Cycling around Chiang Mai – an every day pleasure and a great way to get around town. After a while I refused to walk anywhere

Thailand is such a great place that it seems churlish to think of 5 things I don’t like, but I’ll have a go.

1. The sex industry (the flip side of No 1 above)
2. The huge numbers of tourists everywhere! – although easy to get away from them if you deviate from the tourist haunts.
3. Let’s face it the Thais like shopping – they’re not really into culture. Great Thai theatre, music, art, cinema? I don’t think so.
4. The smog in the cities – too many cars in a hot climate. (and the hilltribe people still practice slash and burn agriculture so the countryside can be very hazy too )
5. The difficulty of the language. My beginner’s Thai course just made me realise how different it is from any other language I know.

Tons of Thai Textiles From Chiang Mai

It’s easy to love northern Thailand and Chiang Mai in particular and many people do. It’s easy to relax and start feeling that you could stay a few months and maybe even join the many ex pats who have made their temporary or permanent home here.

Start to think about finding a way to make some money and getting a work permit (and you don’t need to earn much to live here) or getting a retirement visa if you’re old enough (and I am, hooray!) or even just joining the queues at the Burmese or Laos border every two weeks to renew your tourist visa. And of course getting yourself a Thai girlfriend which is what just about every middle aged single man is doing here. In the interests of sexual equality I must report that of course as a middle aged single woman you could come here for a Thai boyfriend too, but it’s just that you don’t see that in every bar or café and on every street.

Yes, Chiang Mai seems to have mastered the art of pandering to the needs of the farang (the foreigners) in every way. There are umpteen cafes selling cheap and delicious Thai food or huge English breakfasts or mango and bee pollen smoothies – whatever your particular penchant happens to be. And on top of that don’t forget the yoga sessions, the thai massage schools, the cooking classes, the trekking, rafting, elephant rides, meditation retreats, mountain biking, and what have you. And the Thai language courses  - which is how I’m spending my weekday mornings. Sitting in a classroom being given vocab lists and practicing the five tones and the long and short vowels may not be every one’s idea of a good time, but I am enjoying it very much, thank you.

But it’s not all sweetness and light – most of the “farang” here are polite and cheerful but still the Thais must get fed up of us. My guesthouse landlord confided in a private rant to me the other evening – he began by expressing his amazement that we would come here on holiday and then pay good money to spend a day COOKING?! And then proceeded to a general rage at having to smile constantly and answer the same questions over and over from dumbass tourists. In the end I wrote a big sign for him and told him to just point!

So what am I doing here? Between my morning Thai class, my evening yoga sessions and regular Thai massage in my local temple, I am very busy whizzing around the alleyways and back streets on a bright orange rented pushbike. I have settled into a regular routine – usually first down to the “H’mong village” at Warorot market. This is the section of the market where the H’mong tribal people have set up homes, where they watch TV, play with their kids, make clothes and stitch and embroider and sleep amidst their huge piles of somewhat tatty hilltribe embroideries and pleated skirts. This has all been developing in the past 5 years or so into a full on neighbourhood, and now I join the other traders (Thai, Japanese, other westerners) who are there most days riffling through the piles to see if anything catches our eye.

After that I visit the market shops, to buy indigo and hemp fabrics and buttons or beads or just to see what’s in. Once I’ve bought about as much as I can stick onto the wobbling handlebars of my bike I’m off to Poo’s. place. Poo has a shop selling clothes like me and she has usually already been down to the H’mong village that morning. By the afternoon she is flaked out on her settee at the back of the shop watching day time soaps – which are frankly appalling but quite mesmerising (and good for Thai practice – they speak slowly and dramatically – you don’t love me – you left me alone – you killed my father etc! )

Poo’s tailors make clothes for me, so most days I am there with my fabrics and my bits of hilltribe embroidered scraps and my patterns and samples, working things out and ordering or collecting. We can compare notes on what we paid for stuff, how the price of cotton is going up and the quality of hemp weaving down, have a laugh at the soaps and my crap Thai and share some mangosteens or other exotic fruits.

At the weekends the shopping doesn’t end, it just changes location – at the end of the road where I’m staying, the famous Sunday “Walking Market” sets up. From 4pm onwards the traffic is stopped, the roads are lined with stalls, the temple courtyards are full of food stalls and the road is thronged with people enjoying the atmosphere and the shopping. If it all gets too much you can stop and get a foot or shoulder massage at one of the massage “parlours” which get set up on every corner.

So that’s my particular version of Chiang Mai – but there are so many others… girly bars and pool tables, reggae bands and beer, meditation and massage, sausage and chips and Premier league football at the Irish pub, cocktails and candlelit dinners, ancient temples and golden Buddhas, tennis or a round of golf at the Gymkhana Club. You name it, Chiang mai has it all!

A Pair of Embroidered Trousers from Vietnam

The very trousers I bought

I’m not sure what it was but it took me a long time to start enjoying Vietnam. Maybe it was just a bit of an anti-climax after the never ending variety and daily surprises of China, maybe it was the feeling of being  constantly on my guard or maybe it was just the weather – mostly grey skies with hazy indistinct views and surprisingly cold! Herrumph …I was hoping we’d finally left that behind.

In the mountainous north where I just know the scenery would have been amazing if only we could see it, the temperature was bone chilling. The titchy electric blanket was very welcome but it did mean the only warm place was in bed.

So we swiftly headed for the coast and were looking forward to enjoying the world Heritage karst islands of Ha Long Bay. We had two tempting days of sunshine to enjoy the kayaking and the seaside before a still becalmed grey chilliness set in.

Ha Long Bay

The floating town of over 4,000 people who make their living from the sea around here is an impressive sight but it does mean that there’s hardly any marine life to look at. Snorkelling? Not much point.

Floating town

As we went inland we had more tantalising glimpses of magnificent karst mountains rising up from rice fields, rivers and fishing villages. The people there again make their living from the water – ducks, fish and rice, but we couldn’t see a lot of it. But I should stop moaning about the weather – what about Vietnam itself?

Well I can only speak for what we saw (northern parts) but it was … just a bit boring. The countryside is despoiled with industry and half-finished road and building schemes, the towns are scruffy with piles of rubbish and construction materials, and ugly great shop signs everywhere.

A typical scene in Hanoi

The people look just a bit boring too – no glitter and glam like in Uzbekistan, no embroidery and polished indigo like the hill tribe people, no exotic robes like the Tibetans, not even any goths or punks or daft emo haircuts like in China. Almost everyone wears an anorak (puffa jackets by the thousand!) and jeans, and drives a scooter and wears a face mask. The most exotic it gets is the occasional woman wearing one of those archetypal bamboo “coolie” hats.

So I have to admit I was feeling just a bit disappointed by it all until we got to Hanoi. Finally I was charmed. The old part of the city is full of slightly dilapidated colonial architecture – tall yellowish buildings with green shutters and little balconies, old neighbourhood temples, markets and street cafes where you sit on a mat or a tiny plastic stool at best. Hanoi manages to retain the charm of old Asian city street life which used to exist all over Asia, and which China in particular has been assiduously demolishing as fast as it can.

So there it is – Hanoi, city of a million motorbikes and every one of them seems to be coming towards you at the same time!

So now I have to choose a textile to represent Vietnam. Most of the population here is Vietnamese but the problem is they don’t really go in for handmade textiles – unlike everywhere else we’ve been. Yes, there’s a bit of hand embroidery and some silk production but it doesn’t compare to the countries around it.

There is another population living in Vietnam though – around 55 different ethnic minorities, mostly living in the north, and they are a very different matter. Just like in China, they wear and make stunning costumes.

So my chosen textile is a pair of embroidered trousers which I bought from a red Yao woman in Sapa. She may live in Vietnam but she probably doesn’t speak much Vietnamese or feel that she belongs to this country, and as a minority she and her family are not treated the same as the Vietnamese.

Sapa was the first place we went to. We crossed the border from China over the Red River and climbed a steep 38 kilometres to Sapa, which was used as a hill station by the French back in those pre Vietnam War days. We stepped out of the minibus into thick drizzly fog and it was freezing cold – well everyone told us it would be.

There’s a lake, a church, a market, and lots of hotels, cafes, restaurants, and French bakeries for all the tourists. Most strikingly there are hordes of extremely colourful hill tribe women.

They waste no time in letting us know what they are here for and what we should be here for. “Buy my blanket, cushion, very cheap, look mister, very beautiful, why you not buy one from me?”  

The women here are mostly Black H’mong who wear pleated skirts, black turbans and polished indigo jackets or Red Yao with fantastic embroidered trousers, big hoop earrings and huge red headscarves. What they all have in common is that they are tiny, undernourished and they are not wearing enough warm clothes. On their feet they’ve got cheap wellies at best or plastic bags and flimsy plastic sandals at worst.

Some of them can speak pretty good English, and for me this is the first time I have been able to have a conversation with a hill tribe woman. So I start to get involved.  “For goodness sake go and get warm.” “You buy something from me!” “OK then, lets see what you’ve got?”

That’s it! As soon as you show any interest they’re all on top of you.

If there’s anything I can buy I will, but with the best will in the world I cannot buy something from the whole lot of you and I absolutely will not buy any of those hideous bright yellow and green over dyed cushion covers you keep waving in my face.

So I buy a few embroidered bags – but this only leads to “You buy from her, you buy from me”.

Finally somebody has something that makes me stop and look – a pair of traditional embroidered trousers. A bit dirty and patched but the embroidery is very fine and oh joy! they have escaped embellishment with bright pink or fluorescent green wool.

So now our protracted relationship begins.  “How much for the trousers?” – a ridiculously high price from her, a ridiculously low price from me – gasps and laughter from the crowd. Can I really be bothered with this?

As I walk around town she’s still trailing me, hanging around while I get my lunch in a lovely warm cafe. Another slightly lower price from her and a slightly higher price from me. “They make by my mother – she at home, long time to make, she angry with me if I sell too cheap. I been here three days, not sell anything. You buy from me and I go home.”  Talk about emotional blackmail! But look at her, she’s cold, it’s cold, and maybe if I buy them it will make her day.

Finally a mutually acceptable price is found. I hand over the money and wait for a smile. “You happy now? Good – now go back home and get warm for goodness sake”.

Half an hour later, I go into a shop selling ethnic costume and see a pile of embroidered hill tribe trousers, very much like the ones…. How much are they?

Exactly the same amount I have just paid – all without the haggling and the bargaining, all without being trailed and hassled and all without feeling extremely guilty. But also I suppose without getting some insight into the life of a dirt poor hill tribe woman trying to make a bit of money on a cold and foggy winter’s day.