Weaving still calls to us in our travels

Imagine our surprise! Visiting the Hilltribe Museum in Chiang Rai, Thailand today, we encountered  handwoven, flowing scarves, dyed with indigo and mango, in cotton and silky cotton-rayon blends. Unlike the backstrap looms favoured by tribal weavers, the "parrot beak" pattern gracing these pieces require the comb and heddles used on the floor looms traditionally used by lowland Lao and Tai weavers. Not surprisely, the designer/weaver/dyer, Atittaya, is originally from Sakhon Nakhon where we purchased these styles in the past. Atittaya says she puts her heart into each piece because she loves this work. If she feels good, she will weave; if she's not feeling calm and meditative, she'll do some dying or wind bobbins. It's easy to see her feelings when you look at her scarves, bags, blankets and even dresses.

Long-time TAMMACHAT customers will recall the indigo scarves with deep colours and a wonderful drape: the ones we brought back in 2008 that quickly sold out. The good news is these are available now in Chiang Rai! Do visit.

______________

The Hilltribe Museum is a public-benefit organization which aims to help educate local and foreign tourists about Hilltribes' fast disappearing culture. The Museum aims to preserve artifacts and to provide information to tourists and tour operators so that responsible tourism can occur. When people are informed about Hilltribe culture, it is hope that negative impact of tourism on Hilltribe life will be minimized.

The Hilltribe Museum is under the supervision of the Population and Community Development Association.

620/25 Thanalai Rd., Chiang Rai

05371-9167

Junhom Bantan: Building Relationships - the Heart of Fair Trade

It's time for our annual visit to Ban Tan to visit Mai, who runs Junhom Bantan. After a 2+ hour local bus ride to Hod, south of Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand, where Mai picks us, we settle in to catch up. We spend the first 2 hours chatting in Thai and English, consulting our "talking dictionary" as needed. We cover all kinds of topics -- the small guest bungalow Mai's father is building in his spare time, from parts of another, disassembled wooden house moved from nearby; gardening -- what grows well here in Ban Tan and at our home in Canada; cooking -- who cooks what and how; how business has been for us over the last year.

Traditional floor loom under the house

Mai tells us -- as she had told us a couple of visits ago -- that she values the quiet of living here in the village where she grew up. Although she attended university in Chiang Mai, thanks to the success of the weaving group her mother ran for decades, her heart is here in the village, with the weavers. It's important to her to work with customers who don't pressure the weavers -- with orders too big, weaving too fast, deadlines too short. These pressures do not make for beautiful textiles or for happy weavers, she tells us. We agree wholeheartedly.

We talk about how we sell Junhom Bantan's textiles in Canada -- mostly face-to-face where we can tell the story behind their creation. She nods and smiles. We talk about technology -- she uses email at a local internet cafe -- and show her some of the tools we use on our computers and iPod Touch. She's interested, but we agree that this work is truly rooted in the village and in the hands of the spinners, dyers and weavers. Technology only supports this.

When the time feels right, we step inside the shop -- a showroom and storeroom for the weavings. We open glass-fronted, handcarved cabinets and pore over the designs within. We talk about local, natural dye colours (soft gray-greens, mushroom, indigo, sky blue, ebony brown, rosewood tan), textures (handspun cotton thick or thin, weaves in small windowpanes or "missing thread") and designs.

Junhom Bantan's shop next to Mai's house in Ban Tan

We talk about what sold well last year and the years before, then thoughtfully choose our favourite designs in colours and textures that reflect the talents of the artisans in this group. Our textile order is simple this year -- cotton scarves in 6 designs and traditional Thai fishermen's wrap pants.

Wispy cotton scarves are fun to wear

Chunky scarves offer texture from handspun cotton

Finally -- our order for cotton scarves settled -- I model the wrap pants I brought from Canada. A slightly slimmer design, Mai is happy to use this new pattern and we select the fabric -- a deep ebony brown with finely handspun cotton and a deep indigo blue, still on the loom somewhere in the village. Our work is now officially done and we can eat, talk some more and laugh.

Indigo wrap pants are great for everyday wear

 *******

"Can you eat khao neow?" Mai asks us the question we're frequently asked in Isaan, the northeast of Thailand. Here too in Lanna, the north of Thailand, sticky rice is traditionally the staff of life. "Yes," we reply. "We love it."

Mai relaxes. We have just returned in the dark from a trip to her sister's field on the edge of the village. We had jumped on 2 motorbikes as the sun was quickly disappearing and followed a newly paved path that soon  slid into a typical red dust road. The field was filled with blooming marigolds, ready for offerings to the monks, and a small vegetable garden of greens.

Mai arrives at the marigold and vegetable field, mountains in the background

I grab the second knife and join Mai to cut khana, a type of kale, for our dinner and for the children tomorrow. Mai has invited us to stay the night so we can join her at a nearby Kaliang (Karen) village for a local textile festival the next day. School children from around the region will attend to learn about growing cotton, spinning, dyeing and weaving.

Mai cuts khana, green onions and cilantro

Back in her kitchen, Mai shows me how she cuts khana and I take over. Her soft protests that she's not a good cook are put to rest as we soon tuck into a delicious meal of khana stir-fried with oyster sauce, a chopped omelet sprinkled with tiny green onions and feathery cilantro, a simple soup with squares of fish cakes we picked up earlier in the local market, fresh cucumber rounds and the popular Chiang Mai sausage, a slightly spicy pork specialty of the region. And, of course, khao neow -- served in 2 beautifully woven sticky rice baskets made by a man in the village.

*******

It's morning. Roosters crow. Motorbikes putt putt along the main road of the village outside Mai's family house. I awake early and see she has set up a display area since we visited last year with weaving and farming tools on the porch outside our room. We eat sticky rice cooked with coconut milk, stuffed into a length of bamboo and roasted over the fire. It's time for the Kaliang textile festival.

Outside our room, we discover a display of weaving and farming tools

Prae Pan Weaving Co-op: Weaving a Stronger Cloth

Our visits to Prae Pan weaving co-op in Northeast Thailand usually span several days and this year is no exception. We catch up with staff, present gifts carried from Canada, offer feedback on which products bought on our last trip sold well and, of course, choose new textiles and make orders. The silk below -- in soft seafoam green and rich magentas -- is destined for jackets to be tailored in Canada. (Learn more about The Jacket Project in our earlier blog posts.)

On our 2nd day at the co-op's shop in Khon Kaen city, 2 members of the co-op arrive, children in tow, bearing metres and metres of luscious green, handwoven cotton fabric. Much to our delight, this unexpected visit gives us a chance to meet a couple of the younger members of the group and to learn more about the cloth we had been choosing when they arrive.

Ploi (meaning "gem") is the younger daughter of one of Prae Pan's former shop staff. A weaver and dyer herself, she explains that most of the younger women are busy harvesting sugar cane. She and Noi (meaning "small") are dropping off cloth for older weavers, saving them a trip to the city.

From Sooksamboon village, they are well versed in the use of natural dyes and we talk about which local materials were used to create the beautiful piece of mudmee fabric we are selecting for jackets.

The younger weavers usually weave the heavier pieces, like the cotton lap blankets we buy this year, pictured below.

As they prepare to leave, Alleson notices the credit union symbol on Ploi's knapsack. She wants to know more. We learn that Prae Pan set up a credit union about 10 years ago. Now with more than 500 members -- including weaving co-op members and others who live in the same villages -- the credit union has become an independent enterprise. It has bought land and is working toward erecting its own building next year. The credit union has helped people save money, offers life insurance and makes it easier for members to get loans without the same kinds of guarantees that banks typically demand.

On day 4 of our visit, I have the chance to accompany Fon, one of Prae Pan's staff, and Pii Yai, a board member and good friend, to deliver our selected fabrics to the woman who will sew them into bags. We drive to Nong No village, 50 km from the capital city of Khon Kaen. It's a sewing village. Throughout Thailand, one craft or other form of home-based work often dominates in a particular village -- weaving, pottery making, gong making, broom making and so on. Sewing employs many home-based workers in this village. The seamstress, Kampiang, sews only for Prae Pan. (That's where her heart is, I'm told.) TAMMACHAT customers know her work well, as all our bags from this co-op have passed through her skilled hands.

Fon explains the details of our order for 2-pocket shoulder bags, and delivers the fabric, zippers and TAMMACHAT labels.

I notice a couple weaving a grass mat in the yard next door. I ask if I can learn more. Soon Kampiang leads me through a narrow opening in the fence and introduces me to the man and woman working at the mat loom. She deftly folds the end of a strip of grass over a stick and introduces it into one end of the loom. He slides it through, then pulls on the comb to tighten it as she prepares the next strip of grass, some of which she has already dyed.

They work quickly and efficiently. Mats are still used here extensively within homes and even shops -- to cover an indoor tile floor before a sleeping mat is laid down, as a make-shift kitchen or eating area, to cover outdoor raised sitting/working platforms and more. This couple explains that they will be giving mats to other family members, as well as keeping some for their own use.

Before we leave, Pii Yai invites me to see the family kitchen, located to the left of the house. We had been sitting on a platform below the 2nd floor of the house and I had already admired the wooden building above. Kampiang's husband, a carpenter now working in Brunei to earn money for the secondary school education of their 2 sons, had built the house and the outdoor kitchen. I've seen many such Thai kitchens and, like Pii Yai, was impressed with the organization and tidiness of this one.

On visits like this, I never know what's coming next. Our final stop is at the village primary school. The kids are on a break and several gather at the small canteen next to the open air cafeteria. We enjoy a snack of som tom (green papaya salad), sticky rice and small, fried fish. I watch as the kids prepared for an afternoon meditation session before their next class.

We arrive back at the shop in the late afternoon. In 2 weeks, our Prae Pan bags will be on a ship bound for Canada. The rest of our textiles are already en route with Thai Post. We always say goodbye fondly to everyone at Prae Pan, the 1st weaving group we met -- and the relationship that spawned TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles and is at the heart of fair trade.

Saoban: development with a heart

The capital of Laos, Vientiane, is increasingly a city of contradictions. Our annual visits sound discordant notes that grow shriller with each new year. Gleaming luxury cars (this year I saw a Lotus!) park next to broken sidewalks that expose the stinking sewer beneath. I imagine an unwary tourist falling into one of these manhole-sized openings while gawking at the cake-like decorations that frost the Buddhist temples.

Tourists' cafe tables sprout bottles of Lao beer -- as tasty as it is cheap -- while Asean businessmen savour European wines. The menus of the newer restaurants in the old city centre boast bottles of wine that sell for $100 -- in a country where $50 will feed an impoverished family for a month.

Amidst these anomalies is the fair trade social enterprise that we've come to see. Saoban, meaning "village people," has grown out of earlier sustainability projects in the Lao countryside. Many of these were the work of a local NGO, the Participatory Development Training Centre (PADTEC).

Saoban ("Village Handicrafts From the Heart of Laos") now stands on its own feet, which ideally is the goal of all development projects. It works closely with village artisan groups in many regions of this diverse and mountainous country to provide training in business planning, product development, marketing, and access to micro-credit. In its Vientiane shop we see elaborate tapestry weaving, precious silver jewellery, intricate bamboo basketry and bags of many descriptions.

Saoban's Vientiane shop brimming with handcrafted products

We met Saoban in 2009 when they were establishing their store in Vientiane. That year we accompanied one of their young staff on a visit to a small village several hours outside Vientiane where the women weave intricate bamboo baskets. We were impressed with everything we saw, especially the absence of toxic chemicals often used to produce bamboo fibres. Together we designed a bag that combined the villagers' basket-making skills with indigo cotton produced by another village and sewn by a third group. We also arranged for a Big Brother Mouse book party in the village later that year (and provided the funds for same.)

This year, however, we have come to find products woven from organic cotton dyed with natural indigo. In planning for this visit, we had a meeting on Skype (amazing that we can do some of this work from afar), while we sat in Chiang Mai, Thailand and Bandith Ladpakdy, Saoban's Manager, spoke to us from the shop in Vientiane.

softly draping, handspun organic cotton indigo shawl

We're delighted to find that we do not need to make a special order: on the shop's shelves we find almost everything that we had imagined we might design together. iPad pouches in indigo cotton yarn dyed with mudmee (ikat) designs are displayed almost exactly as we had imagined them! The heritage variety of organic cotton used is inter-planted with upland crops of indigo, corn, beans and chilies. The weaving is done in Central Laos, in an area known for its indigo dyeing. Products like these are then sewn by an urban sewing group in Vientiane, where most of the women work at home.

quilted iPad sleeves in organic cotton

Nubbly, handspun organic cotton scarves and shawls in an assortment of naturally dyed colours are nestled into a large bamboo basket that greets us as we walk in the door.

organic cotton scarves in a handwoven bamboo basket

There are even 2 extraordinary handspun organic cotton shawls, yarn-dyed with traditional mudmee designs in a beautiful mid-range shade of indigo.

rich traditional mudmee design in handspun organic cotton

We spend 2 afternoons at the shop. This is the first opportunity we've had to get to know Shui-Meng Ng, who has worked in development with rural Lao families for decades and is now serving as the Managing Director of the independent enterprise that Saoban has become.

Bandith helps village weavers and dyers organize themselves into groups, select their leaders, learn about business planning and how to set realistic, fair prices for their work. Through his work with more than 300 artisans in 14 villages, he is becoming an important local resource. Bandith is also a key figure in a new Lao Fairtrade association formed by and for Lao social enterprises to support each other and learn about fair trade together.

The Saoban team: Bandith, a volunteer from Australia, Shui-Meng and Samoy

While our focus for this visit has been on handspun, indigo organic cotton, we are also keen to learn that village-based organic silk production is again on the rise after decades of dwindling resources and practitioners. This news prompts us to add to our shopping list an elegant but simply designed silk scarf  in naturally dyed shades of gleaming, burnished metals.

hand-reeled organic silk with weft bands from the looser, outer fluff of the cocoons

We look forward to continue building our relationship with Saoban and visiting some of the more remote villages with Bandith in coming years. Until then, we are anxious to share our indigo Laotian treasures, and a bit more, with fans in Canada.

Also: See our video about a Weaving Bamboo Baskets in Laos.

Alleson

New from TAMMACHAT: Sweatshop-free Clothing

For years we’ve been looking for a tailoring group in Thailand – one that could make clothing with the handwoven cotton and silk cloth that we buy from weaving groups in Northern and Northeast Thailand. At the end of last year’s trip, at a special juried craft fair, we met Kumpor, whose name means “sufficiency.” We loved their unique, “fusion” designs, so we bought a few pieces and found these sold quickly in Canada at our Fair Trade Textile events.

It came as no surprise that we found this group in Chiang Mai. This large and vibrant northern Thai city is home to many highly skilled tailors, dressmakers and small factories that sew the many garments produced in the area. But we wanted to find a group that shares TAMMACHAT’s values of offering fair wages and benefits to the sewers, as well as protecting the environment. This worker-owned co-op fit the bill!

So, this year we looked for their retail outlet. There we were able to make arrangements to visit Kumpor’s headquarters and workshop. Once we had the address, we had no trouble finding it, as it’s based in the community where Alleson first lived in Thailand 20 years ago.

Our visit to their headquarters allowed us to learn about the group as well as see their designs. Unlike the other groups with whom TAMMACHAT works, Kumpor colours its cloth with low impact chemical dyes from Germany and the UK that are certified “environmentally friendly.” This year, they received “Green Product” certification from the Thai Department of Environmental Quality Promotion, one that’s available only to small textile producers that use environmentally responsible processes.

Kumpor co-operative includes:

• 6-7 pattern-makers and sewers who work at the community workshop
• 28 home-based sewers who work with Homenet Thailand's support and oversight
• a group of 26 dyers and 18 handweavers, living in a community about 2 hours away, where they  produce the cloth Kumpor uses for its garments. They are in the process of adding local farmers to the group to grow heritage varieties of cotton. This will allow Kumpor to add new designs that will feature handspun, handwoven, indigo-dyed fabric.

Most of the indigo cloth we have found comes from Sakhon Nakhon in Northeast Thailand. Interestingly, the indigo Kumpor will use for its handspun cotton clothing grows wild in the north of Chiang Mai province. Karen people (one of the “hilltribe” groups in the North) gather it and make dried dye cakes that the co-op will buy and send to the dyeing/weaving group.

This year our visit resulted in an order for cotton blouses and jackets in 3 distinctively different styles and 3 appealing colour ranges, using designs and cloth produced by co-op members. These will be available in spring 2011 when we return to Canada.

We look forward to working with Kumpor on future projects. We hope you look forward to seeing their unique line of sweatshop-free clothing.

#9: Suchada Cotton: Hearing the Story Again

Dec. 18, 2009

The colour indigo -- painstakingly made from the leaves of the indigo plant (Indigofera tinctoria) -- conjures a depth of blue that can't be achieved with chemical dyes. Repeated dippings of cotton yarns, sometimes more than 20 times, can produce a blue so deep that it appears black. More importantly, traditional cultures on every continent have attached significance to indigo beyond a colouring agent.

We first met Suchada Cotton at the Sunday Walking Market in Chiang Mai last year. Their placemats in deep blues and rich browns snagged our attention as the dyestuffs that produce these colours are not frequently seen in Chiang Mai. More often you’ll see mor hom -- a blue cotton fabric produced in Prae from a "cousin" of indigo.

Conversely, Sakhon Nakhon province in Isaan (the Northeast) is well-known in Thailand for kram -- the Thai word for authentic indigo. This province is also home to the village dyers and weavers who produce Suchada Cotton's fabrics. Combined with the bark of the mango tree, indigo produces a deep green, also a popular colour for Suchada's many handwoven products. The rich coffee browns, the third in their trio of signature colours, comes from ma-kleu (Diospyros mollis), often referred to in English as Burmese ebony.

Talking later with Suchada in her stall at the Night Market, we learned that she’s from this village herself where the story is similar to the story all over rural Thailand: Most of the middle generation of women leave the village in search of factory work so they can bring a cash income to their families. Left in the village are the grandmothers and younger women with children. [Read our story about the Women's Organic Cotton Group in Ban Kokkabok for another version of this typical story.]

The 10 to 20 older women weavers and dyers in this group are rice farmers who do this work to make extra income after the harvest is brought in. These skills are a critical supplement to the family income, especially in these difficult economic times with the global recession reducing income from factory work while inflation increases prices. And Thailand's current political instability reduces tourism even farther.

The photos that Suchada showed us of women in her village show dyepots simmering over fires, leaves and barks being gathered, older women at looms. We've seen these photos before, in fact we've taken them ourselves and will, we hope, continue to see them despite the increasingly homogenous, global marketplace.

The term "slow fashion" truly describes this process of textiles produced by hand -- from the gathering of natural dyestuffs to the finished handwoven fabric, bags, scarves, placemats and tablecloths that come off the loom 2 months later.

Chiang Mai is a lively market for many goods from other parts of the country. Suchada's husband is from Chiang Mai and this link makes it an ideal place to bring the handwoven textiles as they make their way to new homes in Japan, Europe and Canada -- anywhere that natural fibres and dyes are popular.

Alleson (Pii Plaa)

#4: How we communicate with the weavers

We're often asked if we can recommend our driver and interpreter that we use to visit the weaving groups in Thailand and Laos from whom we buy the naturally dyed silk and cotton textiles we sell in North America. We laugh and sometimes wish it were so easy (although not usually so, as it's much more fun the way we do it).

As we begin our 5th buying trip -- which we always describe also as a networking trip -- I am reflecting on the many ways we communicate with the weaving groups. Rarely have we ever hired someone to interpret who is not also integral to the group with whom we're working. Here's a sampling of ways we communicate with the weaving groups:

1. We rely heavily on Alleson's Thai. Since she lived in Thailand almost 8 years, she can get around quite well, although she feels her vocabulary is slipping each year that she spends 8 months at home in Canada. Still, with some effort, she has added to words to her weaving lexicon: loom, warp, weft, heddle (and other terms she has had to learn first in English!), to name a few. In fact, if she hadn't been able to carry on a conversation in Thai the first time we visited Prae Pan Group in Khon Kaen, where TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles was born, I seriously question if we'd have embarked on this fair trade enterprise in the first place.
2. We also rely on board members of the 2 largest weaving co-ops we work with who speak English, although at times we look at each other and shrug in confusion, because sentence construction in Thai and English is vastly different. Mai pen rai, we end up saying, in Thai -- never mind, it's OK, not to worry! 
3. Staff at a few of the weaving groups (or executive directors of NGOs that work with village groups who do the natural dyeing, weaving and sewing of the products we buy) are, at times, an invaluable resource. We've spent time working with field staff exchanging words and finally coming to common understandings. In Laos, we've more heavily relied on staff of weaving centres (or the daughter of 1 group's founder, who lives in Australia) to help us with orders and provide information.
4. We also bring photographs of products we've bought in the past, draw pictures of products we'd like to design together, occasionally borrow the services of a friend to translate, especially when we need to use the phone -- and we laugh a lot.
   

One way or another, we manage to choose textiles from stock already woven and make orders for new pieces. Often, as you'll read in future blog entries, we're invited to share a meal, take home a bag of bananas or visit the person we've been working with, with a gracious invitation to stay in their home.

A final note: I have been studying Thai at home in Canada via the internet, podcasts and my notebooks from lessons I took 2 trips ago in Chiang Mai. I could not do this work with the language skills I presently have, but being able to compliment -- in Thai -- the women who do this highly skilled work, tell brief stories about life in Canada (especially as it relates to our experiences here) or comment on the food we're sharing goes a long way to building relationships that are a key element of fair trade.

All for now,

Ellen (Nok Noi)

#2: Let the travels begin

After a good fall show season, we're heading out tomorrow for 4 months in Thailand and Laos. As always, we have visits planned with weaving groups with whom we've been working for the last few  years. Top of our list for this trip is sourcing organic silk and organic cotton fabric for several designers who value fair trade and working with handwoven, organic fibres and natural dyes. We also have several new groups to visit, as we've connected recently with some people doing interesting work with Thai weaving groups on organic cotton production.

In Laos, we will be visiting Mulberries' farm to see firsthand their work creating organic silk and have offered to make a book for them, similar to the 3 we've already created for 2 Thai weaving groups and a Thai NGO. We'll be delivering 15 copies of our latest book, Weaving Sustainable Communities, to the Pattanarak Foundation the day after we arrive in Bangkok. Take a peak inside TAMMACHAT's 3 books if you haven't already seen them.

And back at home in Atlantic Canada, we'll stay in touch with the newly formed Clothing and Textile Action Group, a group of people working within the Ecology Action Centre, based in Halifax, NS, on issues around sustainability, clothing and other textiles. We've been involved since the first meeting and value having a local group that shares our values and is taking active steps to change how we look at our current production and use of the textiles we wear and use.

Hitting the ground running, in our usual fashion!

In fair trade,
Ellen (Nok Noi, my Thai nickname, which means little bird) and Alleson (Pii Plaa, Thai for older sister fish -- hard to translate!)

#8: Of peacocks & indigo

Greetings from Sakhon Nakhon -- one of the 19 provinces of Isaan (Thailand's Northeast).

We came here in search of handwoven cotton khram (indigo) textiles, an art practiced for generations in this area. These luscious blues have been very popular at previous TAMMACHAT events; probably because so many of our customers have the same hair colour that I do -- although it would be a challenge to name any colouring that doesn't look great with one of the umpteen shades of blue that can result from this natural dye, depending on the fibre, the season, the method of processing and the number of dye baths. We've been told that even the time of day is a factor -- BTW, early morning is the preferred time to dye the yarns.

I'm happy to report that our search has been very sucessful; we have not only found indigo products but we've found them made by women's groups in 2 different provinces and numerous districts, encompassing hundreds of kilometres, women and items!



Already on their way to Canada are some exceptional mudmee patterned indigo scarves. Mudmee, as some of you know, is a process of tyeing and dyeing the yarns before they are woven. These variegated yarns then line up on the loom, resulting in elaborate geometric, and sometimes figurative, patterns.



We visited one weaving group on the banks of the Mekong, where we were able to see and photograph each step of this process. While we were there we hosted a luncheon get-together with the group, where much laughter as well as great food was shared. We especially enjoyed a hilarious lesson on the correct pronunciation of Mae Nam Khong (Mekong River in Thai) -- next time you see Ellen, ask for a demonstration.

We rushed off from those visits in Ubon province to come north to Sakhon Nakhon, when we heard a provincial fair was in full swing where many weaving groups that specialize in indigo would be selling. Although we were invited to visit their villages, we settled on purchasing goods at the fair this year and have promised to return next year (prior to the fair's launch) to take them up on their hospitality and see first hand the work in progress.

We're sure that the many shades of indigo and the many styles of weaving that we're sending home today will make everyone an indigo fan.

Ellen has taken pictures of someone (?) wearing a selection of these wonderful cotton scarves with close-ups so you can see the woven patterns.

On a final note, a more personal anecdote: I was disappointed that, unlike in most other provincial capital towns, absolutely no one rents motorbikes here. I had hoped that we would have at least one day to toodle around and see the sights -- maybe have a serendipitous encounter with some weavers or ??? -- but without wheels it didn't seem possible. Anyway, having a little more time on our hands than anticipated, we returned to the fair where we saw a vendor who'd not been in her stall on our earlier visit. Not only did we find 2 more styles of scarves that we're sure will be a hit, but we also had a wonderful conversation and received another invitation to visit her home. Last but certainly not least, when she heard of my unrealized intention to rent a motorcycle, she offered me hers. After my 2 requisite polite declines, she was still insisting so I took her up on her offer, without so much as a baht (the Thai currency) or a passport as collateral. So...yesterday we had a fine time driving through the Phou Pan National Forest district and visiting the Phou Pan Palace. (Palaces are customary Thai tourist sites when there are no Royals in residence.)

And finally, here is one of the many Thai peacocks we saw at the Royal Palace, strutting his stuff!

Until next time,

Pii Plaa (aka Alleson)