Silk Factory, Chiang Mai, Thailand

Moving countries and exploring a new place is a bloggers dream, but I’m not the best blogger in the world and find myself waiting for the opportune moment to blog – this never happens. So while I have a spare moment here’s some photos from a recent visit to the Silk Factory in Chiang Mai, Thailand. (Eventually I’ll get to my move to Vanuatu)

Walking into the wooden work area I immediately fell in love with all the visual candy; bundles of silk thread drying on wooden rafters, pots of different coloured dye, woman hand weaving the silk threads and silk worms busy at work. However, this moment of artistic inspiration was interrupted by a lady who promptly took us on a tour – and by a tour I mean she practically rolled her eyes at our existence, ushered us from stop to stop before I even had a chance to set the ISO on my camera and practically told us she couldn’t be bothered (Well, not quite.). In her defence, and a little to my humour, she did look about 8 months and 3 weeks pregnant. She could have asked for a foot massage and I would have been totally sympathetic.

(Below) The silk pods made by the caterpillars are boiled and basically unwound by this contraption. Every now and then they would stir the water, and any pods that weren’t being unstrung would be caught by another thread and start to unwind. It really was quite amazing.

The Silk Place (don’t know it’s actual name) is on Sankampaeng Rd. On Sankampaeng Rd, there are a whole host of tourist attractions including paper umbrella making, an awesome cotton shop (mostly hand woven), Asia’s largest jewellery store, and a huge wood working factory and store (I mean huge!) Entry to all of these places are free. We booked a car and driver for the afternoon for $15! Thailand is known as the land of smiles, but I also know it for the country that really knows how to do easy tourism for those times you just want to be a tourist.