arts & crafts - thai edition

Last Friday we were back at Patara to survey again and have more thai language classes with Pi Poad.

Saturday was an “explore Thailand on your own” day. After a lazy morning, we all headed out to grab kao soi for lunch. Our taxi driver, Pong, joined us and was extremely helpful in helping us order our food and drinks. 

After lunch we drove to a silk factory where silk worms are grown and cocoons are harvested to make silk. We were able to see the traditional process of spinning silk which they do on a man powered wooden machine. 

After doing some shopping in their silk store, we all headed over to an umbrella factory. This wasn’t the kind of factory that you might think of though - everything was outside and each station was manned by one person who handmade each individual part to the umbrella. They made all of their paper from scratch and the each wooden component was hand crafted. There were also many talented artists that painted the umbrellas and also offered to paint any other object such as T-shirt’s, phone cases and purses. We each bought an umbrella and with the help of the artists, painted them with our own designs. 

We shopped for a little bit in the gift store after and then headed to a tailor. The tailors here are known to be able to sew a three piece suit in a day or two. Some people walked around the tailor and looked at fabrics while others wandered around and picked up some coffee at a nearby coffee shop. 

We then went to the most popular stop of the day - a grocery store with multiple American brands. Everyone grabbed candies, cookies, chips, crackers and more and headed back to the taxi. We all showed off each of our finds and shared snacks as we headed back to the resort before dinner. After resting for a little while, we loaded back up into a taxi and headed to the night bazaar to do some shopping and grab dinner. We walked over to a store that sold Tibetan singing bowls and learned how to use them to meditate. We grabbed some sunglasses and other souvenirs before grabbing some street dumplings. 

After a late, but fun, night we headed aback to the resort to get some sleep before heading out to a cooking class early the next morning. 

Hey y'all it's Grace!

So this weekend was full of fun adventures ! Ireland and I woke up early Saturday morning to go to a yoga studio. We took a red truck by ourselves to a hole in the wall studio that was absolutely stunning. The instructor and his wife lived above the studio in a tree house sort of set up along with their two small dogs. After an hour class, we headed back to the hotel to meet up with the rest of the group and continue with our day. One of my favorite parts of the day was going to the umbrella factory where we were able to paint our own umbrellas ! 

We head back to Patara tomorrow, and I’m hoping that I get to see chompoo (the elephant I was paired with last week ) she’s a seven year old female who loves to play in the mud and water and is a flirt with the camera. I absolutely adore her ! 

Anyways, I still love Thailand and have enjoyed all the adventures so far and can’t wait for future ones !

Hey, Anneliese here! 

This weekend was incredible and filled with so many great memories! One of my most favorite activities was visiting the silk factory. We learned how silk is made and saw women using wooden machines to make the silk. The pieces were gorgeous, and the store was filled with soft and colorful fabrics! I even treated myself to some silk hair ties. Another one of my favorite activities was painting the umbrellas because the artists helped us stencil a design to paint and all of our umbrellas were so unique and showed our personality. At the end, one of the artists "beautified" all of our umbrellas by adding details and even writing out "Thailand". I really liked the silk and umbrella factories from Saturday because they were such a unique part of Thai culture! Overall, this weekend was great and I need our time here to slow down!!