Ock Pok Tok - East Meets West

One of the things I've been doing on my travels is taking classes in whatever catches my fancy including cooking classes in Hoi An-Vietnam, Luang Prabang-Laos and Istanbul-Turkey. They've all been great experiences - learned a lot, had fun and ate well.

This trip to Luang Prabang I did something I had been wanting to do for some time, but never quite got around to it before - a day long class in silk thread dying and weaving at Ock Pok Tok. I had never even touched a loom before so this was going to be all brand new.

Weavers at Ock Pok Tok - the Professionals

My ride

The first hint that the day was going to be outstanding was when I showed up at the shop in town at 8:45 a.m. to be transported by tuk tuk to their weaving center a few kilometers away on the banks of the Mekong River. I found, to my complete delight, that no one else had signed up for the class this day – meaning I had a day-long private lesson with the total attention of the weaver teacher and the English speaking assistant. What a treat. And no fellow foreigners to have to talk to or, worse, listen to, a subject I will no doubt return to "in the fullness of time".

Win, the interpreter, is a former monk in Luang Prabang. He left the monkhood, or whatever you call it, just a few months ago after spending 5 years at the temple as a novice monk. He is 19 years old and wants to go to university, which he couldn't do had he stayed to be ordained. He misses being a monk, but monks can’t go to university. He wants to study IT or “electricity”, which I think he meant electronics or electrical engineering or something like that. This job as guide at Ock Pok Tok is his first job ever, and I think he probably got it because not only does he speak English, but he also knows quite a bit about weaving as he used to help his mother who was a weaver of cotton in the north. "Such a different life you have now!" Yes indeed. I asked him what the monks thought about all the tourists at morning alms in the town. Did it bother the monks to have all those people being around and taking pictures of them (and behaving like assholes, I didn't say)? Oh no, he replied, it doesn't bother them. They realize the visitors like to take home souvenirs in their photos. How tolerant. How very monklike.

Win offered to take me on his day off, Sunday, to visit his friend who was still a monk so I could learn about the monks' lives and ask any questions I wanted. What an opportunity! Alas, we were leaving Luang Prabang before then so I couldn't take him up on it. It reminded me that I had seen organized "Talk to a Monk" programs in some places, where for a specified couple of hours on an afternoon a week, you can do exactly that for, I'm sure, a small donation to the temple. One of the temples in Chiang Mai had a sign promoting it. Would be interesting I'm sure.

Boiling cocoons and removing the silk threads

At the weaving center, Win and I  started the day by going through the silkworm process, which I had seen before in earlier visits to silk manufacturers in and continues to fascinate. The silkworms are fed mulberry leaves for a number of days, then when they started raising their heads, it's a sign they are ready to start wrapping themselves in silk strands to form a cocoon. These natural strands are either white or yellow. Before they become moths and bore their way out of their cocoons, thus ruining them for silk production, the cocoons must be boiled and the strands unwound.

Pounding annato seeds to make orange dye

Then the silk is dyed using all natural dye ingredients in the outdoor dyeing "kitchen" where pots of water are boiled over wood stoves. I learned to dye my own silk threads. For one batch I sliced and pounded turmeric root with a mortar and pestle to make a bright yellow. I made the orange monk’s robe color (known as “Sun in the Dark”), by taking annatto berries off a tree, removing the seeds and pounding them as well. Then we boiled the bark of a flame tree adding a few iron nails to make a deep red color.

My 3 silk strands drying in the sunshine after dyeing

There was a busload of 29 tourists there for a private visit and lunch that day, which meant that I lost my guide for awhile as all hands on deck were called for to serve the lunch. I was afraid that my wonderful solitary visit was to be disrupted but it seemed the best was yet to come. Instead of having to eat lunch with 29 western travelers from the tour I was to have lunch with Mrs. Keint, as her name tag identified her, my weaving instructor behind the kitchen in the staff "dining room". I had a wonderful time sitting low to the ground with the weavers, none of whom spoke a word of English nor I Lao, eating a Lao meal, Lao style. I was in heaven. Eating sticky rice by hand which is the only way to do it, spooning soup out of a communal soup bowl, watching everyone really closely to learn the dining etiquette. I didn’t have a clue what anyone was saying so I just sat there watching, as they chatted away solving all the world's problems, all the while with an enormous big smile on my face. It was perfect.

These 3 at the end of the table were having an intense conversation on rice quality. She is examining the sticky rice container (the lunch box) of the gal in red and comparing it to hers. They each bring their own rice in its woven container and then share the dishes on the table prepared there.

Keint set me up on the loom and sat beside me as I learned to weave my two-color placemat with center design, moving things up and down, side to side this way and that. No real clue what I was doing but lo and behold, by the end of the day not only had I actually completed a woven placemat with center design on the loom, I had also learned how to count to five in Laos to keep track of the pattern I was weaving. I taught Keint the English phrase “No problem”, which is the equivalent of the Lao “bor pen nyang”, and learned all about the life of my young ex-monk translator. I also have a new appreciation of the effort and skill that goes into all these beautiful silk weavings we’ve been collecting these past few years.

Great day by the side of the Mekong.

Win and Keint and my finished masterpiece