Silk weaving in Surin and crossing the border to Cambodia

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After checking into our hotel in Surin we set out to explore the nearby market area. It was very busy - in fact much busier then we have usually seen at markets later in the day, with no sign that the stalls would close down at all that day. In the centre of the market was a tall concrete gilt trimmed clock tower which was a great reference location point amidst the canvas and corrugated iron of the market area. Leaving the market area we were thrilled to discover a Pizza Express - great pizzas and an even better enormous green salad. I admit we even had another meal there before we left Surin...

Surin is surrounded by dozens of silk weaving villages and next morning we planned on visiting one of them. The province is also famous for it's elephant conservation centres and we met a couple of very excited young Western women at the bus station as we were leaving the city who were waiting to travel to the Surin Project, the Elephant Nature Foundation's reserve, to participate in their volunteer programme. Sadly we had seen one of the 'begging' elephants at the bus station in Nong Khai. A terrible fate for such proud animals - forced to perform for money amidst the noise, smog and traffic of a busy city. We soon found the correct songthaew (a pick up truck which has rows of the seats along the tray) amidst the dozens parked just outside the market perimeter. There was nobody else aboard but over the next half hour women, loaded with supplies purchased at the market, boarded. Soon the back of the truck was full to overflowing with dozens of boxes, shopping baskets and bulging plastic bags.

We were going to visit Ban Sawang, one of Thailand's most renowned silk villages. This village specialises in the intensive handwoven 'pah yok torng' brocade weave which requires four weavers working together to produce the fabric. Thankfully our fellow passengers realised where we were headed and called out to stop the vehicle as it drove past the turn off to the silk weaving workshops. The village was 8 kilometers out of the city and an enjoyable drive through the flat rice paddies. The main workshops were down a lane leading off the main road and we first visited an enormous, slightly dilapadated wooden building where we watched the women hard at work. The weaving looms are very large, and look most unweildy and very complicated. They are operated by four women simultaneously - the loom is set over a large opening in the floor as two of the women actually work under the main frame amidst the cobweb of silken threads. The fabric woven is a fine brocade - the pattern can be seen from both sides of the fabric. These four ladies working non stop all day produce only 2 centimeters of fabric daily.... The most complex designs take 50 days of combined labour to produce a single meter of fabric. 1600 hundred hours of work for a meter of fabric which sells for US$1,500! The Thai royal family often wear the fabric to state functions and all the world leaders at the 2003 OPEC conference were presented with shirts or shawls made from fabric woven in Ban Sawang. It was fascinating to watch - though equally interesting to watch was the tiny elderly lady who was sitting cross legged on the floor winding meters of glossy silk thread onto tiny spools. Another very time consuming job.

We left the workshop to explore the village further. The street was lined with shops selling silk products though fabric of the quality we had watched being woven was not for sale (not that we could afford it anyway!). We then actually found the actual 'presentation' workshop - it as situated in a purpose built building (recently constructed from dark carved wood) with a special area set aside for tourists to watch the process. The layout of the looms was the same though - four women all busy with hands flying amidst the hundreds of meters of silken threads. We left the village and made our way back to the main road to catch a songthaew back to Surin. An hour and a half we were still waiting - there were many travelling in the direction away from Surin but for some reason none heading towards the town. I spent the time sitting with a lady who was operating a small provisions shop - we sat in the sun together on the bamboo seating tray out the front of her tiny shop. In the end she took pity on us and waved a four wheel drive down - she obviously knew the young male driver - and asked him to take us back. It was very kind of them both. By chance he was going to the bus station so we accompanied him there and checked out departure times for the next day.

We walked back through town, stopping to explore many of the tiny local shops, and made a side trip back to Pizza Express before exploring the markets for the last time. An early night followed in our comfortable room. Next morning we were back at the bus station where we immediately boarded a small minivan for the one and a half hour trip to Chong Chom - the Thai border town where we planned on crossing into Cambodia. O'Smach, the tiny town on the Cambodian side, is well patronised by Thais as it has two large casino hotels. The bus was full and was constantly waved down by locals wanting to board - buses go every 20 minutes and they are obviously in high demand. We stopped at one town enroute to be greeted by a group of plain clothes police who boarded and took away a young man and his girlfriend. The police seemed to have been expecting him and he was soon quickly hustled away. His young girlfriend looked frightened and confused.

As we approached the border we passed through an enormous market area - the highway was lined with hundreds of stalls. Our van had barely stopped at the border when it was swarmed by a large group of Cambodian men - we had no idea what was happening when they thrust open the door, checked out the people inside and just as quickly left. I think they realised we weren't carrying freight (for the market down the road) - they no doubt earn their living carrying bulk products down the road to the stalls.

We were dreading crossing the border as we had read about the problems many travellers had experienced there. Corruption is supposedly rife and we had read that many people had to pay quite large bribes to get through. We had our passports with US$20 enclosed - the visa fee - and headed towards the immigration point. We were approached by touts who tried to get us to give them the cash to 'help' but we ignored them and thankfully had no problems getting our visas. There was one other Westerner there - an older man who attached himself to the hand of a young beggar boy at the border. He was helped through customs by a tout and was soon in a taxi, accompanied by the young boy. I was really upset when I saw this ....

However we were stamped into the country without any problems and without any extra donations being asked for. The two large casinos were behind the tiny immigration office, and there seemed to me no other indication of any type of village. We found later that the tiny settlement of O'Smach was a few kilometers further down the road. It didn't take long before we were surrounded by taxi touts. There was no sign of any bus onward, no more Western tourists (it's not a well used tourist crossing) so we had no choice but to negotiate a taxi fare onwards to Siem Reap, a two hour drive away.

A young man who had collected two mates from the border wanted us to travel to Siem Reap with him but we didn't feel comfortable with him. Eventually he left and we booked another driver, paying a fare for four people, as we knew it would be a long wait before we actually found the extra two people needed to discount the fare. It was a comfortable trip - the road was in top condition - though it became much busier the closer we got to Siem Reap. We passed many traditional villages full of bleached wooden houses, lots of kids playing in the dust, and farmers working their fields by hand in preparation for rice planting. I was very excited as we reached the outskirts of Siem Reap. We had spent time in the city on a previous visit - this visit was to be a family holiday. Two of my sisters (plus a niece) were nearing the end of three months of voluntary work at a village school in the city and my mother and another sister were due to arrive from Australia in a few days. It would be the first time we had all been together in a foreign country. My sisters in Cambodia, Ginny and Deb, were expecting us the next day. We had arrived 24 hours early to surprise them and were to stay at the guesthouse where they had been living in Cambodia.

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