A night of Lao silk, food, and music

There is a store near the embassy called The Beauty of Lao Silk. The owners have a compound in Vientiane with three amazing traditional Lao houses. The first has a textile museum, where they keep a rotating collection of old and beautiful examples of silk textiles from around Laos on display. The second house (shown below) is another showroom for their products. The third is their home.

All their silk is hand spun, hand dyed, and weaved on looms by very talented people (judging from the finished product, anyway). We were lucky enough to go there for a night of learning about the silk making process, touring the museum, and eating a delicious Lao meal in the owner's home.

We were there with some other embassy folk, including the Ambassador and her two daughters and the DCM. Katherine tried her hand at dyeing, and I played photographer. I was also cast into the role of interpreter, as our hosts spoke some English, but not much. My Lao skills as relates to the process of dyeing and weaving silk could use some work too, it turns out.

Vats full of natural indigo, made from a plant that is decidedly green in color before they crush and do other various things to the plant. Then they add a bit of mud and some Lao whiskey to the concoction and it's time to dunk your textile. Usually they dye individual threads of silk that are then woven into intricately designed shawls, hangings, and other stuff. The neophytes just took a finished textile and made it mono-color.

Once you have it the darkness you want, you hang it out to dry.

There are two methods to dyeing silk, depending on the color you are using. The hot method and the cold method. Indigo uses the cold method. Why? Well, from what I got from the explanation, because the hot method doesn't work with indigo. So there.

Other colors, such as silver, gray, red, etc. can use either hot or cold. Is one better than the other? I don't know.

I do know there were pots of steaming gunk over fires that we didn't use, as everyone opted for an indigo runner/shawl/whatever it was they were making.

After a tour of the museum, which had an amazing array of old and beautiful textiles (but, being a guy, I tired of them quickly), we headed over to the house for dinner.

Ambassador Haslach and the owners, Hansana and Bouavanh (I think). Hansana and I sampled some of his homemade, mushroom-infused Lao whiskey, which, for whisky (of which I am not generally a fan), was pretty good.

Towards the end of dinner, they called their kids away from the TV to play some music for us. It was very nice, but I could pretty much tell what was going through the kids' minds. Something about the damn foreigners coming over, making them miss their favorite Thai soap opera, I'm sure. The eldest daughter played the encore on another instrument that looks like a harpsachord but is played using two small sticks that look like chopsticks with rudders.


About this time, Katherine was a seething mass of controlled hysteria, having been away from Jack for about 4 1/2 hours. Plus she was about to burst, if you know what I mean. She is productive, afterall. So after the group moved on to the showroom, we took our leave and headed home, where Marilyn and Luther had things with Jack well in hand.