LAOS: Luang Prabang Markets, Traditional Cloth Patterns, and, Local Village Weavers

For the early birds, there is a market that is open from 4am to 10am.  

I wouldn't describe myself as an early bird, by any means.

But, after we got up before sunrise to offer our alms to the monks we went to the morning market.

There was an array of items for sale.

For the foodies, there is fresh farm produce for cooking up delicious meals. 

Cleavers to chop and meat to fry up.

And then there are the odds and sods sellers.

But my favourites are the textile vendors. They have interesting traditional patterns.

In the town shops we found stores with beautiful traditional outfits.

I was surprised at how exquisite some were.

It turns out they are rental costumes, mostly for tourists, and they also organize photoshoots. I am sure they have a good business catering to the Instagram Influencers and TravelVloggers out there. 

We went into a small textile village and one of the ladies was kind enough to "chat" with us and show us the ropes. If my descriptions are inaccurate, blame it on me and my inability to speak Laotian.

Raw cotton.

She was feeding the raw cotton into her machine and getting the seed out of it.

Then she put it in a basket and used a bamboo stick with a string on it and "whisked" it to soften it up and get it ready for spinning.

Then she spun it into yarn and made it look easy. Note the bicycle wheel she uses to spin her yarn. Ingenuity at its finest. She kindly invited me to spin it too. It was not as easy as it looks and I kept breaking the yarn.

She had a loom as well. She didn't show us how it worked - I think at that point she'd had enough of us.

She was selling scarves. Interestingly, not all of them were ones she had made. Some were from China. 

Despite my moratorium on purchases I felt guilty and I did buy one of the scarves that she had made.