Siem Reap, Cambodia –
My driver wasn’t happy with me. I was not sticking with the agenda he had planned.
“Why do you want to go see the silk farm?”
He had planned on taking me to see the military museum. And now I wanted to go elsewhere.
“It’s a long drive to get there. I’ll need gas.”
“Well, if you really don’t want to take me where I’m wanting to go, there’s a tuk-tuk driver just around the corner that was wanting my business.”
“No! If that’s where you want to go, I’ll take you.”
I guess he really didn’t want to lose that final day-fare.
This had all started with a conversation at breakfast.
Another guest and I were the only patrons at the rooftop restaurant in our hotel. We had started comparing notes on where we had been, and where we were planning on going.
“Have you been to the silk farm? If not, you need to go. They gave me the full tour. You learn everything, the whole process.”
According to him, the Killing Fields memorial would be too depressing to see, but the silk farm was a must.
He had been to the Killing Fields museum in Phnom Penh, which was quite extensive. After seeing it, he could not understand how the Cambodian people could be so happy peaceful, and friendly. He thought they should be angry.
Maybe they were.
But we weren’t the ones responsible, why should they show any anger to us?
I still was planning on stopping by the Seam Reap memorial, just to pay my respects to what the people of this wonderful country had suffered through.
But after that brief stop, I now had a new destination to see.
Turns out, it wasn’t nearly as far a drive as my driver was making it out to be. Not even close to an hour-long. In fact, the Artisan d’Angkor Silk Farm was no more than a couple of miles past the airport, only eight miles from downtown.
Once at the farm, I was given a complete tour with a private guide, all for free. I think they are trying to make all their money when you leave through the gift shop, where you can buy all sorts of silk clothing, along with other Cambodian artisan goods.
The tour started with the farm, where they are growing various types of mulberry trees. He made it sound like a research facility, where they are experimenting with the mulberry strains to see which the worms like best, produce the most silk, and anything else that might be measured.
From there, we spent the rest of the tour indoors, starting with the nursery, where the breeders lay their eggs, and the adolescent worms are provided their first tastes of mulberry leaf.
Next, we entered the feeding room, where they bring a constant supply of mulberry limbs, complete with fresh leaves, to fatten up the worms. Up through this point, the worms must feel like royalty, with their every need catered to by a host of servants.
Then came the part where the servants expect payback, as the worms are “planted” in baskets and wheels to weave their cocoons. My guide even held a worm in his hand to show me the thread of silk it was producing.
At this point, a lucky few are selected to be breeders, and get to live out the rest of their natural life in a hedonistic paradise, eating leaves, having sex, and producing offspring.
As for the rest, things take a rather unpleasant turn…
The vast majority of the cocoons are placed in pots of boiling water, and the silk is slowly unwound. There are two phases of the boiling, with different qualities of silk being harvested from each phase.
From there, the tour followed the stages of processing the silk, from the spinning, to the dying and weaving into cloth.
At the end, I was taken to a small museum of traditional Cambodian clothing, all made from silk. These were outfits that were probably worn in the royal courts and temples. None of the outfits on display looked like peasant-wear.
The only exit from the museum was through the showroom, where all sorts of silk goods were available for purchase, all for very reasonable prices.
Too bad I had made all of my silk purchases the previous day at a store in town, no doubt at a much higher markup, where they probably gave my driver a commission for delivering me to their showroom.
Maybe that’s why he didn’t want to bring me here. He didn’t want me to know how much I had overpaid…
For more photos from the Cambodian Silk Farm, click here.
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