Siem Reap - Day One

The Silk Farm Tour

We spent three days in Siem Reap this past weekend. We saw a lot during that time, met some wonderful people, made some new friends and had an overall great time. The unfortunate thing for the town was a truck hit several electric poles on Thursday pulling down 20 poles total, so the town was out of power for over 5 days. This meant only people who had generators had any power or electricity. Thankfully our guesthouse, the Traveler's Inn (www.siemreaptravelersinn.com) had a generator so we had running water and ceiling fans to sleep at night. The hosts are members of the Siem Reap church and we felt very welcome there. So on to our sightseeing. We are going to break these into a couple of blogs so we can show more pictures.

Our first day, we went to a Silk Farm. It was amazing. The silk farm is located about 20 minutes from down town Siem Reap. It was put into a rural area so they could have plenty of space for the mulberry trees that the worms eat from. It also created over 1000 jobs for those people living on the outskirts of Siem Reap. The free tour they have is very informative and fascinating.

 

When we got there, they walked us through the entire process of how they cultivate the worms and gather the silk thread from their cocoons.

These are moths that have mated (some were still in the process) and are now laying eggs.

 

 

 

 

They have them on papers so that they can see the eggs as they hatch. 

 





 

Here is a picture of some of the worms right before they start their cocoon process. When they turn yellow that means they are ready to cocoon.

 

And then they cocoon.

 

They then spin the silk separating the raw and fine silks. The raw silk comes from the outer layers of the cocoon while the finer silk comes from the inner layers. They gather it by putting the cocoons into water and pulling the silk that way.

 

They then dye the silks using various natural elements (leaves, bark, berries, etc) to make the dyes. That is why unless you get the silk from the same batch you won't be able to match the color because it is not an exact science.

 They then spin the silks onto spools and use the silks to hand weave fabrics out of them.

 

Then they use the fabrics to create beautiful clothing. Like these traditional wedding clothes. The entire process was fascinating and we enjoyed it very much.