Thailand: Handicraft Village in Chiang Mai

This is M&M here and I am going to tell you about the Handicraft Village in Chiang Mai. The first part of the Handicraft Village was the umbrella making place. 

We were able to see people that didn't even have shoes make absolutely beautiful umbrellas. We saw them make the skeleton. Then they put the top on. Next they made decorations inside the umbrella. Lastly they painted the top. 

They made such beautiful umbrellas and it was very cool watching them make them too. After the place where they made them, there was a store that sold them and we bought a few. Big Sis, Little A, Monster, and I picked out some small umbrellas that didn't have decorations on the inside for one American dollar. Mom and Dad picked out a big green umbrella with pretty zig zags and designs inside. It was a winner and we bought it. 

The next part of the Village was a poetry making place. We saw people make pretty poetry that was ridiculously expensive. So we didn't get anything there. There were signs everywhere that said no photographs were allowed, so we didn't get any pictures at the pottery place.

The second to last part of the village was a jewelry making store. All of the girls including me had a blast here. We saw people make all kinds of jewelry and other products. We were able to go into this HUGE room that had jewelry everywhere. Mom bought beautiful earrings and Mom and Dad bought me some pretty Elephant Earrings for my birthday.

The last place that we went to was the silk-making store. We enjoyed the silk making process so much because it was educational, something we haven't ever seen before and it created something gorgeous.

We saw a ton of silkworms.  They were all in different stages of the life cycle. To get the silk, they took the cocoons and boiled them in water.  As they stirred the water, a hand made machine would pull the silk out.  I wondered if they boiled the silkworms alive?  It kind of made me sad for them. We then saw people taking silk from silk worm cocoons and spinning them into thread.

Then we saw people weaving the tread into fabric and turning them into things like clothes, scarfs and shawls. It was a really cool village to see and truly one of the coolest places in Thailand that we saw.