Sugar and Spice and IWD

International Women's Day in Laos is a big deal. It's a public holiday, restaurants offer special dinners and groups of female workers band together to celebrate. Sounds pretty good to a card-carrying feminist, right? It wasn't quite what I expected.

Paying For My Sinhs

This really is sinh city. Sinhs are everywhere. Women wear them on motorbikes, bicycles, to work, to market, in tuk tuks, in groups, to weddings, walking along dirt roads and running across busy streets. And soon I, too, will be wearing a sinh.

These sarong-like skirts are sometimes cotton, sometimes silk and, if you are not picky or wealthy, sometimes polyester. They usually have a strip of embroidered silk along the hem. The patterns often mean something. I don't know what yet, but something.

 

 

 

Clara and I were taken shopping through the fabric section of Talat Sao yesterday. It was confusing and hot and humid and noisy and we were grateful that Gai, our personal shopping assistant, had some idea of what to look for and how much to pay.

Once we got started it was hard to stop. Look at the choices we were faced with:

Although I am still not particularly pleased that I will HAVE to wear a traditional Lao skirt everyday to work for the next year, I'm kind of a little bit excited to have this gorgeous fabric swishing around me.

Leaning towards the conservative, I chose three pieces of fabric, all cotton, all gorgeous.

My original sinhs (boom boom!)

Clara made some gorgeous choices, too. They'll look stunning.

 

Clara worked out she spent $36 on all three (and the dressmaking won't add a whole lot more)

 

 We've been measured and now we wait...  (and worry about not having appropriate shoes).