Batik

One of the things that the people of this country are proud of is Batik which is a cloth that is traditionally made using a manual wax-resist dyeing technique.

They make bottom down shirts, long skirts and pretty much any shape of women's top out of it (also purses and other things) out of the material. There seem to be different levels of fanciness in Batik, but people wear it as office uniforms, school uniforms, to any official engagement and also at weddings. You can almost never go wrong wearing Batik here.

Today our language helper was kind enough to take us to a batik factory to see how they produce these pretty fabrics.

 first we watch this man stamping the wax on the fabric

the stamps get dipped into a bowl with hot wax, then you have to shake them 

(hence the splatter pattern on the wall in the previous picture)

and then press them down on the fabric

 we even got to make our own piece of batik,

it is harder than it looks

 Here is where to fabric gets dyed afterwards, and when it is dry, the wax gets taken off

and vòila, you have something like this

 Erlend prefered observing to batiking himself

group picture at the end