The 10th annual Lao Handicraft Fair was held at the city’s mall/convention center, Lao-ITECC, last week. Last year, I had still arrived relatively recently, and was rather dazed by the whole affair. But these days, I am a seasoned handicraft purchaser, and was ready to do some serious shopping. And that I did, mostly at one particular booth of local ladies selling their homemade sinh fabric, to make the traditional Lao skirts that women wear most of the time here (in any somewhat formal context)–to work, to school, to temple.
It’s taken me awhile to come around to wearing sinhs. I’ve always found them beautiful, but was always intimidated at the dizzying array of prices and colors and styles at the market, never knowing where to start. After a few recent successful shopping trips, my sinh collection has exploded exponentially from its previous number of one. And the number is only growing, as evidenced below by the heaps of striking and colorful fabric Ilse and I purchased on Saturday.
