Ratchaburi, visiting fabric factory, brick factory and Adobe houses (50km)

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Today is a plenty day! Pita did for us a pro tour with lots different things so see and discover. First we worked on her Adobe house this morning, had lunch and hopped on our bicycles again. The original goal was to visit one of her friend who is an expert in Adobe house. He lives about 20 kilometres from where we started. On the way, we stopped first at a factory where they made traditional textile. Then we stopped at two other places where they do the same but handmade. Then we kept cycling and stopped on the way at a brick factory. The guys were very nice and showed us the whole process. Then, we kept on going until we stopped to the place where Grandin (The monk I’ve been cycling with from Singapore to Malacca) built an Adobe house for a friend. And finally, 4 or 5 hours later, we arrived at Pita’s friend property where we had dinner. After that we cycled the 20km back to Pita’s home.

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Hello :-)

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This morning we are applying the top layer on the walls. Pita’s house is not totally built with mud. Half of it is concrete. Fortunately the waterproof mixture that covers the mud walls works also on concrete. At the end, we won’t see any big difference between the two expect the mud walls are a bit more roundish.

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Pita at work :-) She does the bottom and me the top part.


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Like I said previously, we are now cycling towards Pita’s friend place and stop on the way to visit. First stop: a traditional textile factory.

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First step, the company import the thread from China and create the bobbins using those machines.

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Note that the machines uses bamboo for some parts :-)

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That’s interesting how this piece of metal is designed. By rotation the thread will follow a certain path and will create a perfect bobbin shape like these white one. Clever!

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I’ve forgot to ask how this machine works unfortunately.

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What’s this doing?…

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I’ve got no idea… I was focusing on taking some graphics shots and forgot all the rest.

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Once enough bobbins are ready we get to the next step: “the bobbin wall!” (That’s my own description).

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If you make a node your are very much in trouble!

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This machine is going to create a “super roll” that will be used for the next step.

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That’s the “big roll”. At this point the tissue can be consider as half made.

Live!

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The boss of the factory welcome us very well. Today no one is working here but he launched tw0 machine to show us.

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What is he doing?!

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This! That’s a big roll.

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And now?

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This! :-) The “big roll” is the one which creates the main horizontal pattern.Each thread is parallel to each other.

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Hey! That must be the work done by the second machine. These bobbins must be used to create the vertical pattern.

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Keep shooting around.

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Those machine do a real vacarm when they works! (video coming at the end).

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We are like reporters :-) Well, tourists reporters.

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These machine are 60 years old and work like a charm. Pointing at the one on the left hand side: The “big roll” is on the left side (we cannot see it). On its right hand side is the final product.

You can appreciate the noise too!

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Dozens of machine cover the ground of this factory.

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Sixty years old. I thought it would be more than that.

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Bobbins view!

The visit was very interesting! The daughter of the boss is actually the designer. She explained in a very good english what they tend to do these days to compete with new products. This factory used to make original products with traditional pattern. Today they are creating new pattern too and provide product like 100% cotton, pure quality. They export their products worldwide.


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We are now to another factory but these guys does everything by hand.

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They got the original machines used before the industrial revolution. Those machines are human powered :-) This time we start the visit from the end of the process. I will try to be clear enough ;-)

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So, this one being the last step, this is where the people are working like the previous noisy machines. They must work really efficiently and with rhythm.

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Do you recognise this one? This is the “big roll” again but it has only one color.

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We keep going backwards… This woman is actually creating the “big roll” by hand! This must take quite a while! The bucket behind contains 3 kilometres of threads. She is now putting each of them through this kind of white comb. When this is done, I imagine she will be able to rotate the “thing” to create that roll making sure there is not any node naturally.

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That’s the bucket I talked about previously. My little finger tells me that the next roll will be some kind of blue :-)

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What is doing this guy?

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He his the one who fills the bucket with 3 kilometres of thread. He told us he is doing something like 3 rolls per day, meaning he walks up and down the room 9 kilometres per day! haha That’s nearly sport!

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A larger view of his working space. See the video below of how that process works :-) if you did not get my basic explication.

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Next to the workshop there is the shop where customers can buy their finish products.

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Our special model, Pita :-)

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This is where the serious work starts. This is all made by hand. Actually I think a machine could not do that.

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These pattern are design to fit and traditional dresses that would cost around 30.000 to 50.000 Baht. This kind of model is made by few persons here and they usually do that at home. They work by feelings. The pattern are not set in advance. Several months later and lots of work behind, they come to the shop and the boss here buy those awesome handmade pieces to make the dress.

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To create all those very details pattern, the artist uses this tool which comes from a porcupine style animal. At every single horizontal thread she hooks and sews the vertical thread. You must be very very VERY patient to be able to do this.

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The day is not finished yet! We have just started :-) Come back!
You see? This buddha is cheap :-) It hasn’t any gold coverage like the brothers (or maybe sisters) yesterday.

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This time we were on the way to see the Adobe house made by Grandin. But, because there is always something happening on the side of the road, we passed front of a brick factory owned by a family. Pita, stopped, hesitated and then asked: “Do you want to see how bricks are made?” “Sure!”.

So, we started from the back of the field to see how they obtain the mud. Pita asked one of the son few questions and he offered to show us. Great! They digged the ground for something like 50 cm, laid down some dirt and covered it with water for a week or more until it becomes soft enough to be mold.

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The young man brought his wheelbarrow and started fill it with fresh mud.

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That’s good exercise for the top part of the body :-)

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Then he pushed the wheelbarrow along one of the free row. By spreading burned rice peels powder on the ground, the mud won’t stick.

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Hop! That’s nearly done.

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The next main step: molding the bricks.

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Firstly the woman put that same burned rice peel powder inside the mold and then fills the mold with the fresh mud.

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Then she puts the mold on the ground and pull it up.

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That’s two bricks fresh made!

brick mold

I love gifs animation ;-)

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That’s a lot of space to make bricks.

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Once the bricks are dry enough, they put them this way certainly to have enough space to keep working. The woman said they do on average 10.000 bricks per day.

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That’s a lot of handmade bricks :-)

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No no no, that’s not finish yet! We have to cook them to make them strong and waterproof resistant. To do that, this family doesn’t have any oven. The dry bricks are use as is.

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They create high pile of them and leave air corridor in between.

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Finally, they light the fire, set up panels all around them to keep the warmth.

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Looks quite hot isn’t it?

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I guess they cover the top part with peel rice to poor some in the holes from time to time and keep the fire running.

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Rice peel is very useful not only for work. Chicken love it!

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And we keep going towards Pita’s friend house. This time we stopped one more minute to buy this interesting kind of dry pancake which Pita loves.

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A bit more cycling following by another stop. That’s the Adobe house that Grandin made for his friend.

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This garden is cute. The owner doesn’t come very often so Grandin propose to built a house for him. That way, when he comes cycling around this area, he has a place where to stay.

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Sunset on river.

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This house is part of the landscape. Hard to get it!

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Contrary to Pita’s home, this one is rough. There is not any special decoration, just mud style.

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We could almost count the bricks one by one.

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The main door is super safe haha.

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That’s the toilets :-)

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During we take pictures around Pita takes some energy :-)

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Pita told me that when Grandin and Kate stay here they go swimming in the river. Arg! I’m not sure I would try this.

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Can you see that little sculpture?

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Now? :-)


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Last step of our journey cycling around Ratchaburi area! We finally arrived at Pita’s friend’s house. That’s a shame because I don’t remember his name. This house is entirely made with mud.

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if I were not aware about this, I would not find out.

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That’s another one. I love the roof like this but apparently it has a short lifetime of 6 years. Then you must change it.

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Adobe house can have any shape.

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The jungle toilets, made in mud too.

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The livingroom and children room.

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Inside decorations.

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The Kitchen.

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The kitchen from another view angle.

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Pita and Stephane.

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When Pita’s friend heard that she planned to build her own Adobe house, he helped her and give her some advice. Later on, he decided to create his own library. He told us that he has a collection of 3000 books that don’t have any space to be stored. That’s now an old story.

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Pita tries to find out how to enter on the terrace.

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Still closed?

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Mister Adobe has a big property in the middle of palm tree plantations. He used to be a monk for 16 years until he decided that he had enough. Other monks started to treat him as “Arjan” which means “Teacher”. It’s like he woke up one day when the others have still things to learn and rules to follow. After that, he moved to India for a certain period of time to study the Buddhism “made in India”. Then he came back to Thailand and few years later he would work in Bangkok as life coach. He is now still doing the same thing but moved out of Bangkok to live in the nature. People come from Korea, China, Business men, Monks or Students come here for several days of training.

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Back to the visit :-) We are now inside of that called library which is still empty at the moment. The walls have been made by students during an exploration week of discovering the techniques of Adobe house.

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Let’s cook dinner! We are starving after an heavy day like today :-) From left to right: Pita’s friend, Pita and Stephane. They all work, I take pictures haha :-)

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Miam! Pita’s friend is vegetarian. The food looks delicious!

2 thoughts on “Ratchaburi, visiting fabric factory, brick factory and Adobe houses (50km)

  1. I will appreciate textiles more than before. Brick making is interesting as well.
    I like mud houses, they are very environmental and can be very creative.
    Anybody can make one if they have time and patience? (as long as they have a property)

  2. Eh bé voilà un post plus que riche. Riche de nouveautés et d’informations. A choisir je crois que je préfère l’usine textile “manuelle”, et quand on voit le résultat … C’est incroyable ! Quant aux petites maisons boue, sympathiques !!

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