Batik Factory

Day 9, January 19

Woke up quite early this morning. The dove first cooed at 4:15. I laid in bed until about 5:15 hoping I would go back to sleep but alas that was not to be. I got up dressed took the computer out into the garden/yard and did some reviews for TripAdvisor and wrote some on this document. Sipped some tea while I was writing. The rest of the crew showed up about 7:15. We had toast, tea, water and a lot of conversation and general fooling around. All was good with everyone. About 9 we will check out and begin the trek of the day.

And we are off to the batik factory. There were 2 men working on tracing the designs on fabric. That
didn’t look too difficult. It doesn’t look that way until you try and do it yourself. Of course how difficult the tracing is depends on how complex the fabric design turns out to be. Once the design is drawn then the design is waxed on the fabric. There were two women demonstrating this process. The wax is very hot and obviously liquid. The was is applied using a type of pen. The pen is dipped into the wax bowl. There is a tip on it that the wax flows from and onto the fabric. We were able to try this but it certainly isn’t easy. We asked one of the ladies showing us what to do how long it takes to learn. The obvious answer is it depends on the person learning and the complexity of the design. We were only able to wax the designs and we had a lot of help. Bonnie and Finanda collaborated on a piece and Rizcky and I did. All of us had help for the pros making it look good.

From the waxing the fabric goes on to dying. The wax design acts as a master for making all of the fabrics that design. This particular shop has 121 different designs. It was pretty amazing to watch these people do their work. The woman that was teaching us had been doing this work for 53 years. Her hands were steadier than mine and she was amazingly fast.

From there we went to find some lunch. We parked in front of a gelato shop. It was temping to go there right away but we decided to wait until we had lunch. We actually went to McDonald’s for lunch. And who wudda thought, McDonald’s is just as bad as in the US only it is more expensive here relatively. It’s not as cheap meal but it’s just as crummy. As we were walking back to the car and the gelato I developed that problem that I usually have when I travel. So our plans were abridged for the day. We checked into a hotel called The 101 and would be two nights.

By late afternoon I was feeling better. Having spent the afternoon watching TV and doing absolutely nothing.  Hope things are better tomorrow, tonight would be better.