James and Cat’s Jazz-tastic Journey!

(James thought of that title.  He’s just started his dive course and finished reading ‘From Russia With Love’… I bear no responsibility)

When we last left you we were on the stupidly expensive island of Koh Phi Phi, vowing that we would leave as soon as possible as it was killing our budget.  We ended up spending five nights there!
On our wanderings about town we happened across a rickety looking shack with a hand made sign outside declaring it to be a ‘Batik School’.  Not one to judge a book by it’s cover, I went in and got chatting to the guy who ran the place.  He was a young looking Thai guy (though that’s no indication of his age, he could have been 50, Thai people just seem blessed with youthful looks) called Bay, who’d lived on the island for ten years and had owned a batik shop before the tsunami, but had invariably lost everything when it struck.  He’d finally been able to get together the money to build a new shop and buy new equipment but he hadn’t been open very long, and apologised profusely for the lack of batik paintings on the walls and the and the general ‘rough and readiness’ of the place in general.  There was no need to apologise, however, as he’d already won me over! The batiks he did have up were amazing, and he was so friendly and helpful; when I was enquiring about a batik course, he said it was a one day thing, but if didn’t want to get up early I could spread it over two days, he also assured me that it didn’t matter whether or not I could draw because “if a picture is made with feeling it will be beautiful… drawing doesn’t matter, it’s feeling that matters”.  Excellent!

So, I arranged to go back the next day and start my course.  I spent the evening scrawling various designs in James’ notepad, constantly frustrated that I couldn’t draw the way I wanted, but I let myself be comforted by Bay’s words, and the next morning I went to his shop confident that I could make something awesome!

We started off with a cup of tea, a fag and chat about life in general.  Then, to business.  (I am now going to give you a blow by blow account of how a batik is made, whether you want to know or not!)  Firstly you take a plain white piece of cotton and pull it taut over a wooden frame.  To make it stick Bay used the technique of melting wax over the frame, leaving it to dry, then placing the material over and using a coin to rub the cotton onto the wax and make it stick.  Then comes the drawing!  You sketch out your design in pencil (a rubber can be used so it didn’t matter about mistakes, thank god!) making sure not to press too hard or you can still see it when you’ve finished.
Right, ok, I was thinking, this isn’t too hard… then comes the wax!  Bay used a small gas canister with a grill on top to heat his pan of candle wax until it was runny and smoking.  The tool used to apply the wax, was simple yet effective.  A long handled device with a hollow ball at one end with a hole in the top (into which you pour the wax) which tapers into a narrow tube which is used like the nib of a pen.  Not a great description I know so I found some pictures  These are the closest I can find to what we were using…. though I’m sure there’s less primitve devices out there… but I quite liked primitive!
Then it’s just a question of filling up the ball and drawing over the sketch in wax, being careful not to spill any drops onto the picture (I managed to do this twice… I had a really shaky hand!) and taking care to empty and refill the ball every couple of lines drawn, in case the wax drys and clogs up the applicator.  It took me forever! I was so slow, and my hand was shaking like that of a recovering alcoholic!  But Bay was very patient, and said my all mistakes could be fixed, and considering I was new at this, I was doing very well.
The wax only takes about five minutes to dry and then you can start painting.  This is the fun bit.. the paints are water based.  From what Bay was saying, he imports them in powder form from Malaysia (I think he said they come from some kind of tree) and they cost him 15 quid a kilo!  He then does some witchcraft with water and boling and voila.. there is paint!  There’s just so much you can do with them… depending on how much water you use it changes the shade of the colour.. if you put water on the cotton first it gives it a pale eerie look, and if you drop small clumps of salt on the paint when it’s still wet, it makes an almost cloudlike pattern.  I should probably explain, that it’s not really painting, you just daub a line of paint on and watch it spread across the cotton, filling up all the gaps to the wax.  It’s so cool.
Then it’s just a question of waiting for the paint to dry, applying the fixing agent (so you can wash it without the colours running), then putting newspaper over it and ironing the wax off.  Leaving you with crisp white lines and bold blocks of colour. 

I had so much fun doing it, and I am quite pleased with the final result.. it may not be perfect but I did put a lot of feeling into it!

So I spent two days doing that, and eventually we left Koh Phi Phi, getting a boat over to Krabi, then a bus to Surat Thani.  We spent one night in Surat Thani, to break up the journey, then the next morning got a boat over to Koh Tao.

This is where I end my part of the story… tune in in the next couple of days to hear James’ enthralling tales!

Much Love x

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 25th, 2008 at 7:27 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.