Sonia Pressman Fuentes

From Eat First -- You Don't Know What They'll Give You,  The Adventures of an Immigrant Family and Their Feminist Daughter by Sonia Pressman Fuentes

Thai Silk

In 1977, Michael Bennett asked me to go to Southeast Asia for three weeks. Michael was the representative of USIA (the United States Information Agency) with whom I had dealt in the past. On several occasions before a foreign trip, I had called him and asked whether USIA needed a speaker in the country of our destination. USIA had an American Specialist program that sponsored speeches and meetings by Americans with certain specialties abroad. Under this program, I had given speeches on the women's rights movement in the US and met with leaders of business, the professions, government, labor, academia, and women's groups in Fukuoka and Tokyo, Japan, and Madrid, Spain. On those occasions, I had received an honorarium and travel expenses for the one or two days I devoted to USIA business. This trip, however, was totally for USIA and all my expenses would be underwritten by the agency. My husband, Roberto, would go with me, and we would be going to Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

Our first stop was Thailand and our first city there was Bangkok. There were beautiful temples and other sights to see, but it was a crowded, polluted, traffic-choked city. We had been told to look for Thai silk, and there was at least one Thai silk store on just about every block. It seemed as if we went to every one of them, but I could not find anything to my liking. Thus, we were glad when it was time to leave and fly to Chiang-Mai in the northern interior.

Chiang-Mai, a city we'd never previously heard of, turned out to be our personal Shangri-la. It was enchanting, with native markets, lovely temples, working elephants, and hill tribes. On our first afternoon, I addressed the Rotary Club, the first woman ever to do so. That evening, Hugh Ivory, my USIA contact, arranged a small dinner party for us. At the table were Hugh and his Japanese wife, Roberto and I, another USIA representative, and a Thai woman. She appeared to be in her 60's and had the proverbial inscrutable Oriental appearance. She was seated at my immediate right, but I had no idea what to say to her. I finally selected the most innocuous ice-breaker I could think of.

"I'm staying at a lovely hotel," I said. "The Rincome."

"I'm glad you like it," she answered, handing me her card. "I own it." Her name was Khun (comparable to Miss, Ms., Mrs. or Mr. in the U.S.) Chamchit Laohavad. Her card stated that she was the owner and managing director of Chiang-Mai's three-level indoor shopping center, owner and director of a finance company, vice president of the Tourist Association of Northern Thailand, honorary secretary of a leprosy foundation, honorary manager of a school for the deaf, and an associate judge of the juvenile court. She later told us that one of her brothers designed the shopping center that she owned and was responsible for the establishment of a ceramics factory; her sister owned the Old Chiang-Mai Cultural Center, which seated two hundred for dinner and had daily performances of traditional Thai dances; and her mother owned a travel agency. Khun Chamchit told me of the good fortune of Thai women who, she said, had complete equality with men.

The next morning, she was at our hotel, with her car and driver, to take us on a tour of the city. As I was about to step into the car, she cautioned me against sitting in the front. Women in Thailand did not sit in front with the driver, she said. Only men did that. When I questioned her about this in view of her claim of total equality the night before, she said women didn't want to sit in front anyway. At the ceramics factory that had been established through the encouragement of her brother, young women and men did different work for different pay. Only the men, for example, were assigned the more strenuous work at the potter's wheel, for which they received higher pay. When I asked Khun Chamchit about this, she said she didn't want girls doing this kind of heavy work.

I told her of my inability to find Thai silk that appealed to me in Bangkok. "You want Thai silk?" she asked. "Come with me." She took me to a factory owned and managed by a princess, the granddaughter of the last ruling prince of Chiang-Mai and the widow of a prince. The princess had six women working for her at individual looms. She supplied this handwoven Thai silk to the Queen of Thailand and the Queen of England. And that day also to me.

Then Khun Chamchit took me to her dressmaker, who created the traditional Thai costume for me from the fabric I had bought: a beautiful, black long skirt, with pink, aqua, and purple embroidery at the hem and a matching pink long-sleeved form- fitting jacket. It hangs in my closet today and reminds me of Chiang-Mai, Khun Chamchit, and the princess who sold me silk.

Copyright © 1978 by Sonia Pressman Fuentes

Reprinted with permission from the author.

Notes about "Thai Silk"

This piece was previously published in the Common Law Lawyer and on the websites of iagora.com, whispersmagazine.com, and most recently at BankgokAtoZ.com (September 2001). "Thai Silk" is an excerpt from Ms. Fuentes' memoir, Eat First -- You Don't Know What They'll Give You, The Adventures of an Immigrant Family and Their Feminist Daughter, published in the U.S. by Xlibris Corp. (xlibris.com) and in the U.K. by Planetree Publishing, Ltd. (planetree.com).