Gillian and I want to see more of PP so we decided to be tourists for a day. Silk Island is, guess what, an island in the middle of the river that is famous for it's silk!! I was expecting the usual silk farm with shed full of women working on the looms, worms and silk.

As usual I was wrong. The first surprise was the ferry, it was the one that takes the locals back and forth. It was a basic ferry that has a deck and nothing else. When we arrived at the “port” we chose to walk the last 50m as it was very steep and the Tuk Tuk driver said out!! It was literally a 3 minute journey. On the other side we went up another very steep slope and arrived in the countryside. It was going from city to country in less than 5 minutes.

On the way over we were targeted by a lovely young woman who asked us to visit her house. Well we said yes, off we went and of course she wanted to sell us silk. What I had failed to understand was that it really is Silk Island. She really did weave silk in the space under her house but so did almost everyone else. We watched them weave some silk, looked at some scarves and then left without buying anything. From then on we looked at the houses and under almost every house was a loom. (As it is still holiday, we didn't actually see anyone working on them)

After a tour of the island we went to the silk farm. It really is a community operation, run by the community for the community. They create the silk and then send it out to the whole community to be woven into material.

Lunch back in PP - every so often it is good to be a tourist. The other good thing is I have a tame Tuk Tuk driver who also has a Taxi, great for airport pick ups etc!!