Many of the things we see in our shops at home and take for granted every day are made in South East Asia. Although we see them in the shops and on the market stalls we never really know where they come from or what actually goes into making any of those things.
Here in Siem Reap there is something called Artisans Angkor which is a Cambodia hand craft centre dedicated to keeping the traditional art forms alive. The centre is run in a charity style without charging anything for entry but producing high quality hand made souvenirs that then help pay the centres running costs. One of the things that they produce there is 
hand made silk that is then made into various different garments or products to we decided to go and take a look on the tour to see what it was all about.
The tour was really interesting as it showed you how they harvest the silk worms now is special rooms, bringing the leaves from the fields to them instead of having them wild in the fields. From there the worms eat and get larger until they are full and then create a cocoon in order 
for them to transform into moth like creatures. These moths then breed, lay eggs and die in a lifecycle that only lasts about 40 days. The cocoons are made of raw silk and it is these that are then harvested to get what is later processed and refined into the silk thread that we then know and recognise.
The craziest thing about what we saw in my mind was the women working the looms to actually weave the silk material. The machinery involved was all wooden but actually quite complex in how it worked and enable them to weave the silk threads into cloth. 
Since it was all being done by hand though the time taken was quite high and apparently the women working on the plain fabric could produce 4 meters per day and the women on the patterned 1 meter per day. There was also someone working on a far more complicated design that involved coloured threads that had been dyed in a certain order so that when they were weaved it would produce a full pattern and design as if someone had drawn it on. The level of patience involved to get all of that right was really high, 
especially since it took them 1 months just to get the threads prepared in the first place!
So next time you see a handmade silk item for sale somewhere and scoff at the price they are asking for it just realise the amount of work that has probably gone into making it by someone who is an expert at what they do.