Straw Hats

When other boys started to do other interesting things in the village, we would normally become copycats and follow what others are doing; whether it is worth it or not. One that interest me was the making of straw hats. All you need is a few bundles of straws bought from the shop, skills to weave them and 60 cents to have them sewn together at one of the tailor.

With multi coloured straws bought from any shop at Godong (costs 20 cents a pack of approximate 50 straws), we take three of those straws and weave them; just like making pony tails with the hair. It is an addictive activity. After a few packs of straws, we would have then woven straws as long as 30 to 40 feet (woven from threes). Depending on how you arrange the colour scheme, that would denote on how your hat will look like. Once we have 'enough' straws woven, we will send it to one of the shop at Godong to have it sewn together to make it into a hat. I had like 3 made over a period of 1 month. It costs 60 cents to have it sewn into a hat and once done, we would proudly wear them on our heads.

We wear them to the padi fields, to the school fields and while riding our bicycles to school of to places where we normally play. We would compare with each others' straw hats and if you are not satisfied with the pattern that you got, you can always buy more straws with different colour combinations; have it weaved and sewn. After a while, the craziness just died off and those hats then sits and collect dusts somewhere in the house or in the barn!