I’ve been to Malaysia twice already but I just failed to buy one of its prized coloured and patterned batik and songket cloths. To those unfamiliar, a batik is, according to the Wikipedia, a cloth that traditionally uses a manual wax-resist dyeing technique. I own several pieces of batiks from Indonesia and Philippines (which I use to have an outfit made for me, some for making  bags, etc.) but none yet from Malaysia. So a friend sent this postcard to me. At the moment this is the closest thing I have to owning a Malaysian batik.

 Songket is a common to Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, that is hand-woven in silk or in cotton with intricate gold or silver patterns. Songket is a very delicate (and expensive) material that weavers are trained well for careful material handling. Both songket-weaving and batik printing are important cottage industries along the east coast of Malaysia. I hope I could go back to Malaysia again and be able to see how a songket and a batik cloth are made, and come home a proud owner of these clothing  materials.  For the stamp used: