"Ban Khom Kham" A Dance First, Then a Lantern.

You don’t see bamboo frames, or that warm glow of a finished lantern before something shows up first sound.

Drums and thumps, cymbals and sparkles, and a rhythm that seems like a community merit festival just starting out, one of joyful-feeling guest-comprehension.

The smiles on Ban Khom Kham’s courtyard come complete with a simple welcome dance unpretentious but so sincere you can feel it almost instantly: this is more than hospitality for “visitors” solo.

More like being embraced as family  as if you’ve come home and met everyone again.

Standing there thinking, I wondered: Well, maybe to be truly good, craft isn’t all about materials or techniques.

Maybe it starts with atmosphere and with the people who create it, who genuinely want someone with their own eyes to experience this.

But it is the welcoming music that gradually fades:

We enter the workshop space.

Long wooden tables are already arranged.

The geometric lantern frames are laid out in neat rows—some that are still skeletons but others partially covered—waiting for our gentle introduction of some 'life' into them, one step at a time.

Beside them there are finished lanterns.

That is when you realize: a lantern isn't made simply by "getting the job done."

It comes from paying attention to every line, every corner, every rhythm of the hands and until everything is in wholeness.

That’s when, too, the charisma of Ban Khom Kham establishes itself.

This isn’t exactly a place where you learn how to create something.

It’s a place that beckons you to slow down, which makes the small details of handcraft come alive again.

I felt the workshop doesn’t teach through long explanations when I started working.

It teaches as it shows and follows you step by step.

Assembling the frame, measuring angles, orienting corners, smoothing surfaces all of it demands a type of focus we never have in our daily life.

But we’re not doing it alone.

The workshop mothers  local women instructors wander from table to table, checking in softly.

They keep your hands steady when you need them and offer tips that make corners less prickly, surfaces cleaner and the whole piece more beautiful without you even noticing.

Above all, every instructor is an incredibly kind person.

When you erred, there is no “wrong.”

It’s just: “Make another try” and “This way will look nicer.”

They convey a light-hearted and safe tone for the entire room the experience of learning in an atmosphere that nurtures you, and where your pride can expand, alongside your work.

Quietly, something shifts when your piece begins to coalesce.

The lantern ends up no longer being “mere decoration,” it is a memory because you’ve seen it go from an empty frame to something that has pattern, dimension, light, shadow, and the layered stories of the makers threaded into every step.

In the larger context of creative city building, what Ban Khom Kham is doing is to make culture feel alive — and accessible.

Where craft is being confined to glass, where people only have to see it, here it’s done for real: Get hands on it, gain experience, walk away with a larger understanding of how much you have in place with your handmade object.

That’s where Ban Khom Kham makes art something other than an ornament or piece of art that looks pretty good in boxes.

Mae Thi, the owner of Ban Khom Kham, told me once:
"Someone repeated the same workshop three times... they missed it."

Some stories are longer, but there’s nothing that comes close to creating something with your own hands, not even only once.

If you want to “feel” Like this  from the welcoming sounds in the courtyard to the lantern light on the workshop tables follow my updates for the next class, or book a workshop with Ban Khom Kham.