Each country in the world has its own typical dress and costumes reflected throughout the process of formation and development. Cambodia, a Southeast Asia country, which is famous for many temples and pagodas, also has sampot as its national clothes.

Cambodian Traditional Dress: Sampot

Sampot was originated from Fuman reign when all Cambodian people had to wear sampot in suggestion of Chinese envoy under the request of the Cambodian king. Since this era, silk weaving has played an important role in Cambodian’s longstanding culture. Especially, they possessed their own unique and cross weaving techniques. These silk sampot styles are used as household items in every family, wedding, funeral, and temple as well.

Sampot is a traditional cloth of Cambodian, which is relatively the same as the Thai or Laotian traditional costumes. However, each countries’ one has own unique features. With Cambodian’s one, sampot is a long, rectangular piece of cloth wrapped around the waist covering the abdomen, leg and is tied at the front of the abdomen. In the upper body, Cambodians traditionally use Chang Pong – a cloth of any color crossing across one shoulder and covering the woman’s chest. They just display a little belly, which shows the charm of Asian women in general and Cambodian women in particular.

Different Sampot Types of Cambodian

Cambodian traditional dress – sampot, is divided into various kinds with distinctive characteristics. There are some most popular ones shown following:

Sampot Chang Kben

Sampot Chang Kben is like a rectangular trouser with the length of about 2.7 meters and the width of 1 meter. People wearing this cloth wrap around the waist, which is steadily tied to a small button in front of abdomen by a metal belt. Almost all Cambodian women wear sampot chang kben on special events and occasions.

 Sampot Phamuong

Sampot Phamuong is a textile fabric loved by many Cambodian people. Nowadays, there are 52 different colors of this cloth style. In many cases, luxurious sampot phamuong model needs using up to 22 different needle stitches, together with the variety of flower – leaf patterns and geometry.

Sampot Hol

Sampot Hol is another famous cloth with 2 basic types: a category is a skirt wrapped in the normal way and another type is a crosslinked type. This type of sampot is affected by the patola silk from India, then, through development of patterns and arts, sampot hol style has become more delicate. This sampot type includes 200 patterns with colors: yellow, red, brown, blue and green in the style of leaves and animals.

Besides, there are many other types of sampot which are less popular but still bring their own uniqueness such as Sampot Tep Apsara, Sampot Samloy, Sampot Chorabap, Sampot Sang, Sampot Seai Sua, Sampot Lberk, Sampot Alorgn.

If you are going to have tours in Cambodia, spend a little bit time trying this kind of dress of Cambodian. It will be fantastic and exciting!