“Go ahead and have some tea. Keow will be with you soon. In the meantime, you can take a hat.”
I stared at a row of conical farmer hats made from dried stalks of grass. Salakot as they were known in the Philippines, but I had no clue what they were called in Laos.
I stared out over the rice fields. The sky was gray, flirting with rain. My vantage points allowed me to see all the different plots on this farm. The amount of distance I could see seemed at odds with the quietness of the place. People told me Luang Prabang was a cozy and quiet Lao town. I just didn’t expect it to be so literally quiet.
Eventually, Keow did arrive where I was waiting. I had signed up for a hands-on rice farming tour to get to know this staple of Lao life.
“It’s a good hat for you,” Keow greeted me.
“It’s familiar, from the Philippines.”
“So you are from the Philippines.”
“Yes.”
It’s not uncommon for me to go with this answer when traveling. I generally prefer the set of questions that follow this piece of information.
“Okay, let’s go to the fields for the tour,” Keow led. “Traditionally, cultivating rice has thirteen steps. But we know that is an unlucky number so we added a fourteenth step. Eating the rice.”
He led me on to the plot of land where we would be working. At this point I had to literally step in the mud. I slipped out of my shoes and socks. I was glad I opted to wear shorter shorts that day, not always my travel go-to.
Stepping into the mud was, dare I say, fun? The soft earth had been taking in a moderate rain all morning, ready to receive rice seeds and farming feet. It had the color of coffee and the texture of bread flour, squelching wetly as I stepped in. Instant foot massage.
Keow walked me through the early steps of the process. Identifying which rice grains would be ideal to plant. Softly embedding them into the soil. Sticking in the sprouted stalks like performing a hair transplant.
I’d like to think that this all came pretty naturally for me. At least until we got to the part where I was supposed to slice the rice stalks for harvest. He handed me an old jagged sickle, the symbol of so many revolutions and ideologies returned to its state as a very practical, physical, everyday item. I pulled the ready rice stalks taut and tried to slice through.
At first a hacking motion with the sickle seemed like the classic move, but my first few attempts didn’t quite make the cut. I switched to more of a slice. Increased the friction between blade and grass. The approach was better, but it was still shaky.
“You are from the Philippines?”
It felt like convenient timing for Keow to call me out on my oversimplified backstory. What Filipino goes to Laos to learn how to farm rice?
Well, now we can say there’s been at least one.
Check out my rice farming adventure on my latest video: