Crossed off something from my Asia travel list today! Planting rice in a rice paddy! Ever since I bought my lovely and expensive rice paddy shoes I’ve been waiting for the time when I could do this. Unfortunately Bali disappointed me, but Thailand came through!
We went off with Pi Dao today to visit her family’s rice paddy which we would be helping plant. Pi Dao led us on her motorbike as the three of us biked to the bus station at 8:30am. Then we got on a bus and took that for about 45min to the village. Her step father picked us up in his pickup truck and we drove to her house arriving around 10. Evidently that is eating time, because lunch was then served, and despite the hearty breakfast of Nestlé Honey Crisps I’d had less that two hours before, you have to eat. So we had mango, papaya, sticky rice and two odd dishes I didn’t much care for. I stuck to the fruit and rice, which northern Thais eat with their hands, a skill I am growing slightly better at but is still really weird to me. Then off to the paddy!
Bouncing along a dirt road it was obvious the truck hadn’t been built for tall people as Andy’s head went smashing into the handle and I had to sit bent over since it was too short. As we walked up Pi Dao warned her family by yelling, “The white people are coming!” or at least that’s the translation Kayla gave us. Pi Dao then decided I wasn’t a white person, despite the fact I’m American, so she and Kayla argued about that for a while. Next thing you know we are wearing knee high boots, straw hats on our heads, sunscreen on our arms and wading through the paddy to get to rice seedling bundles we were going to plant in the ground. Everyone around us was covered head to tow, with only their eyes peeking out under huge hats. With marginal instructions we set to work, and I fell into a jerky rhythm of planting with the kind old man next to me.
He congratulated my work with the occasional “good” and “beautiful” in Thai, although Pi Dao only scored my skills at 85%. Nevertheless this beat Kayla’s 75% and Andy’s 72%, so they decided I could be a Thai daughter-in-law. Then we washed ourselves off in a nearly pond and took some really awkward standing pictures as boys and girls can’t touch each other.
We finished that off with another hand fed lunch of sticky rice, corn, papaya and tomato salad, a bunch of meat things, some vegetables and a suspicious leaf they had us chew for energy. Back to the grind we went and this time we pulled out the seedlings to be transplanted from the bed they had been growing in. I was able to become decent at this after learning that those in the driest part of the soil come out easiest. After gathering a handful of seedlings you rinse them in water, beat them against your boot to get the mud off, even them out on a handy movable table and then tie a piece of straw around it. Very interesting and ingenious process.
After hopefully helping more than harming the rice paddy we returned to Pi Dao’s family home for a nice bucket shower, more mango and papaya, and a nap! We were actually watching Thai boxing with the step-father, but they gave us pillows and next thing you know we were all asleep on the floor. I can’t even imagine letting foreign strangers into my home to feed, send to my field, feed again, bring back to my home, let them shower, feed again and then have them take a nap in my living room. Nevertheless Pi Dao’s family seemed happy enough and hopefully we didn’t offend them too much. Speaking of, it has recently come to my attention we are probably offending people left and right by doing things like pointing our feet at them, hanging our laundry wrong and not crouching when walking by a seated person. Too many rules!
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