Rice Harvest: 4,000 Islands

A glimpse into the rice harvest of 4,000 Islands, Laos in October, 2014.

4,000 Islands, or Si Phan Don in Lao, is a a river archipelago in Southern Laos at the Cambodian border. While there may not actually be 4,000 islands, there are a lot of them, many uninhabited, really small, or even covered in water when the Mekong River floods.

Currently the only islands with tourism infrastructure, such as accommodation and restaurants, are Don Det, Don Khong and Don Khon. 4,000 Islands is pretty out of the way, so it sees less travelers than Luang Prabang or Vang Vieng, but still gets a steady stream of those looking to relax, cruise on bikes, take chill boat rides and watch sunsets from riverside bars. If you didn’t already get the picture, everything is slow here, and chill, very chill.

What immediately fascinated me about this place was the intimate look into the lives of Laotian locals. We were there in the low season, so it helped that there weren’t many tourists and locals were more likely to be going about their lives outside of the tourist industry. We saw kids going to school, swimming in the river, families gathering in their yards, fixing their homes and businesses, tending to livestock and harvesting rice.

We happened to arrive at the start of the rice harvest, and having a close look into this was incredible. We all eat rice, but how many of us know how it actually gets to our table?

While in Japan working on a farm a couple months earlier I had planted rice, but didn’t get to see it mature and harvest, so catching the final days of the process was helpful for completing the story for me.  

A rice harvester almost hidden in fields of crops
close up of rice with water droplets

Due to a small percentage of irrigated areas in Laos, most rice production takes place in the rainy season. Also, 80% of rice produced is glutinous rice, or sticky rice, which requires less water.

Items from rice harvesters, water jug, hats, sickle
A farmer's supplies for the day
dried fish hanging in rice field
Local fish drying out in the sun

There are many of these shaded structures scattered throughout the rice paddies that farmers use to escape the mid-day sun, cook lunch and rest.

Shrine in rice field
groups of yellow rice bundles in field
Water Buffalos eating in rice paddy
Rice drying in front of Laotian home
Rice drying in the sun, waiting to be threshed
Rice being dried under shade structure next to home with 2 school children
School children about to leave for school and a pile of rice drying alongside the laundry
Rice being dried on the first floor of a home
To avoid flooding many buildings here are built on stilts, and also provide a place for storage and shade

Collecting dried grains of rice that are ready for consumption, unless they are going to be milled and turned into white rice, which they most likely are.

Piles of harvested rice waiting to be threshed
A local threshing rice surrounded by bundles of rice

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