My day as a rice farmer - by Osric aged 10

We arrived at the farm and they gave us these cone shaped rice farming hats made of bamboo fibres. Next we went to a room full of tools that they use for rice farming, which included traps that they use to catch the animals in the fields that eat the rice and sickles to cut the rice.

We then went to the paddy field to meet Rudolf the reddish buffalo ploughing the field, and some of our group got in and steered the buffalo. I was then allowed to ride Rudolf with my brothers, which was really fun.

We carried on to another field which had already been ploughed to plant some young rice plants that were about 20cm. I got in the really squidgy mud which went up to my knees and pulled around three seedlings from a big bunch and bent down and planted them underneath the mud. Rice needs to grow for about 5 months before it is ready for harvest.

We then went to another paddy field with rice that was ripe and we were shown how to cut the rice. I was allowed to have a go at cutting the rice with the sickle which would have been dangerous if you hadn’t been told what to do. We tied up the rice we harvested into bunches and took them to a rack, where it needs to dry for 24 hours.

The next stage was to take some bunches of rice that had already dried and smacking it against a wooden plank to beat all the rice out of the stalks. 

We then took the rice to a massive hammer which is used to pound the rice out of the husks, which was good exercise and my brothers and I all enjoyed this.

At the end of the experience we got to taste some sticky rice grown on the farm, and lots of different snacks made from rice which were delicious.   

This Rice Farming Experience is located a short distance outside Luang Prabang, and can be added to any of our tours of Laos.