Rice Farming

This interactive experience teaches you the traditional methods of growing, harvesting and processing rice at a picturesque organic farm located on the outskirts of Luang Prabang. The farm is a community project run by a group of families who supply the local restaurant and hotel trade with their rice, herbs and vegetables. The experience starts at a small museum, where your guide will talk through their collection of ancient tools and implements used for rice farming, which included animal traps, sickles and hoes. You will then try your hand at each of the stages involved in the production of rice, which include ploughing a paddy with the help of a buffalo, planting seedlings in knee-deep mud, slashing the rice stalks and the energetic process of extracting the rice from their kernels.  Your efforts will be rewarded with a feast of traditional snacks made from rice. This rice farming experience will give you a new appreciation for rice, and admiration for the rural people of Lao, many of whom to this day continue to harvest rice without modern machinery.

For a first-hand account of a day's rice farming please read this blog post.