I decided after having worked 5 months at the beach resort, that I’ve had enough luxury and turned in my air-conditioned office job for a job harvesting rice. I can pretty safely tell you I won’t be making a career out of harvesting rice in this lifetime. With my sai in hand and encouraged by Ben, I set off for two back breaking days of helping my friend’s family harvest their rice fields. Under the hot midday heat, I needed a break more often than not, and by the end of the day I was exhausted, and an hour after that (like 6 o’clock in the evening), I felt like I needed to sleep. Needless to say, it was really hard work and I’ll never take another grain of rice for granted, ever again.
A typical rice farmer in rural northeastern Thailand can expect to be paid 150 baht a day (less than $3.75 USD) for eight hours of work. That’s eight hours of manually cutting rice stocks with little to no breaks in the hot Thai sun. Children start helping when they are young, and some of the grandmas were 50+ years, both groups of whom probably cut 20 times more rice than I managed, at my prime age of 23. Anyway, at least almost everyone got a laugh out of watching the foreigners look like fools.
Coincidentally, my friend Ben whom I attended University arrived in Thailand just as I was getting sick of my old job and as my Thai friend was heading home to Nongkhai. Anyway, our short home stay in rural Thailand was a blast, I’m sure there will be pictures soon.