Kampong Cham rice fields

Gideon my tuktuk driver friend called and told me that the rice was just about to be harvested and the government was starting to rebuild the bamboo bridge. I took a bus to Kampong Cham to photograph rice fields. I arranged with Gideon to meet me at the bus station. I was surprised the bamboo bridge was being rebuilt now because the water in the Mekong is still deep. I thought they would wait until the river went down before rebuilding. We went to the river where we could overlook the bridge site. There was about 100 meters of the bridge started out from the far side. Gideon said that they would finish the bridge in the next two weeks.

We took Gideon's tuktuk to the where I had taken many photos of the rice paddies. A tuktuk is not a bad ride on a smooth road but on the dirt road in the country it is a very different ride. I felt like my head would snap off.

We reached full grown rice, WOW! I did not know how tall rice grew!

It was good timing to photograph the rice, it was just before it turned golden. I tried to take photos of the rice cornels on the top of the stalk. I would get situated with a good background and then the wind would blow. I tried numerous time but never got a good shot.

The family below was headed home at the end of a work day.

We found a young woman harvesting rice that had been blown over by a heavy rain and wind. She was using a typical rice harvesting tool. The tool allows her to pull the rice up and then cut it. She would cut enough for a bundle which is about six inches in diameter, she would then cut just a few strands of the stalk, make this into a small rope and then tie the bundle of rice with the rope. 

Farming rice is a back breaking living, it is planted bent over pushing the shoots into the ground, and it is harvested bent over cutting it off near the ground and then picked up and tied off. After it is bundled, the bundles are taken to a thrashing machine that separates the grain from the stalk.