When you think about farming and Thailand the logical conclusion usually ends up with visions of rice, but when you drive through the provinces of Samut Sakhon & Samut Songkhran your logic just might be challenged. When I was heading to Damnoen Saduak floating market in April I settled in for what I knew was going to be a long ride full of bland scenery, about 50 kilometers South West of Bangkok along Rama II Road something made me sit up and take notice.
On both sides of the road for as far as the eye could see were flooded fields. I knew it was too early for rice planting and some of the fields looked almost white under the water while others had men who seemed to be raking white mounds into perfect lines throughout the field. I tries to coax the answer out of my driver but he couldn’t explain in English so I was left with my own ideas until I got back to the hotel later that day.
When I showed my find to Pookie and asked what was going on without blinking she picked up a salt shaker from the table and poured some salt into my hand. Something so simple yet my mind couldn’t figure it out.
After looking at the pictures for a while and doing a little research I realized I had hit the mother load of Thai ingenuity. Not only are the Thai’s using one natural resource to manufacture another, they are doing it in an absolute green way.
These fields are actually large shallow flat pools that have the earth tamped down tight to hold the water that is pumped into them from the Gulf of Siam or the Mae Khlong River, both of which have a high salt content. The water is pumped into the pools by means of a wooden paddled conveyor belt driven by small windmills scattered throughout the fields. Once the water is pumped into the shallow pools then it’s a two month wait while the sun does it’s work removing the salt from the water.
At the end of two months the pools are drained of the majority of their water and the residual salt that came to rest on the bottom of the pools is then raked up into piles to be collected. The collected salt is then stored in small warehouses located at the edges of the fields where it is then packaged for sale.
Every couple of miles along the road are small stands selling the sea salt in bags as small as one kilo all the way up to 50 kilo sacks. The salt farms operate for six months of the year starting at the end of rainy season in November and continuing until the end of April just before the rains return.
Most crops need water but this is one crop that relies on the sun and I can only guess that early rains would be bad for business.
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Talen this is something that has interested me in the past. Ban Dung which is in Udon Thani Province is very heavily into salt farming but until I read this post I didn’t know the process.
As you approach Ban Dung there are loads of roadside vendors selling bags of salt and on each side of the road are the watery salt farms.
I’m not sure what type of salt it is but my guess would be rock rather than table salt. Wilai says she sometimes buys some and puts it down the toilet…strange but it either acts as some kind of fungus type killer or as a water softener, probably the former.
Martyn´s last blog ..Udon Thani – Shake It and Wake It
From what I gathered Martyn this salt is used mainly for cooking but not positive.
Talen, like you when I first visited Samut Sakhon I wondered what the white fields were. A little investigation led me on the same route.
As you say a great way to use natural resources-not a plastic bag in sight!
I haven’t photographed them so its nice to see your excellent pictures-did you take any of the small windmills which would look great against the blue sky and white salt?
Mike´s last blog ..Across the Universe-A Trip Down Memory Lane
Mike, I thought I had some photos of the windmills but I couldn’t find them and the only picture I had of the wooden conveyor belts didn’t turn out.
I’m actually amazed that these pictures turned out as most were taken at 50mph…although a few shots happened as we slowed to a stop for a checkpoint.
Talen , thank you sooo much for the details of the process of making the salt , I never knew it was done that way, and the pictures are great , we rode by the salt farming one time , but I was taking a nap and didn’t know what I was looking at and had forgotten about it till your post , now I MUST go back and look and take pictures for myself . thanks again. Malcolm
malcolm´s last blog ..WHEN IS A HAIRCUT MORE THAN JUST A HAIRCUT????
Malcolm, there’s a good chance with more people writing about it and showing pictures that it could be the next huge tourist attraction…yeah, probably not but interesting to us non the less.
Talen, when I first read your post I thought that you must have amazing control over time; stopping at each and every subject of interest while cruising through Thailand.
Time is a problem that I am often faced with, because if I stopped at everything I took a fancy to in Thailand, I’d never get anywhere.
But now I read that instead of controlling time, you have fantastic control over your camera while riding by at 50mph.
Sigh. I have yet to acquire that talent. Most of my drive-by photos are strings of colour, reminiscent of the ’70s.
Catherine´s last blog ..An Easy Way to Learn Foreign Languages: Part One
Cat, I would explain how to take pictures from a moving vehicle but I haven’t a clue…it’s just luck. Whenever I take pics from a car more than half usually turn out the others are just nice blurs.
Great post, I love it when things are covered in such detail!
Bangkok´s last blog ..bangkok: Salt farming in Thailand http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49540