Phang Nga Agriculture

Monday was a national Holiday that translates as Buddha Day so not much was going on. We visited a rubber farm. Rubber is a major crop here but most farms are relatively small and run by one family. The trees are tapped early in the morning since the rubber runs better in cooler temperatures. The first picture below is a rubber orchard and second one shows a family processing the day’s rubber. Later in the day we visited a farmers’ cooperative that processes the liquid rubber for its members. We also stopped at some small vegetable farms that grow chili peppers and cucumbers for the local market the third picture is of the cucumber field. Our next stop was at a Muslim community, in addition to producing rubber they also have a small hydroponic greenhouse and produce salad greens for the resorts in Phuket. The greenhouse is shown in the forth picture and was added after the tsunami to diversify their production. The same farmer took us by boat to see their aquaculture operation. They have frames that float in the mangrove forest area and there are mussels and oysters hanging below the frames. This is not a good time of year for this enterprise because there is too much fresh water mixed in with the sea water from all of the rains. The fifth picture is of some mussels. On our way back we stopped to talk to a sea gypsy. Sea Gypsies live in their boats. As you can see in the sixth picture he is cooking on board his small boat. Many sea gypsies were lost in the tsunami and they now have some houses on land but they prefer to be on their boats.

I realized that I haven’t shown any pictures of the resort I stayed at in Khao Lak. The first picture is of the nearly deserted beach and the second one is of the large, fancy pool complex that I had all to myself. The Khao Lak area to back to normal after the tsunami, now they just need the tourist to come back.