A Family's Story - Part 1 of 3
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Alvin, Jin and Robyn Yong stumbled upon this eco-vacation idea in 2007...
The idea was hatched at Ban Yafu village during a 2-day trek in the hills of Chiang Rai in Dec 2007. Guided by our guide Kitt, we visited the Akha and Lahu hill tribes and learnt about their interesting but gradually vanishing cultures. We also enjoyed the beautiful and untouched sceneries of Thailand's northern most territories.
Kitt is from the Karen tribe whose parents are rice farmers. He grew up helping his father in the rice paddy so he knows the A-to-Z of growing rice. It then dawned upon us that as city folks, we knew so little about rice - a staple food that we grow up on. When we think about rice, we think of ready packs of it in supermarket or provision shop. There are probably few amongst us who are able to truly appreciate what lies behind every grain of rice: the nourishment provided by the natural elements - the sun, the rain and the earth - and the many months of labour and tender loving care by the farmers in the paddy.
We thought how wonderful it would be for us to experience the life of a rice farmer and learn first hand the planting and harvesting of rice in a paddy field. An after-dinner chit-chat with Kitt in Ban Yafu thus grew into a joint project for us in 2008.
Conceiving the plan
Incidentally, the sowing season in June and harvesting season in November fall right into the school holiday periods in Singapore. We decided to try out the experience for ourselves as a family in June and November 2008.
Jin and I were excited that this would not only be an interesting vacation for us, but it presented a golden opportunity to impart certain life lessons to our daughter, Robyn (9+), through demonstration and experiential learning. There are two important life lessons we thought were particularly appropriate:
"You reap what you sow" - the success of harvest depends upon the investment of quality time, effort and love upfront.
"Delayed gratification" - that patience and persistence are virtues to behold for the harvesting season is a different one from that of sowing.
Upon conceiving the idea, we planned the schedule with Kitt, and realized this back-to-nature experience in 2008:
- Part 2 - Rice Planting Experience - 8 to 14 June 2008
- Part 3 - Rice Harvesting Experience - 16 to 22 November 2008
We discovered that the rice farming experience with Kitt and his family was so precious and enriching that we decided to work with them to design a dedicated rice farming program as a form of eco-vacation to benefit other interested families, individuals, teachers and students. We launched this first-of-its-kind back-to-nature experiential eco-vacation program in 2009 through TigerlandRiceFarm.com
