Herding Ducks

Herding Ducks in Kanchanaburi

On one of my daily bike rides, along my usual route, I saw hundreds of ducks being herded through a recently harvested rice field. Below is a video I took of them. If you’re on Facebook, you’ve seen the videos already, but read on, there’s more to the story than the pictures can tell on their own.

It was surprising to see all those ducks being driven through the field, but I didn’t give it too much thought. Two days later, I saw the ducks swimming in the canal that goes along the road.

Again, I took a few pictures, then rode on to finish my bike loop. Passing the same spot again about ten minutes later, I saw no ducks at all in the canal. Hmm, where had they gone? And a couple of days after that, I saw the ducks in the canal again. Their herders were with them, one wading behind the ducks, one walking along the side of the canal that they didn’t want the ducks to climb out of, and one to head them off at the point where they needed to cross the road, as you see below. The video shows at most only about a fourth of the ducks in the herd.

The man you see at the end of the video asked me in Thai where I was from. “America,” I said, and he said something like “You don’t have ducks there?” as if he couldn't think why anyone would want to take pictures of ducks. I started to say, um, yes, my parents had ducks on our farm . . . , but the man was already gone – with hundreds if not thousands of ducks to keep track of, he had other things to do besides chat up random foreigners.

By now I was quite curious about the ducks. I sent the above video to my friends Judy and Fizz in Germany, who said they look like Laufenten (Runner Ducks). These ducks get their name from the way they run more or less upright, rather than waddling like other ducks. Judy wrote that Runner Ducks are popular with gardeners because they eat the slugs that destroy all your plants and are so hard to get rid of.  Click! The part about slugs reminded me that when I was in Sukothai province some months ago, our tour guide told us about efforts to control slugs and snails in rice paddies by importing storks to eat them. It was time to do some research.

Internet searches for “Runner Ducks in Thailand” and “Duck Farming in Thailand” turned up quite a few YouTube videos similar to mine, showing large numbers of ducks crossing roads or grazing in rice paddies. I also found a rather scary report on the role of ducks in spreading the bird flu virus (yik), information about the history of duck farming in Southeast Asia, and an interesting article titled “Nomadic Duck Farming.” Here is the gist of of what I learned about ducks and rice fields.

Increased rice production in Thailand (three harvests a year rather than two, more land opened up to rice farming) had unintended consequences, including habitat loss for natural predators of slugs and other pests, which in turn led to greater numbers of pests.  So, some farmers revived an ancient tradition, "rice duck farming." Having ducks eat the pests is less expensive than, and ecologically preferable to using pesticides. An article on the Greenpeace website describes the 7,000-year-old practice of "rice duck farming" in China, where ducks were raised on rice paddies -- raising ducks and growing rice were integrated. See: http://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/news/blog/how-ancient-chinese-farmers-had-it-right-all-/blog/38534/

"Nomadic Duck Farming" as described in the article so titled seems to be a modern adaptation of rice duck farming, in which duck herders literally move with their ducks from farm to farm, staying only about ten days in each location. These "nomad farmers" are actually contract laborers employed by thao kae, wealthy men who finance the project and keep most of the profits. The "nomad farmers" get ducklings and a few weeks’ worth of feed from a supplier, who also provides them with a small living allowance and trucks for transporting the ducks. I didn't find information on how fees for the ducks' services are collected from the rice farmers.

The herders take the ducks to forage for slugs, insects, and rice that may still be on the ground at the farms where they stop. Runner Ducks are very popular for this purpose, not only because they prefer slugs to most other foods, but also because they are prolific egg-layers. The herders sell the duck eggs and, eventually, the ducks themselves to earn money to pay back the thao kae at the end of a cycle. It's not hard to see how the herders could get trapped in a cycle of always owing the thao kae.

My best guess is that the men herding ducks in the videos I took are traveling with their ducks, like the man interviewed in the article “Nomad Duck Farming,” who travels with 8,000 ducks, and several family members to help him. Here is the link to the full article.

http://www.worldpoultry.net/PageFiles/32317/001_boerderij-download-WP6225D01.pdf

My searches didn't turn up any information on how widespread the practice of "nomad duck farming" may be in Thailand or other Southeast Asian countries. The man quoted in the article said there were 20 such farmers "in Sena alone" (Sena is a district in Ayuthaya province). If the same is true in other provinces, there could be thousands of them.

The practice of nomadic duck farming may eliminate or reduce rice farmers' dependence on pesticides, but has some obvious drawbacks. It's clearly a difficult life for the duck herders as well as for their ducks, who must be terrified to be packed into and out of trucks every couple of weeks, not to mention the stress of having to navigate new terrain each time they are moved. Not least, transporting the ducks over longer distances fosters the spread of disease. Sadly, concern for ethical and humane treatment of animals too often takes a back seat in developing countries.

I was surprised to learn, from German websites forwarded to me by Judy, that the idea of short-term use of Runner Ducks to rid people's gardens of slugs had won a Henry Ford environmental prize in Austria in 1999. The project, called "Rent-an-Ent" (rent-a-duck) quickly came under fire for a number of reasons, notably mistreatment of the ducks. As far as I know, "Rent-an-Ent" was not done with huge numbers of ducks as described in "Nomad Duck Farming;" rather, a few ducks (usually two) would be rented to a gardener for a few weeks or months at a time.

In closing, let me add that I haven’t seen the ducks for a few days, so I’m guessing they have been moved on to the next farm. Now, when I see a truck loaded with the type of crates used to transport poultry, I wonder if those are "my" ducks.

27 January 2015

Update 31 January 2015. I spoke too soon. Late this afternoon I saw the ducks again, in one of the fields where I first photographed them a couple of weeks ago.  Here they are, or rather, some of them.

As you can see, the herders are standing at the edge of the field to keep the ducks from going into the next field, which appears to have been more recently planted than this one. It still has standing water and the rice plants are more delicate-looking than in the field the ducks are in. Everyone seems happy and the ducks are busy eating, which is their job, after all. -- Anyway, I shouldn't have been so quick to conclude that these are nomad ducks. Or maybe they are, but their period of work in the fields I've seen them in lasts longer than two weeks. I'll see what else I can learn about ducks and rice fields in Thailand before I leave in two months.  Stay tuned!

Disclaimer: The content of this blog is mine personally. It does not represent the opinions of the Peace Corps, the US government or its employees, or anyone but me.

Da Lat: Scenic Highlands

Da Lat: Scenic Highlands

From Mui Ne we went to Da Lat, another popular tourist destination but inland, in the southern part of the Central Highlands. Because of the higher elevation, it has a cooler climate. French influence is evident in the architecture.

On the way to Da Lat, I took some pictures of the landscape we were passing. The plants you see in the picture below look like cartoon plants that you hide under as a disguise, the better to sneak up on someone. But in fact they are dragon fruit bushes. The dark shadow is, of course, our bus -- not a sleeper bus this time.

Before long we started to see mountains that reminded me of the northern part of Thailand.

 Da Lat. The city of Da Lat has some beautiful views and neighborhoods.

There is a large, bustling night market. Most pictures I took at night didn't turn out.

Roses. We booked a tour just for the four of us, with a driver and a guide who spoke excellent English. We visited several family businesses, the first of which was a rose farm. Our guide explained that all the work is done by family members – planting and caring for the rose bushes, cutting the flowers and transporting them, binding them into bundles for sale, and selling. Thus, their roses are much fresher than flowers that are flown in, and cost less.

 Coffee farms. It was a beautiful day, cool and sunny. On our way to the next crop, coffee, we stopped for a photo-op.

Me, Tricia, Angela, Katherine

 Our guide described the stages of coffee cultivation.

Coffee beans on tree

 It surprised me to see coffee beans spread out to dry right beside the road, in people’s yards or wherever there was space.

Weasel coffee. The alleged superiority of weasel coffee, made from coffee beans that have been eaten by weasels, is, er, hard to swallow. The coffee beans pass through the weasels' digestive systems and are excreted, then extracted from the dried weasel doo-doo, cured and roasted. Here you see one of the weasels, and a photo of weasel droppings spread out to dry in the sun.

Of curse, after all this extra work, the weasel coffee is more expensive than other coffee. I politely declined a taste of weasel coffee when it was offered and did a little research later. Some sources said that weasel coffee is not worth the extra money unless the droppings are collected from free-ranging weasels, who eat only the best-quality coffee beans. The caged weasels must eat whatever beans they are given. If this sounds like a scam to you, I admit that the same thought crossed my mind as well. However, if you have had a positive experience of weasel coffee, please let the rest of us know.

The people who make the weasel coffee also make rice wine and snake wine.

Cooking the mash for rice wine

Wine stored in plastic jugs

Big snake in big jar of wine

The wine I tasted was very strong, more like schnapps. I didn't sample the snake wine. It’s not clear whether the snake is a vital ingredient of the wine or just window-dressing, like the mythical tequila worm. You can buy little souvenir bottles of snake wine, with small snakes in the bottles, at many markets.

Silk farm. Next we went to a silk farm where, again, every step of the process is done there, at the site.

Silkworms

We watched women making the silk thread and working at the looms, as seen in the two videos.

We then spent about an hour in their store, buying silk scarves and shawls. To my chagrin, I have no pictures of us doing that.

Waterfall. After the silk farm we took a detour to Elephant Waterfall and clambered around it for a while. Here are a few photos.

Temple. Finally, we visited a Buddhist temple. It is very different from Buddhist temples we see in Thailand, as you can tell by comparing the Buddha figures in the picture below with Buddha figures in Thailand seen in previous posts. To cite just the most obvious differences, their clothes are very colorful, their faces are less stylized, and their hair looks smooth, unlike the tight curls seen on so many Buddha figures in Thailand.

The three Buddha figures above are seated front and center in the temple, at the space we would think of as the altar.  The figures below are on either side of them.

From what I understand, this bodhisattva “with a thousand arms” (actually, it’s usually 18 arms) is the most compassionate of the bodhisattvas. Having many arms enables him to reach out and help more people. Sometimes "he" may also be represented as female.

The nagas guarding the stairs outside the temple look different from the ones in Thailand too – their heads are larger and they seem more active, ready to charge. The Thai nagas do look very fearsome but don't give the impression that they are coiled to strike.  Just my opinion.

 Outside we also saw a couple having their pre-wedding pictures taken and chatted briefly with the groom's mother who was waiting for them..

Notice that they are walking across coffee that has been spread out to dry!  Makes you glad that there’s a roasting process before the coffee comes to us, doesn’t it.         

The temple visit was the end of our tour. The rest of our time in Vietnam was spent exploring the city, sampling street food, and of course shopping. There is one street, near the center of town, where virtually every other shop has a sign saying that it was endorsed by the popular travel guide Lonely Planet -- sort of like a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, but for tourists.

After one more five-hour sleeper bus ride back to Ho Chi Minh, we flew back to Bangkok on December 16. A good end to a memorable trip!

Dunes and Food

Mui Ne, Vietnam. Dunes and Food.

Mui Ne is a resort town on the beach, a five-hour bus ride from Ho Chi Minh City. Here is a photo taken inside the bus.

This is a so-called sleeper bus; the picture was taken between the left and the center rows of double-decker seats (three rows in all). To my amazement, nearly everyone except me manages to sleep in these hard, narrow reclining seats. We took buses like this several times in Cambodia and Vietnam. I would be happy never to ride in one again.

Mui Ne has developed rather recently (since 1995) as a resort town with shops and restaurants along the beach side of the road, hotels and other businesses on the other side. Here is a photo of our very nice hotel and one of the view.

Dunes. Mui Ne is popular for surfing and other beach sports. It is famous for the sand dunes about an hour’s drive from the village. The hotel manager called a driver with a jeep for us and off we went, stopping to take a few pictures along the way.

Fishing boats along the beach

Tricia and our driver

Just a nice view of the coast

The dunes look like other dunes you’ve seen – very beautiful, giving you the sense of being in a different country from where you just were. The wind covered up our tracks soon after we made them.

On the way up . . .

We didn't rent a dune buggy

Tricia trying to tie up her hair against the wind

Sun starting to go down

Angela and Katherine going back down the dune

Many people rent a sled to slide down the dunes. The vendor will wax the sled for you so it slides better. We resisted the vendors at the white dunes, but caved in to the very persistent elderly woman who followed us up the red dunes, which are about a half hour away. The ride down the dune was bumpy and, uh, sandy. Unfortunately, it was too dark to take pictures by the time we got there.

Food. This section is mostly about food we didn’t eat, so skip to the end (banh xeo) if you prefer to read about something that we did eat.

Since Mui Ne is a beach town, near a fishing village, seafood is fresh and plentiful. Katherine and Angela partook enthusiastically; Tricia and I found vegetarian alternatives. None of us sampled the so-called exotic dishes, seen on the pages below from the menu in a restaurant where we had lunch.

Finding snake, turtle, and frog on the menu was less surprising than seeing the dishes in Russian along with Vietnamese and English. We later learned that Mui Ne is very popular with Russian tourists and that quite a few businesses there are Russian-owned.

Alligator wasn’t on the printed menu of the seafood restaurant where we had dinner, but was simply displayed on the counter, waiting for another customer.

In another restaurant, in the town of Da Lat, the menu pages labeled Beef, Pork, Chicken, Fish, etc. were followed by a page titled “Animal,” apparently meaning wild meat.

It's interesting that boar, anteater, and porcupine are all prepared either with ginger or lemongrass, but deer isn't, or at least not at this restaurant.  -- I  didn’t know they even had porcupines in Vietnam, let alone that they are eaten.

Banh xeo. Lest you think we were overly preoccupied with collecting examples of startling foods in Vietnam, let me conclude this post with a delicious snack we enjoyed, banh xeo. Walking around the French section of Da Lat, we stopped to watch a vendor cooking these little morsels, like a thin crepe but crispy on the outside, like a super-thin taco. In the picture below, we had already demolished two orders of banh xeo and started on the third.

The crepes are cooked on a sort of griddle, spread with a thin layer of a pork and shrimp mixture (or other filling), then folded over. To eat them, you wrap them in a lettuce leaf with herbs and dunk them in the sauces – at least, that’s how the vendor told us to do it, but then we saw other guests plop the whole thing into the dipping sauce, cut it up with their chopsticks, and eat the pieces. I can’t describe the flavor, except to say it’s very yummy, spicy and a little sweet, and not like either Thai or Chinese seasonings. Here is a link to a recipe that I found online; of course, I don’t know if our vendor would think it’s authentic.

http://thelunacafe.com/vietnamese-crispy-crepes-banh-xeo/

When you open the link, scroll down to find the recipe. Let me know how it turns out if you decide to make it!