Before arriving on the organic rice farm six weeks ago, I had no idea what jobs my volunteer assignment would entail. Of course it being a rice farm, I had a vague notion that I would be involved in some form of, well, rice farming… but what rice farming was and how one actually [...]]]>

Before arriving on the organic rice farm six weeks ago, I had no idea what jobs my volunteer assignment would entail. Of course it being a rice farm, I had a vague notion that I would be involved in some form of, well, rice farming… but what rice farming was and how one actually went about farming rice I had no clue (Aside from the fact that I knew, at some point, I would have to wear a pointy, straw hat… a look, I wasn’t quite sure, I could pull off). Since arriving here, I’ve definitely acquired a lot of new job skills (Unfortunately, I haven’t acquired any new hats — it turns out those pointy, straw numbers are neither fetching nor very comfortable!). Oddly enough, many of the skills I’ve picked up have nothing to do with rice or even, say, farming.

While I’m definitely impressed with my fancy, newfound skill set, I have no idea where on Earth I’ll be able to put these skills to use again. In fact, I have no idea where on Earth I’ll end up next. With only about a week to go, I’m nearing the end of my stint on the rice farm, but I haven’t had the time or the Internet to line up a new job for the coming months. Other than a volunteer gig set up in Laos at the beginning of September, I don’t know what the future has in store for me.

But maybe you know! Maybe you have some time and Internet and would love to find a gig for me somewhere between Southern Malaysia and Laos that can utilize my fantastic new set of skills! Or, heck, maybe you would like to hire me yourself to do one of the great new jobs that I suddenly know how to do (just don’t ask me to wear a pointy, straw hat!). So in case you’re wondering what it is I can bring to the table (hint: it’s certainly not rice!) here are just a few of the jobs that I’ve held while on the farm.

Weed Maintenance

My arrival on the rice farm, unfortunately, did not coincide with the glamorous Rice Planting Season or the equally exciting Rice Harvesting Season. Instead, I arrived smack dab in the middle of the ugly stepsister of Rice Weeding Season. Hence all the time I’ve spent in the rice paddies (and trust me, I have spent some serious time in those paddies) has been spent weeding, a task you very rarely ever see in all those famous movies about rice farming. (Surely there are some, right?!).

I still have no clue how rice is planted or how rice is harvested… or even how rice comes to be on a rice plant. At the moment, all the rice plants I’ve seen look just like long, wide blades of grass. How these blades of grass produce rice I have no idea. Maybe magic rice fairies show up in the middle of the night, wave around their magic rice wands and bestow grains of rice on each of the rice plants (but only on the rice plants that have been very good this year!).

Whatever magic happens during Rice Planting Season and Rice Harvesting Season, I can tell you not a lot of magic is happening during Rice Weeding Season. Generally the only thing that happens during Rice Weeding Season is weeding (lots and lots of weeding). Every once in a while something exciting will happen like someone will fall into the rice paddy (mind you, this is never exciting if it happens to you) or you’ll manage to wade all the way to dry land (without falling in) and take a water break — and then it’s back to weeding (lots and lots of weeding).

I usually spend at least three hours each morning weeding the rice paddies. When I’m not weeding rice paddies, I’m usually weeding something else, like one of the many small gardens around the farm, or the organic fruit trees, or a miscellaneous shrub somewhere. Because I have to pull out most of the weeds by hand, I have developed what is referred to as Carpal Weeding Syndrome by us in the farm biz. (Okay, I’m the only person who calls it that… but I’m sure the hotshots of agriculture will pick up on that name in no time!). Every morning when I wake up, the fingers in my right hand (my Primary Weeding Hand, as we in the biz call it) are stiff and sore and refuse to move for a good half hour (and then are none too pleased when the first task I ask them to do is weeding).

Given the sheer amount of time I’ve spent weeding (and, again, we’re talking serious time), I’ve been able to ponder the practice of weeding and have even developed a few guiding principles for the task:

1. Know your enemy… and remember not everything green is your enemy. After about an hour or so of bending over in the hot, Malaysian sun, it’s very easy to slip into a near-catatonic state. During this time, you may start pulling up every hapless plant that comes into your path. This is what I like to call The Weeding Zone. While The Weeding Zone can be productive, it can also lead to your accidentally decimating an entire acre of rice crops before you reach consciousness again (which, apparently, is a bad thing… and, also, happens to be a really difficult thing to explain should your supervisor show up to find you standing in a puddle of muddy water and yanked-out rice plants).

2. Be prepared. Remember that at any moment while you’re yanking out weeds, whether you’re standing knee-deep in rice paddy muck or you’re tackling a banana tree in some back pasture somewhere, you could be attacked by a python. You’re going to want to make sure you have a hoe at the ready to combat any would-be python attacks. Or, in the case of the rice paddy where bringing a hoe is inappropriate (and would just throw off your precarious rice paddy balance), you’ll want to make sure you are standing by someone else — preferably someone who is smaller than you and, thus, easier to swallow.

3. Don’t rush! When faced with an entire rice paddy of weeds or a row full of weedy banana trees, you may be tempted to work as quickly and diligently as possible so that you can finish weeding faster… and maybe get assigned a more exciting task, like, say, anything but weeding. Let’s just get one thing straight right now: you will never stop weeding! As soon as you finish weeding that rice paddy or that row of banana trees, your supervisor will just point you in the direction of a new rice paddy or new row of banana trees that needs weeding. Or, should you be really quick and diligent (even though I’ve warned you not to be), you might be pointed back in the direction of the first rice paddy or row of banana trees you weeded… which now needs to be weeded again. Which brings us to my last principle…

4. Weeds never die… they’re just reincarnated. You see, every time you pull out a weed, it is replaced by two new weeds which spring up almost instantaneously in its place. Should you pull up two weeds, than you’ll be triggering the rebirth of four weeds (so, again, it’s best not to be too diligent with these things). I can’t tell you how many times I’ve discovered a whole new batch of fresh weeds in a section of the rice paddy that I just weeded a day or two beforehand. The best thing to do in this case is to ignore the new weeds and just hope that one day you, too, will be reincarnated, too… preferably as a big huge container of Roundup.

Resort Staff

In addition to rice cultivation, the farm I’m working on also has something called an “eco-resort.” Keep in mind, the words “eco” and “resort” are not used in the way you and I might use them.

From what I understand, “eco” usually stands for “ecological” in an environmentally friendly sense. But since arriving here, I’ve done more than a few things I wouldn’t exactly consider very friendly to the environment. For example, I spent a whole week throwing tractor tires into the pond. In fact, I’ve been asked to complete a number of tasks that usually involve dumping something not very natural (tractor tires, broken aquariums, rubber shoes, etc) into something natural (a pond or empty pasture, for example). Therefore, I would venture to say that “eco” in this part of the world stands for “ecological” more in a “back to nature” way. Not only does the “eco-resort,” transport the guests back to nature, but it also transports a number of other things back to nature… many things you wouldn’t expect to find in nature… like, ummm, tractor tires and broken aquariums.

Meanwhile, most people equate the word “resort” with a luxurious, all-inclusive, five-star hotel complete with a pool, room service and cabana boys. Here, I can only guess that they mean “resort” more in a “last resort” kind of way. I’m not saying the “eco-resort” is a bad place to stay. In fact, I think it would be a very nice, relaxing place to stay if you’re not being forced to do lots of weeding (lots and lots of weeding!). The setting is beautiful, the staff are incredibly friendly and, from what I understand, the pythons, as a rule, never attack guests. I’m just saying it’s not exactly a resort place to stay. I mean, I’ve been here five weeks, and I haven’t seen a single cabana boy!

In fact, the “eco-resort” is more like camping — without the amenities. The rooms are basic, concrete affairs packed full of iron bunk beds, which aren’t particularly comfortable (unless you’re one of those people who likes having an iron bar pressing up against your back). Every once in a while, a room will have a plastic lawn chair or waste basket thrown in for a touch of ambiance. Many of the toilets and showers are located outside of the rooms in little thatched roof huts. There is no pool or room service. The cabana boys have been replaced by rice farmers. And you can forget about a mints or chocolate on your pillow! (Although you may be lucky enough to find a piece of gecko poop on your bed… again, this all lends to the whole “back to nature” feel).

My “eco-resort” duties usually include cleaning the rooms and changing the sheets to prepare for visiting guests. I also help in the kitchen doing various odd jobs — mostly tasks the kitchen staff is certain I won’t ruin. Most days I’m not even allowed access to a knife; instead I’m usually asked to arrange bananas or wash dishes. Last week, their trust in me being suitably gained after four weeks of careful banana arrangement, the staff asked me to peel potatoes. Halfway through a pile of spuds, my peels were deemed “too thick,” and I was promptly labeled the “thick peeler” (a reputation which was only reinforced later when I was asked to peel some fruit). I have since been banished from any utensil with a sharp edge and have been put back on permanent banana arrangement and dish duty.

My “eco-resort” duties also include providing the guests with photo opportunities they might not otherwise have in their home countries. A week or so ago, while I was standing knee-deep in a rice paddy, a large herd of Singaporean guests descended upon the banks of the paddy to stare, point and take pictures. I looked around to see what they were so entertained by (Maybe the magic rice fairies had finally shown up to help me weed? Or maybe a python was devouring one of my smaller fellow rice paddy workers?). And then I realized they were taking pictures of me: the crazy white girl who came halfway around the world to weed rice paddies. That, my friends, is definitely something you won’t see at your fancy, schmancy five-star resort!

Prawn Wrangler

My favorite job on the farm by far is catching the freshwater prawn which are raised in the ponds on the farm. Every week, one of the ponds is drained, and it’s my job to run around the muddy, pond bed chasing after the prawn and then throwing them into a basket. Usually this requires me sticking my hand down a muddy hole and hoping to God I come up with a prawn (or two) and not a python (or two). Once all the prawn in the pond are caught, we then have to wash them off, weigh them and pack them up in styrofoam boxes.

While this job is even muddier than weeding rice paddies, it is infinitely more enjoyable. Catching prawn is fast-paced and has a certain “Man versus Beast” feel to it (or in this case “Woman versus Crustacean” feel) that keeps you on your toes (Well, that and the fact that it’s very easy to step on the prawn… which keeps you on your toes as well). From my experience catching prawn, I’m convinced that if weeds had pinchers and the ability to move, they would be much more exciting to catch.

Another reason why I like this job the most is because it reminds me of my childhood pastime of catching crayfish with my brothers and sisters in the creek nearby our farm. While I haven’t caught a crayfish in over twenty years, it seems that catching crustaceans is just like riding a bike — it’s something that was a lot of fun as a kid but you never thought you’d have to do as an adult (until you end up on a rice farm in the middle of Southern Malaysia).

New Volunteer One-Woman Welcome Wagon

As the volunteer who has been on the farm the longest, I’m usually the one who has the task of welcoming new volunteers and filling them in on important information like their expected hours, expected duties and all the ways they can expect to die. Admittedly, this is one skill that I could use a little help with. (Maybe I should leave out the part about expecting to die… and, well, being expected to work…) Considering the recent retention rate of volunteers on the farm, I may need to adjust my approach.

I’ve been told that most volunteers on the farm stay from two weeks to one month. Lately, the volunteers have been staying from one day to, umm, two days. Last week, an American couple hightailed it off the farm in less than twenty-four hours of their arrival. This past week, a thirty-year-old interior decorator from Kuala Lumpur showed up on Sunday and was gone by Tuesday claiming she had a “work emergency” to attend to. (What this “work emergency” could be, I was dying to know, but she never filled me in. Maybe a case of exploding curtain rods? Or possibly an incident with a paint roller and some semi-gloss paint?!).

I was a little surprised she left so early seeing as I was making every attempt to watch my words after the quick disappearance of the American couple. I didn’t even mention the word “python” until her second day! And, as she had been placed in her own room (a management decision spurred, no doubt, by my uncanny ability to scare away new volunteers), I wouldn’t have even bothered to tell her about the bed bugs which had infested my room the weekend before her arrival. But then she showed up at my door on Monday night in the middle of a thunderstorm asking me if she could bunk with me because she was scared of the thunder and lightning and intermittent power outages (How, exactly, she thought I could protect her from these things I’m not sure. As far as I know, the sickle I keep in my room is only good for defending me against snake attacks). After she pulled her mattress into my room, I felt it only right that I tell her there was a strong possibility of bed bugs attacking her in the middle of the night. By seven in the morning the next day, she had left my room and her bags were packed.

At the moment, the only other volunteer on the farm is an odd Austrian, who is prone to doing yoga in the hall in his underwear each morning. While I have grown quite fond of him (in the same way I imagine inmates in a prisoner of war camp might grow fond of each other), I have to say it would be nice to have a few more volunteers around. After all, there are an awful lot of rice paddies to weed for only two people. Plus, it gets quite dull in the rice paddy without anyone to talk to (the Austrian isn’t really into chit-chat) or watch fall over (he isn’t really into falling over either). Besides, the Austrian is very tall and lanky and doesn’t seem to have an inch of meat on his body. When given the choice between him and meaty, little me, I’m quite certain any python would chose me.

So in order to keep the volunteers around a bit longer, I’m thinking of changing my welcome spiel a bit. I could replace the word “weeding” with “drinking” and the word “python” with “unicorn.” So, for example, I might tell the new volunteer: “Tomorrow, we’re going to spend the whole day drinking, but just be careful to watch out for unicorns!” Of course, they would find out the truth soon enough once we made our way out to the rice paddy. But at least they might stick around long enough to help me get through one rice paddy… and long enough to provide a hungry python (or two) with a little lunch.

Growing up, I loved reading Little House on the Prairie and other books about people living off of the land. But, personally, I wanted to live off of Lucky Charms and plump, pink chickens wrapped in plastic wrap and styrofoam.

You see, I grew up on a small farm in New York State, where [...]]]>

Growing up, I loved reading Little House on the Prairie and other books about people living off of the land. But, personally, I wanted to live off of Lucky Charms and plump, pink chickens wrapped in plastic wrap and styrofoam.

You see, I grew up on a small farm in New York State, where our chickens came, not from the hallowed, air conditioned aisles of the grocery store, but directly from the chicken barn. Of course, before hitting our fridge, they all had to make a brief pit stop in the front yard where my father lopped off their head with an ax and my mother dipped their still twitching bodies in scalding hot water and then pulled off their feathers.

Meanwhile, I stayed safely locked inside my room, as far away from the chicken-killing and plucking process as possible. This wasn’t because I was opposed to the violence and the gore of it all, but because I was opposed to the potential “learning experience” of it all. You see, my parents were forever trying to instill their children with life skills that they deemed useful; like, plucking chickens and cleaning barns and weeding gardens.

I had already decided early on that I was most definitely not a farm person. I regarded my childhood on the farm as an uncomfortable stopover before I hit eighteen, at which point I would slip into the life God had intended for me — a life that included lots of little luxuries like milk that came from a plastic carton (and not directly from the warm udder of a cranky goat) and bigger luxuries like hired help. I knew the skills my parents were trying to teach me were just not for me. After all, I reasoned, I planned to spend my adulthood plucking chickens from the freezer case of the local grocery store and having my butler do any tasks that might involve dirt.

If I could, I would retreat to my bedroom every time the words “muck out” and “barn” were ever mentioned in the same sentence within my earshot. If I did end up getting finagled into some farm chore, I would whine the entire time while my mother would threaten knowingly, “One day, you’ll be glad you know how to do this.” I sincerely hoped to God she was wrong.

While I certainly wasn’t the most enthusiastic farm kid in the barnyard (I tended to care more for books about horses rather than actual horses… after all, books don’t require regular manure removal), I did learn how to milk a goat, wield a pitchfork and train turkeys to attack my younger sister. (Okay, so I didn’t actually learn how to do that; the turkeys were able to do that on their own free accord and I was more than willing to take credit for it). Despite all these fabulous “learning experiences,” I yearned for something different… and preferably something that involved a lot less cow manure.

Sure, watching turkeys run full-tilt at my terrified younger sibling was a good time, but I wanted to be able to play with the neighborhood kids instead of being forced to play with my brothers and sisters and a random assortment of farm animals. I wanted a Mr. Softee ice cream truck and a sidewalk.

I enjoyed our childhood game of “Lock Someone in the Chicken Barn” as much as the next guy. (I mean, who wouldn’t?! Should you never have played this exciting game, let me tell you, it is the game to play in the barnyard! First there’s the initial challenge of trying to get some unsuspecting sucker to go into the chicken barn before you swing the door shut and lock him in. Then there’s the joy of listening to said sucker scream and threaten you from the inside of the barn for a good five to ten minutes. After that, there’s the sweet victory of watching your victim crawl out of the tiny chicken door carved into the back of the barn. While sweet, this is also a short victory — as it’s important you hightail it out of the barnyard before your victim shimmies his whole self out of the chicken door and comes after you.)

Despite the hours of entertainment this activity provided, I yearned for something a bit more sophisticated — maybe a game that involved sidewalk chalk and, well, a sidewalk.

My friends in Catholic school, most of whom were from the suburbs, would talk of pool parties and T-ball practice and candy stores within walking distance. The suburbs became a land of enchantment inhabited by moms who wore dresses and didn’t smell like manure, unicorns, and children who knew what the heck a T-ball was and didn’t own a single pair of “barn jeans”. When Santa Claus asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I said, “a house in the suburbs.”

I dreamed of my future home, a modest seven-story affair complete with a basement roller rink and unicorn parking. My home would be located in a magical land called a Cul-de-Sac — a word I found enchantingly exotic and mysterious… mostly because I had no idea what it meant. (It was quite the disappointment when I learned the word’s true definition at the ripe age of twenty-four).

In this house of wonder, I would teach my children skills I felt were useful; like, how to effectively dole out tasks to your live-in maid or how to order a pizza (because our home would also be located in the magical land called “Where the Pizza Delivery Guys Will Actually Deliver”).

While I always thought I was destined for greater things than life on the farm (and by “greater things” I mean Domino’s delivery), I’ve discovered the heart of a farm girl beats somewhere beneath my city slicker ways (these ways include knowing how much to tip the pizza guy and not owning a single pair of “barn jeans”).

When I first arrived on the Malaysian rice farm five weeks ago to start my volunteer assignment, it felt a bit like a homecoming for me. (Granted, there weren’t too many rice paddies or rice-paddy-dwelling pythons on the farm I used to call home).

After three years of living in a tiny apartment in suburban Japan (where, yes, in fact, Domino’s did deliver), there was something comforting and familiar about being once again surrounded by fresh air, green fields, the sound of crickets at night and the smell of cow manure in the morning (Yes, I know, it’s weird but I actually like the smell of cow manure… maybe this is because it reminds me of my childhood; particularly of my childhood spent indoors trying to avoid cow manure.).

In addition to discovering that I may very well be a farm girl at heart, I’ve also discovered I’m something of a farm girl in body. Blessed with a physique that could best be described as “sturdy,” I would have been quite the catch in the good old days when marriageable traits for women included “able to lift heavy seed bags” and “capable of stopping runaway tractors.” My legs, which are short and lack any visible sign of ankles (a physical trait which forced me to wear socks for the majority of my adolescence, even when socks were inappropriate… like while swimming), have actually come in handy on the farm. Being closer to the ground, I’m that much closer to the weeds. And, I can’t help thinking that my lack of ankles only makes me sturdier, which will, no doubt, prove useful should the tractor ever attempt to make a break for it.

My supervisor on the farm, Mr. Choi, likes to tell me on a regular basis (usually while I’m lifting a heavy seed bag), “You’re not fat, just big and strong — like a cow” (The last part he tacks on, I believe, in an attempt to make it clear that he means all of this in a good way). And, after little over a month of manual labor on the rice farm (including a great deal of seed bag lifting), I’ve only gotten bigger and stronger. I’ve probably gained about ten pounds; half of that is rice, the other half is muscle. Due to all those heavy rice seed bags, most of that muscle has amassed freakishly in my forearms, which have started to resemble tree trunks in both size and density.

As I’ve felt myself slowly morph from city slicker (or, at least, suburban-slicker) to farm girl and my forearms morph from human to tree trunk, my attitude has also changed. I’m no longer the cheerful fresh face on the farm, but the grizzled, know-it-all, weed-weary farmhand (and when I say “grizzled,” I’m not just referring to the thick layer of body hair that I’m currently sporting due to the lack of mirrors on the farm… and lack of farmers I care to impress).

You see, most volunteers only stay on the farm for a couple of weeks (or, in some cases, a couple of days… or, umm, hours). Seeing as I’ve been here a full five-weeks, I’m currently the veteran volunteer on the farm. I’m also one of the few volunteers I’ve met on the farm who actually grew up on a farm (probably because most people who grow up farms wouldn’t travel halfway around the world just so they could do something they could be doing at home… especially if that “something” involved weeding… and cow manure).

My tenure on the rice farm combined with my previous farm experience (even if this experience was merely gained from watching the proceedings from my bedroom window), has lent me the air of someone who knows a thing or two about life on the farm. And, I’d like to think that I do, in fact, know a few more things about farming and country living than your average fresh-off-the-bus and just-out-of-the-city volunteer on the farm (even if most of this knowledge wasn’t gained from a lifetime of firsthand experience, but more from a lifetime of bedroom-window-watching experience and, say, Wikipedia experience).

For example, I know the names of a surprising number of plants and flowers and garden-dwelling creatures on the farm (a trait I’m going to attribute to my Wikipedia-addiction… as I’m pretty sure we didn’t have any passion fruit vines on our farm in New York State). I have been known to set other volunteers straight when they confuse toads for frogs and lily bulbs for onions (And I’m sure they don’t mind in the least my know-it-all attitude when I deem it necessary to lecture them on the fine differences between our amphibious friends).

Given the wealth of my experience (and by “wealth” I mean a grand total of five weeks on the farm and a grand total of about a billion hours spent on Wikipedia), it’s become my job to instruct the new volunteers on everything from their expected hours and duties to the intricacies of rice paddy weeding to the best way to avoid fire ants while pruning fruit trees. (“Attack any fire ant inhabited shrub with a long-handled hoe and don’t be afraid to admit defeat should they overtake your flip-flops”).

While doling out my farm wisdom, I’ve made a point of not mincing my words. After all, growing up on a farm means I had to listen to a lot of matter-of-fact conversations about calf castration over the dinner table (Again, this was not my choice; had I been able to chose our dinner discussion topics, I’m sure we would have discussed something much more sophisticated… like whether or not we should hire a bellboy in addition to our butler or where to park the unicorn come winter).

After my experience this week with two new volunteers, it’s possible I should start mincing my words a bit more. (Heck, I might need to dice and julienne them a bit too, should I want any volunteers to stick around long enough to help me weed the rice paddies).

Let me explain.

On Thursday night, a young American couple showed up on the farm with plans to volunteer here for about a month. Having just left the States a mere week before, they had a bright, cheerful, freshly scrubbed look about them. (A look I’m sure I was sporting at the beginning of my trip, too… Heck, I may even still be sporting it; it’s just hidden under a thick layer of rice paddy mud, body hair and insect bites!).

They had just quit their jobs and made a big move across the U.S. before coming on their trip. They said they were traveling for six months before “settling down”, and they figured doing some farm volunteering would be a good way to travel on the cheap.

They both seemed excited and enthusiastic about their upcoming weeks on the farm. The girl looked dreamily at the sun setting over the pond and sighed happily, “I think this is going to be good.” Her partner, a strapping, six-foot-tall fellow who looked like he’d be right at home on any tractor or corn field in America met my eyes and said, “I’m looking forward to getting to work in the fields tomorrow.” An aura of earnest hopefulness bounced off the glow of their freshly scrubbed skin.

In retrospect this was maybe not the best time to mention snakes.

You see, I had almost stepped on a snake the night before while feeding prawns, a task which requires you to walk around the prawn ponds, flinging prawn feed into the pond with one hand while trying to keep an eye on the snake-infested ground beneath your feet. (That I’m even capable of such a task shows you how much I have learned while on the farm. I’ve never been one of those walk-and-chew-gum types of people, let alone one of those walk-and-throw-prawn-feed-while-not-stepping-on-snakes types of people). The night before the two volunteers arrived, I had been making my way around one of the ponds when a snake slithered out from underneath where my feet had just been and slowly entered the water.

Having had a recent near-snake experience, snakes were fresh on my mind the night the new volunteers showed up.

Well, to be honest, snakes are almost always fresh on my mind on the farm. I feel it’s best that you remind yourself that at any moment you could step on a snake so that you’re mentally prepared for that moment when you do, in fact, step on a snake. (Given all my mental preparation, you’d think I would have been better equipped to deal with the situation when I did almost step on a snake; as it was, my course of action, after watching the snake slither away from where my feet had just been, involved whimpering and calling my supervisor on my cell phone to report the snake and tell him that he owed me a beer for asking me to do a task that involved close contact with snakes).

When I think about my reasons for telling the lovely couple my story of the near-snake experience, I’m sure I just meant to entertain them or inform them of some of the fascinating experiences they, too, could soon be having on the farm. How was I to know that they were both deathly afraid of snakes?

Upon finding out about their fear of snakes, I probably shouldn’t have gone on to tell them about the seventy-pound python which was found in the rice paddy last year or about the other python (a much-smaller forty-pounder) who reportedly lurks around the chicken coop.

Come to think of it, I probably shouldn’t have mentioned the time one of the previous volunteers found a snake in his dorm room window.

Again, I’m sure I didn’t mean to scare this shiny, happy couple… just, you know, let them know about all the places they should stay away from should they want to avoid stepping on a snake; for example, the prawn ponds, the rice paddy, any enclosed space filled with poultry and, say, their dorm room.

The next morning I met the couple at the rice paddy where they were to join me in the task of weeding. They both arrived chipper and cheerful and decked out in rubber shoes. These were, in fact, the same kind of rubber shoes I had been given on my first day on the farm and had been told I could wear in the rice paddy if I didn’t want to go barefoot. Being a big fan of never ever going barefoot should there be even the remotest chance of contracting mud parasites, I was very happy to strap on my new pair of rubber shoes before heading out for my first day in the rice paddy muck.

Upon arriving at the field, though, I was promptly told by the grizzled rice farmer in attendance that my shoes would just be lost in the mud and I should take them off before getting to work. “But they told me I could wear shoes!” I whined. Then I whimpered for a little bit while imagining all the mud parasites who would soon be feasting on my toes. Then I took off my shoes and got to work.

When I told the couple that they should take off their shoes before getting into the rice paddy, the guy gamely did so while the girl looked at me like like she’d sooner gouge out her left eyeball. She refused and delicately stepped into the mud with her rubber-encased feet. Little did she know that sometimes it’s only the death grip of your terrified toes in the rice paddy muck that keeps you standing upright. (And, feeling like I had given out my fair share of farm wisdom that morning, I did little to inform her of this fascinating bit of rice paddy lore).

After an hour of rice paddy weeding and conversation about our hometowns and childhoods (during which I made sure to mention that I’d grown up on a farm, but failed to mention my whole bedroom-window approach to farming), things seemed to be going well.

Neither of them seemed particularly enamored of the task of weeding rice paddies, but it’s hard to be enthusiastic about anything when your knee-deep in mud. (Heck, a Mr. Softee truck could roll up to the rice paddy while I’m weeding, and I probably wouldn’t so much as crack a smile).

Then the girl suddenly toppled over into the rice paddy, soaking the entire lower half of her body in water and mud and mud parasites. At this point she went from less than enthusiastic to really, really, really unhappy.

In retrospect this was maybe not the best time to laugh.

I had meant it more as a “laugh with you” kind of laugh (rather than “I told you you to take off your shoes” kind of laugh). But after emitting a guffaw so loud that it startled the ducks in the nearby pond, I noticed that she wasn’t laughing… not even one little bit. In fact, the only noise that she was making was a distinctive, high-pitched whimper.

For the next two hours,  she whimpered and he sighed and I did my best to not think about rice-paddy-dwelling pythons. (Just a word to the wise: repeating in your head the mantra, “Don’t think about pythons,” is a very ineffective way to stop yourself from thinking about pythons… in fact, it tends to have the opposite effect). We eventually climbed out of the muck to head back to the dormitory.

Upon our arrival at the dormitory, we discovered that the couple had been kicked out of their room to make way for some weekend guests. As my previous roommate had just moved out that morning, I had some extra space in my room. They were told they could bunk with me for the weekend.

In retrospect this was maybe not the best time to mention the bed bugs.

You see, my roommate had woken up that morning with bed bug bites across her back and upper arms. I also had felt something chomp down on my back in the middle of the night and woke up to a smattering of bites across my back.

After telling the now-very-unhappy couple about my recent bed bug encounter, I knew from the expressions on both of their faces that maybe I should have held off on telling them that bit of information… until maybe after I’d fumigated the room… and we had managed to finish weeding the rice paddy in its entirety.

As it was they’d grabbed their backpacks, discarded their rubber shoes and left the farm before I could get my hands on a can of Raid.

Later that evening as I was feeding the prawns with my supervisor, Mr. Choi, (and making every attempt to step over snakes rather than on them), he asked me why the couple had left the farm so quickly.

“Didn’t they like it here?” he asked with an expression that suggested he couldn’t possibly fathom why someone wouldn’t absolutely love living on a rice farm.

I looked at him and wondered if I should mention all the reasons why maybe the rice farm wouldn’t be everybody’s cup of tea; like the snakes and the rice paddy muck and the occasional encounter with bed bugs.

But, for once, I decided to watch my words.

“You know, Mr. Choi,” I said, “Some people just aren’t farm people.”

This Monday marks my one-month mark on the organic rice farm in Southern Malaysia where I’ve been volunteering. Time certainly flies when you’re having fun! Time also flies when you’re busy worrying about pythons and mud parasites and sneaky no-good hoe-stealers.

To be honest with you, I’m surprised I’m almost at the one-month mark. [...]]]>

This Monday marks my one-month mark on the organic rice farm in Southern Malaysia where I’ve been volunteering. Time certainly flies when you’re having fun! Time also flies when you’re busy worrying about pythons and mud parasites and sneaky no-good hoe-stealers.

To be honest with you, I’m surprised I’m almost at the one-month mark. Heck, when I first arrived on the rice farm, I wasn’t even sure I’d last the week, let alone the month! After my first couple days of wading through mud to weed rice paddies and waking up to the sounds of my male housemates clearing out all the phlegm from their body cavities, I was ready to call it quits. But, here I am, almost finished with one month and looking forward to my second.

Sometimes I even think to myself that I might want to do a third month — but I’m pretty sure that’s just the mud parasites talking. By now they’ve surely moved their way from the rice paddy muck, into my toenails, up my blood stream and lodged themselves firmly in my brain, where they are making me think all kinds of crazy thoughts — like “Hey, I kind of like this rice farming thing. I could stay for another month!” and “Hmmm, why don’t I just go walk over on that side of the creek where the pythons hang out.”

I can’t say my month at the rice farm has been a walk in the park. It’s been more like a walk in the rice paddy, which, in case you’re wondering, is not as easy as it looks… and I wouldn’t even say it looks all that easy! I mean, there’s a lot of mud in a rice paddy… a lot. Plus, there’s all those mud parasites in your brain making you walk all funny. But I have come up with a few strategies to make life on the Malaysian rice farm a whole lot easier on myself; all of which I am happy to share with you now, should you, too, decide to take up residence on a rice farm (and should you decide to do that it’s possible your brain is already chock-full of mud parasites… because only crazy people with mud parasites for brains would think this is a good idea!).

Put It In Writing

Since the rice farm that I’m working on is organic, they don’t believe in modern conveniences like pesticides and weed killer and the Internet. Sure, these things can be bad: both pesticides and herbicides have been linked to cancer and the Internet has been linked to Justin Bieber. Despite always having been opposed to herbicides, I’m starting to understand the allure of weed-killer after four weeks of weeding rice paddies and banana trees and something called a “grass garden” (which I mistakenly thought was a flower bed; long story short: now it’s neither).

I’m also starting to really, really miss my wifi. Since I’m only able to access the Internet during the one or two trips I make into town each week, I can’t regularly regale the cybersphere with emails and Facebook status updates and Tweets about my new life on the rice farm. I also can’t update my blog as regularly as I’d like. (Maybe you’ve felt a certain, indescribable emptiness in your life over the past month and you weren’t exactly sure why? Well, it’s probably because you haven’t been seeing much of me on the old Information Superhighway. Fret not, though, as I vow the next time I volunteer on an organic farm, I’ll make sure it’s an organic farm with Internet access… and latte-access. You don’t know of any organic farms located within a Starbucks, do you?!).

Should you, too, end up on a Internet-less, organic rice farm (and, again, you really might want to get your brain checked if you have), you’ll need some place to write down all your thoughts and ideas and mud-parasite-induced musings. I’ve been using this thing called a “journal.” A journal is just a notebook full of this stuff called “paper” that you write on with this thing called a “pen” — weird, right?! This is what people used before blogs and Twitter and Facebook back in the olden days of the 1990s. You can’t embed any photos or video into your journal, you can’t use Google AdSense to make money off of your journal, and, weirdest of all, nobody is supposed to read your journal but you. It’s all very old-fashioned and quaintly non-self-promotional.

It may feel a bit weird writing in your journal at first; it certainly did for me. Usually, while writing blog entries, I feel the need to provide entertainment or information to my readers which usually requires a great deal of exaggeration, plagiarism or lying. Since a journal is only used to keep track of your experiences for yourself, there’s no need to embellish the truth or even make anything you write the least bit interesting. This explains why some of my journal entries sound like this:“I spent three hours weeding and pruning banana trees today” and “This morning’s breakfast consisted of rice, dried fish and hard-boiled eggs. I ate two eggs” (Yes, riveting stuff, I know).

By keeping a journal, you’ll never forget all the fantastic memories you’ll be making on the rice farm. (And who would want to forget the morning of the two hard-boiled eggs?! That, my friends, was quite the banner day!). And, should you be like me, you have a horrible memory thanks to a few too many margaritas in your early twenties and now a few too many mud parasites in your early thirties. (I’m just hoping I can make it to my forties and still remember how to tie my shoes. That is, if the mud parasites haven’t taken complete control of my brain and I’ve actually managed to make it off the rice farm by then… seeing as I have very little use for fancy things like shoes in the rice paddy).

Find Your Niche

There is definitely no end to the jobs to be done on the rice farm, but not all of these jobs are what I would consider “good jobs.” (Mind you, my definition of “good jobs” merely means “jobs that won’t put you in close contact with pythons.”) Your first month on the farm is your chance to try out a number of different jobs to find out which tasks suit your skills and experience (and by “skills and experience” I mean “general cowardice”).

For example, I’ve discovered that I’m good at washing dishes, peeling garlic, sweeping floors, pruning banana trees and, basically, any job that keeps me out of a rice paddy. I can’t even say that I’m all that bad at weeding rice paddies, but ever since I found out that they discovered a 70-pound python living in one of the rice paddies last year, I haven’t been so keen to wade out in the muck — especially not by myself. (And, even when I do wade out there with other people, I prefer to go there with people who are a bit more bite-sized than myself in the hopes that that any pythons we encounter will be in the mood for a light snack or appetizer rather than a heavy meal like big-boned, American me).

Once you discover the jobs that you are good at and (and, dare I say, even enjoy), you should make a point of announcing your preference to your supervisors. Granted this won’t get you out of any undesirable jobs, but given the choice between sending you out to a python-infested rice paddy or having you wash lunch dishes, your supervisors will most likely opt to have you wash the dishes knowing how enthusiastic you were about that task last time they gave it to you. (I must mention that it can be difficult to maintain an extreme enthusiasm for something like washing dishes, but, remember, your life is on the line here and pythons very rarely hang out in kitchen sinks).

Meanwhile, in order to ensure that you snag all the plum positions (again, I’m only talking about jobs that won’t get you swallowed alive), you might want to steer the other volunteers away from these jobs. I’m not saying you should lie, just maybe, ummm, mislead them a bit (and never ever mention the words “python” and “rice paddy” in the same sentence). Maybe you can whine about your dish-pan hands or get a t-shirt that says “I’d rather be weeding a rice paddy.” This way you won’t have to worry about them stealing away your sweet gigs. Although, you may still have to worry about them stealing your sweet gardening tools. Some people will do just about anything to get their hands on your hoe! (Just ask your average gangsta rapper; they’re always rapping about stuff like that.)

Home, Sweet Home

Even if you’re not a homebody, you’ll probably find yourself spending a lot of time in your dorm room on the rice farm. Sure, you could spend your off hours lounging out by the pond or watching the sunset over the rice paddy, but this is just asking for trouble (and by “trouble” I mean “work”). You see, as mentioned before, there are a lot of jobs on the rice farm and should someone see you wandering aimlessly around that rice farm they will assume you’re looking for something — like a few dishes to wash. Your dorm room is pretty much the only place on the farm that you are safe from being assigned a task or being asked to wash a dish.
While it may just be a grubby, mosquito-infested dorm room, this doesn’t mean you can’t add a few personal touches to make it feel like your grubby, mosquito-infested dorm room. First, I’d suggest adding a few wall hangings. Forgot to pack your favorite Van Gogh print or your “Hang in There” motivational poster with the picture of a kitten hanging from a tree?! No need to worry! Why not decorate the walls with some drying underwear or your now mildewy pack towel? Nothing says “welcome home” (and “hang in there” all at the same time) like your moisture-wicking undies hanging from a few well-placed nails in the walls.

For a whimsical touch (and in order to help alleviate just a little bit of the back pain caused by bending over a rice paddy for three hours), I’d suggest stacking at least four or five thin mattresses on to the metal cot in your room. This will make your bed look like it’s straight out of a storybook — specifically The Princess and the Pea (never mind that the pea is a metal bar that cuts across the middle of the cot and the princess looks like she’s had a close encounter with the Swamp Thing).

Finally, I’d also suggest you keep your collection of small gardening tools in your room (this may include your sickle, trowels, hedge clippers and the little rake-y thing you used to do such a good job on digging up that supposed “grass garden”). This adds a certain rustic charm to the room that even Martha Stewart would be proud of (she’d also be proud of your work on that grass garden, for sure!). Plus, it guarantees that everyone will keep their paws off your sickle. (As for your hoe, you might want to embed it with some kind of security device…)

Hang with the In Crowd

You’ll probably discover upon arriving on the rice farm that the nearest town is a good five miles away along a dirt road populated by pythons and wild boars. The only way you’ll be able to get into town to use the Internet, buy necessities and swig a beer or two is by hitching a ride with someone who has a motor vehicle. On our farm, farm workers outnumber motor vehicles by about forty to one. (Okay, so I’m not entirely sure there are even forty people on the farm… but still, you get the point: lots of people, not so many cars.) With limited car space, you’re going to want to make sure you cozy up to someone with a car to ensure that you’ll always be invited on trips into town.

The tactics used to make sure you can get a ride into town while living on a rice farm are very similar to the tactics you might have used as a high school student to get a ride into school, should you have been one of the unlucky few without a car. These tactics may include: lying, cheating, promising to weed someone’s rice paddy for him, and showing a little (mosquito-bitten) leg. Mind you, these are not the tactics I ever used to get a ride into high school as there weren’t many rice paddies in New York State and I was prone to making bad fashion choices like wearing stirrup pants (very hard to show a little knee when your pants are inexplicably attached to the bottom of your feet). Hence, I spent most of my mornings heading into high school on the bus with the other big-boned girls in stirrup pants (Oh, and a sorry sight we must have made!). But having had almost twenty years to work on my car-ride conniving ways (and dispose of any stirrup pants that might still be lingering in my closet), I have now become quite the expert at wheedling my way into any trips into town.

In addition to securing your seat in any car heading into civilization, you’ll want to make sure you don’t accidentally reveal the pending mission to town to anyone. You see, should you accidentally tell another volunteer that you’re going to town to check your email and down a few beers after a difficult day in the rice paddy, your fellow volunteer might decide that he also would like a ride into town (even though he has done no lying, cheating or leg-showing to deserve it!). Again, I’m not saying you should lie to your fellow volunteers, just mislead them a bit… or maybe stop talking to them altogether so that you don’t accidentally let out any of your top secret car trip plans.

It does get a bit tricky hiding the truth when your fellow volunteer spots you walking across the farm carrying a purse and wearing something fancy… like, say, shoes. You’ll probably have to do a bit more lying (and leg-showing) to convince him that you’re not, in fact, going into town, you’re just wandering around the farm with your purse in case you see anything nice you’d like to buy… like a new sickle or hoe.

Make a Break for It

The simple life is good and all, but, chances are, you will probably find yourself yearning for the Starbucks life at some point during your time on the farm. A weekend break in the city can help you rejuvenate after a long week of rice paddy weeding and ensure that you don’t spend your Saturday weeding any more rice paddies. You see, spending your weekends on the farm is only asking for trouble (and, again, by “trouble” I mean “work”). You can only hide in your room for so long. At some point during the weekend, you will actually need to leave your room to use the bathroom or stock up on your supply of hard-boiled eggs. This is when you will be spotted and sent packing to your nearest rice paddy.

Upon choosing a destination for your weekend break, you’ll want to make sure you pick a city with relatively little to offer in the way of attractions so you’ll never feel inclined to actually leave your hotel room. I have spent a few of my weekend breaks in nearby Johor Bahru, an industrial city located across the Causeway from Singapore, which is known for its grimy urban sprawl and burgeoning crime rate (kind of like the Detroit of Malaysia). The city is affectionately described by Wikitravel as of “little interest to the casual tourist” and a “remarkably pedestrian-hostile city.” Sights include a handful of mosques and temples, a “dismal” public zoo and the “relatively run-down” Orchard Valley. The first time I stayed in the city, I asked the staff at my hotel if they had a map to the area and they looked at me as if I had just asked them when the next free bus to the moon would be leaving. Needless to say, not many people go to Johor Bahru to check out the sights; in fact, I’m pretty sure the only people who go to Johor Bahru are volunteer rice farming refugees on break from the rice farms.

Should you be traveling on a strict budget (and this whole volunteering-on-a-rice-farm gig is just one of your many crazy schemes to keep yourself within that strict budget), you may be worried that you won’t be able to afford regular weekend breaks in the city. Worse yet, you might be tempted to book accommodation at a hostel or some other establishment which will offer you a room that looks unsettling like your room on the rice farm. Remember, you need this weekend break to refresh yourself (and realign your back after a month spent weeding rice paddies and sleeping on a metal cot), so it’s important to book a hotel room where the beds are comfy and clean and don’t come fully stocked with bed bugs!

Luckily what Johor Bahru lacks in tourist attractions and safety prevention, it makes up for in decently priced, decently clean hotel rooms. The first time I stayed in the city, I splurged on a fifty-dollar room at a boutique hotel that offered free wifi and hot noodles for breakfast. This past weekend, I decided to opt for something a bit cheaper. I went with a thirty-dollar hotel room at Tune Hotel, a budget hotel chain run by the budget airline chain, AirAsia. If you have ever taken an AirAsia flight, you’ll know that their airplane tickets are ridiculously inexpensive but they charge you for everything from your inflight meal to the duct tape being used to hold your seat together. Much like the airline, the hotel also charges you for any “extras” including wifi, air conditioning, television privileges and even towel privileges (not to worry: the room does actually come with a few “free” amenities like hot water, toilet paper and, ummm, a floor).

After shelling out for the wifi and the towel (my now mildewy pack towel having been left in my dorm room to air out and provide a little much-needed ambiance), I decided to forego the television and air conditioning. Unfortunately, the wifi that I paid four dollars for was incredibly slow and only accessible from one corner of my bed (this was not exactly what I had in mind when I pictured myself one day working from a corner office!). While waiting for the Internet to slowly churn to life, I would spend my time staring at the advertisements adorning the walls (these were also apparently among the “free” amenities); these advertisements included posters for shower gel, crackers, financial planning services and the air conditioner (that I wasn’t paying to use).

After one night of aggravating my rice-paddy-weeding back pain with crunched-up-in-the-corner-of-the-bed-trying-to-get-wifi pain, I checked out of the hotel and headed across town to my earlier fifty-dollar find. I may be on a strict budget, but sometimes a splurge is worth it to keep your sanity — especially when you have mud parasites slowly making their way to your brain…

In February, before I headed off to rural Northern Thailand to cat-sit by myself for two months, I worried about being stuck out in the middle of nowhere all on my own. How would I survive in the jungle by myself with absolutely no ability to speak the Thai language and an absolutely uncanny [...]]]>

In February, before I headed off to rural Northern Thailand to cat-sit by myself for two months, I worried about being stuck out in the middle of nowhere all on my own. How would I survive in the jungle by myself with absolutely no ability to speak the Thai language and an absolutely uncanny ability to regularly cause myself harm? Heck, it had been difficult enough to survive in suburban Japan for three years on my own, given my propensity to set myself on fire while making breakfast (toaster ovens can be tricky to operate, you know — especially when all the instructions are in Japanese!).

I was worried that I might die out there in the middle of the Thai jungle and no one would know until the couple I was house-sitting for came home to discover the charred upper half of my body smoldering away in the toaster oven while my lower half was being gradually gnawed away by the cats.

If I managed to survive my time there, I was convinced I’d either end up really lonely or really crazy — at least a more visible form of crazy. I mean, plenty of my friends and family members would argue that I was already a bit off-kilter before I even left the States over three years ago, but I’ve never attempted to chew on my own ears or talk to leprechauns or wear a helmet fashioned from tinfoil and discarded cracker boxes.

Despite my fears, things in Thailand went surprisingly well. I didn’t die. I didn’t cause any house fires. Thanks to regular Internet which allowed me to easily connect with family and friends, I was, for the most part, hardly ever lonely. And as for any visible signs of crazy, well, I haven’t started stock-piling old cracker boxes (yet).

Since arriving at the rice farm in Southern Malaysia where I am currently volunteering, I have realized that being stuck in the middle of nowhere by myself wasn’t such a bad deal. After all, I like myself. I am easy to get along with (at least according to myself), an intriguing conversationalist (again, it’s possible I’m the only person who thinks this) and I bathe regularly. Who wouldn’t want to be stuck in the middle of nowhere with me?! (Okay, don’t answer that).

There are a number of other people in the world who aren’t so easy-going or fascinating or fresh-smelling that would not be such fun company to find yourself stuck in the middle of nowhere with. In fact, I’ve met a few of these people since arriving on the rice farm (which, in case you’re wondering, happens to be located right smack dab in the middle of nowhere).

I like most of the people on the farm; I really do — even if they do share the sounds of their bodily functions with me on an all too regular basis. I’m sure it’s not their fault that they all have a lot of pent up mucus that needs to be regularly expelled from their bodies in a particularly noisy fashion. Maybe there’s something about the nature of rice farming that makes one over-produce bodily fluids and, in no time, I’ll also be spitting and hacking and hawking up phlegm with the best of them!

My two most favorite people on the farm (and fast becoming my two most favorite people in the world) are my supervisors: Mr. Choi and Mr. Charles. Mr. Choi, a Chinese man with enough energy to power a small city, regularly invites me on trips to visit his family or shopping expeditions (or really any road trip that might involve heavy lifting) and lavishes me with gifts of new garden tools (This week I got a new sickle and two new garden trowels! Yippee!). My other supervisor, Mr. Charles has the looks of an aging Indian intellectual and the sweet-talking charm of a Bombay Lothario. His first words to me upon greeting me at the farm were, “Oh my, you look mature!” (Okay, maybe this wasn’t that charming). He quickly followed up that statement by declaring me an angel (It seems he likes his angels on the mature side). He regularly bursts into song when he sees me, declares his love for me with an alarming frequency and has asked me more than once to run away with him (a proposition I have refused — after all, he hasn’t given me a single garden tool, yet!).

The other workers on the farm have been friendly and welcoming to me, even though many of them don’t speak a lot of English and I don’t speak much of anything besides English. Even the crotchedy old fruit farmer who occupies the back apartment in the building where I currently live and acts as the self-appointed crotchedy dorm mother has his moments of warmth. After grumbling at me for the first week for not leaving the toilet seat up (his preferred position when it comes to toilet seats), he appeared happy to have me back after I spent the weekend away and handed me a passion fruit as a welcome back present… and then promptly went back to grumbling at me about the toilet seat.

Then there are the volunteer workers, and that, my friend, is a whole different breed of farm worker. Since signing up for this gig, I have discovered there are two reasons why people do this kind of thing: either they really want to work hard and stretch themselves and have a meaningful experience or they are complete and total weirdos. (Yeah, I realize I most likely fall into the latter group given my already stated off-kilter status and the fact that the only reason I signed up for this gig was because I thought it would make for a couple interesting blog entries — and, boy, was I dead on there, right? I’m sure you’re all thinking you can’t possibly read enough about my intriguing life on the rice farm!)

Think about it: who else would opt to spend their vacation time in a foreign country wading around in a muddy rice paddy? This is not a job most people would do in their home countries if they had a choice, let alone travel millions of miles to do in a foreign country. In fact, this isn’t even a job most Malaysians want to do in their home country. The majority of the workers on the farm are migrant workers from Nepal, Myanmar, and Bangladesh, who have come here for the chance to gain higher pay and a better life. And then there are the international volunteers primarily from Europe and the United States, who have come here for the chance to get malaria and mud parasites. Who other than really good people or really weird people would turn down a vacation at the beach to spend their holiday time as an unpaid migrant worker? Mind you, the volunteers are not expected to work nearly as many hours as the migrant workers are, but, then again, we get paid with rice and mosquito-infested dorm rooms. I’m pretty sure the migrant workers actually get paid with money (as well as rice and mosquito-infested dorm rooms).

The three volunteers I met when I first got here fell into the first group of people who sign up for this kind of thing: they were hard workers who wanted to make a difference with their time. One guy from Britain had arrived here with the intent of staying a couple months and ended up staying an entire year after being given a sizable project that he wanted to see through to the end. One of my roommates, a girl from the States, had a week free in Malaysia before heading to Indonesia and decided to get off the beaten path and spend her week working on the farm. Even my other roommate, a sulky twenty-year-old from Kuala Lumpur, who stayed on the farm for two weeks and stopped talking to me and everybody else by the middle of her second week, seemed to have come here with good intentions. When I asked her why she had volunteered to work on the farm (you know, back in the first part of the week, when she was still talking to me), she had told me she had never done any volunteering before and had wanted to test herself. I guess by midweek she had decided this was one of those silent tests that you’re not allowed to talk during and she promptly shut up. Despite her lack of chit-chat (or possibly because of it), she really did work hard (unlike me, who felt chatting about past boyfriends and future travel plans with my American roommate was a much better pursuit of my energy than, say, weeding the rice paddies).

Since then, all three of those volunteers have left, and two new volunteers have shown up. The first guy, a tall, lanky Austrian fellow arrived on the farm last week sporting a bald head and a tie-died tank top. He had just spent six months bumming through India and the last two months “sitting” in a hostel in Kuala Lumpur (at least that’s what he told me he was doing, although it does sound like an awful long time to “sit”!).

He seemed pleasant and agreeable, if more than a bit vague. When I asked him what he had been doing in India, he replied “something with bamboo” (he never specified what that “something” might have been… and I was too scared to ask). When I asked him why he had decided to volunteer on the rice farm, his answer was even more vague and made even less sense (I’d share it with you now if I had actually understood what he said… there was something about wanting to be close to nature and possibly his not having any more money… and that’s about all I understood). I’m not sure if his vagueness is the result of his shaky grasp of English or his shaky grasp on reality… either way, I haven’t found myself capable of having too many in-depth conversations with the man.

When I launched into a description of the various jobs that volunteers were expected to do on the farm, including weeding, pruning and washing the lunch dishes for the school groups that come here on field trips, he wrinkled his nose at me and replied that none of this sounded very “interesting.” At which point I wrinkled my nose at him and wondered exactly what kind of jobs he expected to be doing on a rice farm… maybe he thought this would be one of those exciting rice farms complete with an acrobatic mosquito circus and sickles that shoot laser beams. Sadly, this is not one of those kind of rice farms.

After two days of his wandering around the farm looking decidedly uninterested (usually without a shirt or shoes), the Austrian was sent off to the back fields to weed and prune banana trees. This was a task I had been given the previous week, and I was steadily working my way through one long row of banana trees that bordered the pond (a task I found much more “interesting” than, say, weeding rice paddies… if only because it didn’t require wading through mud!). When I found out that he had been assigned the same job as me, I couldn’t help feeling a bit territorial. “But that’s my job!” I whined. “He won’t be working on my row of trees, will he?!”

Luckily, he was assigned his own row of banana trees (phew!), and he promptly put on a shirt and some shoes and headed out to the fields. Since then, when he’s not pruning banana trees (his row of trees, mind you), he can be seen staring listlessly out at the pond or tooling away in the kitchen (again sans shirt and shoes) whipping up some concoction. The other day he produced a pan of blackened peanuts coated in vegetable oil and clumps of burnt brown sugar which he plopped down on the counter and declared were “ready” (“ready” for what I wasn’t sure… and was afraid to ask).

Earlier this week, another volunteer to the rice farm showed up, a beer-bellied Brit who has been living the last five years in Bulgaria and has both the British crooked smile and the Eastern European mullet to prove it. He had also spent the last six months traveling through India, but, unlike the Austrian, he seemed to actually have been doing something there besides, well, “something.” He informed me that he had traveled through the country on motor bike and that this had been “a lot of hard work.”

Like the Austrian, he seemed agreeable and made up for the Austrian’s vagueness with a blunt specificity which, at first, I found refreshing… until he kept on talking. At one point, he announced that he’d left the U.K. forever and had no intention of ever returning because it was “too full of Africans and Indians,” a fact he felt “just wasn’t right.” This anti-immigration stance seemed curious coming from a man who had spent five years of his life being an immigrant in Bulgaria, and his anti-Indian stance seemed odd seeing as he’d spent the last six months wandering through India (I guess Indians, in his opinion, are okay just as long as they stay in India!).

When I asked him why he had decided to volunteer on the farm, he replied that he wanted to “spend some time doing nothing and thinking nothing.” This also seemed a bit odd. I briefly wondered if he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere. Maybe he’d intended to go to a beach resort or a nudist colony where you’re not allowed to lift heavy objects or even move very quickly for fear of chafing, but had accidently shown up at the rice farm. After all, one doesn’t usually equate “volunteering on an organic rice farm” with “doing nothing.” One thing I’ve learned from my three weeks here is that, unfortunately, farming isn’t one of those effortless tasks that just kind of happens (like, say, eating an entire pan of brownies by yourself or ordering that third pitcher of margaritas… trust me, those things seem to happen without your so much as lifting a drunken, chocolate-smudged finger!). Farming actually requires lots of work and lots of, you know, doing stuff.

If there’s another thing I’ve learned from my three weeks on the rice farm it’s that farming also requires a lot of thought… or, at least, it spurs thought. Sure, you don’t have to have a philosophical debate with yourself while you’re standing knee-deep in rice paddy muck attempting to discern a rice plant from a weed (Okay, this does take some debate. After all, rice plants and weeds both look surprisingly alike. Sheez, they could practically be twins!). But I’ve found that I do tend to ponder lots of things while I’m at work; for example, I think about all that mud surrounding my feet and wonder how many parasites are in that mud and how many of those parasites are quickly creeping into my feet via my toenails. I also think about life (as in, “Who would have ever thought my life would end up like this?”) and death (as in, “How much time do you suppose I have to get to the hospital before I die of mud parasites?”) and God (as in, “Oh God, oh God, OH GOD, what the heck was that that just crawled between my toes?!”).

After informing me of his reasons for volunteering on the farm, the Brit promptly took off his shirt. (This seems to be some kind of initiation ritual required of the volunteers on the farm that I didn’t know about. Seeing as I have more than enough bug bites covering my exposed body parts, I’ve decided to forgo removing any clothing and have actually considered applying more… like, say, some knee socks… and a burkha.) Sadly, unlike the Austrian, the Brit lacked the body for going topless, and he lacked the common sense to put his shirt back on before heading out to the fields to work the next day (I’m thinking this was part of his commitment towards his new “think nothing” life plan).

After a day of working on the banana trees (thankfully, not my row of banana trees), he showed up at dinner sporting scorched skin the color of canned tomatoes. During dinner he would frequently look down at his sunburnt limbs and chest in a befuddled way that suggested he wasn’t entirely sure how his skin had acquired such a brilliant hue and confessed to me that he feared he wouldn’t be able to sleep due to the extent of his sunburn.

Yet, the next day he was back in the fields, shirt-less and quickly turning an even more tomatoe-y shade of red (I guess I have to give him credit for really sticking to his “think nothing” plan.) By the end of the week, he started complaining of heat exhaustion, a condition that can be easily prevented by protecting yourself from direct sunlight with this thing I like to call a “shirt”. Even after complaining of dizziness and nausea, he kept working outside in the blazing heat with little more than his broiled epidermis to keep his insides from cooking. (Again, I really must applaud him for his commitment to his whole “think nothing” plan. Given the evidence, though, it seems his “think nothing” plan has seriously derailed his “do nothing” plan… unless by “do nothing” he means “die as a result of heat exhaustion.”)

Despite last week’s proclamation that I had, in fact, become a better person after two weeks on the rice farm, my attitude swiftly changed as of this week. On Thursday morning, I was back to my usual snarky self after spending a couple days with my fellow volunteers and racking up a record-breaking number of mosquito bites (despite my application of record-breaking amounts of DEET) and listening to the daily mucus ministrations of my male housemates and waking up to find an ant’s nest in my shoe.

After breakfast, I grabbed my new sickle, which I keep close watch of in my room (a girl never can be too careless with her gifts of garden tools!), and I headed out to find my hoe and make my way to my row of banana trees. I was hoping a couple hours of wrenching out weeds and hacking at overgrown leaves would work out some of the frustration I was starting to feel. When I showed up at the shed where I had stored my hoe the day before, I couldn’t find it anywhere. Someone had stolen my hoe!

Made even crankier by the sneaky hoe-stealer, I drudged my way out to the back field where I attempted to pull up weeds despite being hoe-less. I comforted myself with my new favorite mind game: making up mental tweets. You see, since I no longer have ready access to Internet, I can’t hang out on Twitter as much as I’d like and regale the Twitter-verse with every little thought or comment that enters my head (at least any thought or comment that enters my head in 140-character format… sometimes I do actually have thoughts and commentary that exceed that limit — but not very often!). Sometimes my mental tweets are wistful (“I miss the days when my major criteria for getting dressed each morning wasn’t: must be leech-proof”), sometimes playful (“Judging from the amount of insect bites on my body right now either I’m really tasty… or I have fleas”) and, on that day, they were mostly snarky (“Dear British volunteer, Bulgaria called. It wants its mullet back.”)

As I was composing malicious mental tweets in my head, the Austrian volunteer snuck up behind me and said, “Good morning.” As I was so deep in my pruning process (not to mention my mental Tweet process), I was taken by surprise and jumped about twelve feet into the air. Just moments before his arrival (in between mental Tweets), I had been thinking that it would be a real shame if a python was to sneak up on me while I was out in the field and squeeze the banana-tree-pruning life out of me. While I was pretty sure pythons don’t bother to bade you a good morning before they commence wrapping themselves around you and attempting to swallow you whole, you never can know about these kind of things. (I’m also pretty sure pythons in this part of the world wouldn’t speak with an Austrian accent, but, again, you never know!).

After calming down from my initial scare and chatting a bit with the Austrian about my progress on my row of trees and his progress on his row of trees, he sauntered off and I started to feel really bad. Here I had been composing all these evil mental tweets about him, and he’s really quite a pleasant guy… if terribly vague… and prone to questionable hygiene. (I mean, really, I know I’ve been prancing around barefoot in a rice paddy for three weeks, but you’d never catch me putting so much as a bare baby toe on the floor of the cafeteria’s kitchen — there’s no telling what kind of parasites are lurking on that floor waiting to slither their way under my toenails!). And as I was standing there thinking charitable thoughts about him (and composing a few apology tweets in my head), I saw he had a hoe slung over his shoulder — a hoe that looked quite a bit like my hoe. (I’m sure you’re wondering how I can tell these things… but you spend a week with a hoe and you start to get pretty attached!).

Suddenly my charitable thoughts and apology tweets were gone, replaced by snark and mental tweets of vengeance… and a deep, desperate wish for a sickle capable of shooting laser beams. But, sadly, this is not one of those kind of rice farms.

On the other hand [...]]]> When you tell people that you’re going to quit your job and spend a year traveling around Asia, most people tend to be pretty supportive. I’ve had friends, family members and complete strangers wish me luck, buy me drinks and make me promise to send them postcards (umm, about those postcards…).

On the other hand when you tell people that you’re going to spend two months out of that year working on a rice farm in Southern Malaysia, those same people tend to have a much different reaction; usually an “are you sure you want to do that?” reaction followed quickly by a “do you even know anything about rice farming?” reaction and possibly a “you know rice grows in a muddy mosquito-infested swamp, right?” reaction.

Should those same people know you really well because they’ve lived with you or, say, given birth to you, they tend to have an even stronger reaction. I told my mother my plan to volunteer on the rice farm during a phone conversation a couple months ago. We had to end the conversation shortly after I spilled my news because she was laughing too hysterically to continue talking. She didn’t stop laughing for another two days — I know this because she wrote me a letter after the phone conversation telling me so. It also appeared that she might have had a giggle or two while writing the letter as her handwriting appeared jumpy and uneven.

While all my family and friends and more than a few complete strangers have been happy to inform me that I wouldn’t enjoy working on a rice farm, I chose to think otherwise. Sure, I know about as much about rice farming as I know about retirement investment. (In case you’re wondering, that wouldn’t be much… seeing as my current plan for retirement rests heavily on the hopes that the world will self-implode before I turn sixty-five). Sure, I’ve spent the past three years of my life teaching English where my most back-breaking task was to erase the whiteboard on a regular basis. (Luckily, I could often coax a few spry college students into doing that job). Sure, I couldn’t even bring myself to sign up for Farmville on Facebook because it sounded like too much responsibility. (I was sure I’d get distracted from watering my virtual crops or weeding my virtual garden by some Facebook personality quiz asking me to find out which Backstreet Boy I was or promising to tell me at what age I’d be struck by osteoporosis). Even though I knew I wasn’t exactly cut out for life on the rice farm, I was certain my Better Me could cut it.

You see, my Better Me is like the Real Me… just a lot better.

My Better Me is a morning person. She wakes up at the crack of dawn and needs neither coffee nor the threat of being fired to get herself to work on time. My Better Me can maintain a conversation with actual humans before noon (and not just cats… or Twitter followers).

The Real Me is more of an afternoon or evening person. The Real Me can be a real firecracker around, say, seven o’clock in the evening, but at seven o’clock in the morning, the Real Me’s preferred mode of communication involves a system of grunts and unhappy facial expressions.

My Better Me is a gracious roommate, loves communal living and doesn’t mind sharing her space (and her secret stash of cookies) with others. Heck, my Better Me could be the social coordinator on a kibbutz.

The Real Me is a fun time at parties but needs her alone time… lots of it. The Real Me has stopped talking to roommates for weeks on end for offenses as small as their attempting to make eye contact before noon. The Real Me actually enjoyed living like a hermit for the past two months of house-sitting in Thailand.

My Better Me is chipper even when deprived of sleep, chocolate, cheese and the occasional margarita.

The Real Me needs approximately eight to twenty hours of sleep each night… and regular applications of Cadbury’s, camembert and tequila.

My Better Me is capable of manual labor and doesn’t mind getting dirt under her fingernails (or toenails… or lodged in her hair). My Better Me takes pride in a job done well.

The Real Me has spent her adult years working a number of jobs whose most dirtiest task involved changing the toner cartridge of the office’s printer (a task the Real Me would try to get out of by faking a sudden bout of food poisoning). The Real Me would prefer not to look and smell like a pig farmer at the end of the day. The Real Me takes pride in her couch.

Like unicorns, Santa Claus and my sense of direction, my Better Me has been severely lacking in physical evidence to support its existence. Despite this lack of evidence, I still persist in believing in her and signing her up for things I think she might enjoy… like volunteering on a rice farm and speed dating. (My Better Me loves meeting strangers and hearing about their careers as toilet bowl salesmen; the Real Me can only take about four minutes of this and then starts faking food poisoning). I’ve always figured that if I sign my Better Me up for enough events and volunteer assignments, she might actually show up one day (and possibly fill in for the Real Me who is currently at home with a bout of food poisoning…. for real this time). It’s a “If you sign her up, she will come” mentality. Until now, I haven’t had much luck (both with my Better Me making an appearance and speed dating).

Having racked up almost two weeks of living on the rice farm, what has surprised me most about my stint there (aside from last week’s task of rolling tires into a pond), is the fact that my Better Me actually exists! Well, at least more than she ever has before…

Living on a rice farm means early hours. I usually am out of bed by seven so that I can be in the fields by eight before the sun has gotten too hot. Of course, I wake up a lot earlier than that as about a half dozen of my male housemates can usually be found outside my bedroom window around six o’clock where they like to gather and clear all the mucus from their body. Despite these early hours, I’ve still managed to be decent to everyone, if not practically chipper (well, chipper might be an overstatement… but I haven’t felt tempted to punch anyone in the head despite their copious mucus-clearing exercises, so that’s saying something!).

Life on the rice farm also means sharing my room with other volunteers. After my first week of living with roommates, I actually started enjoying it… well, until the one girl stopped talking to me and started playing Chinese pop music at midnight while I was trying to sleep. After both my roommates moved out last weekend, I started looking forward to having new roommates. When no new female volunteers showed up this past week to take over the empty bunk bed in my room, I started to feel a bit lonely. I even started to imagine what my new roommates might be like should I get some — of course, they, too, would be gracious and kind and willing to share their secret stashes of cookies (but not so into sharing their collection of Chinese pop music… at least not while I was trying to sleep).

Needless to say, life on the rice farm doesn’t include much consumption of cheese, chocolate or tequila. It doesn’t even include much consumption of food I can easily recognize… aside from rice… lots and lots of rice. But, yet, I haven’t killed anyone or threatened suicide or punched anyone in the head or faked any bouts of food poisoning to get out of eating more piles of rice.

Another thing there hasn’t been much of on the rice farm, at least for me, has been sleep. You see, earlier in the week one of the volunteers told me that he had once seen a snake in his room — a room which just so happens to be next door to my room. After hearing this story, I haven’t been able to sleep much. Despite my lack of sleep, I have managed to be upbeat and cheerful (and hopeful that my new roommates will show up soon… and that they’ll show up wielding magic powers to deflect snakes).

And, of course, life on the rice farm includes plenty of manual labor. After a taxing four days of weeding rice paddies and throwing tractor tires into the pond last week, I, frankly, had thoughts of quitting. As I was sitting in my hotel room in Johor Bahru last weekend, I couldn’t help wishing I had brought all my luggage with me so I could make a break for it. I reasoned that there had to be easier ways to get free accommodation while traveling– ways that didn’t involve pitching tires into a pond or having your room invaded by pythons.

This past week, I was entrusted with the task of weeding and pruning banana trees, a job I almost found, dare I say, enjoyable. Maybe this was because, after a week of weeding rice fields, I had finally gained a better appreciation for the wonders of agriculture… or maybe it was because banana trees, unlike rice plants, look quite different from weeds (which tend to look like rice plants)…. or possibly it’s because this job didn’t include wading around in a mosquito-infested swamp. After three days of working on the banana trees, my supervisor came out to see how I was doing, inspected my work and gave me a thumbs up sign (a gesture I hadn’t seen once during my week of weeding rice paddies and throwing tires). “Very good,” he said and then later that day he told me I could store my sickle in my room. I was pleased that I had earned his stamp of approval. (I was also pleased that I now had a weapon against any potential invading snakes!).

And, at least for a week, I haven’t had any thoughts about running away. When I left the farm this Friday to head into the city for the weekend, I packed only enough luggage for the weekend and assured my supervisor that I’d be back… and I meant it. After all, where else can you get free accommodation and your very own sickle?