Drying Rice

There is a reason why rice packages say ‘wash before cooking’ on the instructions.  The streets and highways here are lined with plastic and tarps with rice spread over them to dry.   Sometimes there is no tarp and it is just spread on the pavement. Believe me, there are no emissions regulations and buses and trucks with black smoke streaming out the back come within inches of these homemade kilns, coating them with all of the evil toxins your little brain can imagine.  Often, when a large truck goes by at high speed, you can see the rice rise and scatter on the wind while the sweepers chase after it in an attempt to rescue what they can.  Then there are the chickens and dogs that are EVERYWHERE.  Every square inch of flat ground... soccer fields, school yards and parking lots, are covered in tarps loaded down with rice drying in the sun.