Salt Lakes & Farms

Have you ever wondered where salt comes from? we did before we started cycling the world..
Since then we’ve cycled through many countries with both natural salt lakes and salt farms, so we soon discovered the many ways that salt is produced, to name just a few, last year we cycled across Turkeys Salt Lake (Tuz Gölü) this is the second largest lake in Turkey and is also one of the greatest ‘natural’ salt lakes in the world, 63% of the salt consumed in Turkey is mined from this lake.

We cycled through many salt farms in Vietnam

Today we left Bangkok and cycled 100km to the coastal province of Samut Songhkram, this is a small Thai province on the Gulf of Thailand, southwest of Bangkok. As we approached Samut Songhkram, to either side of the road we were surrounded by a glistening sea of white.

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Several salt farms lie along the salt road, their combined output make the area the largest producer of the mineral in Thailand. The farms work seasonally, and to make the salt, the prepared fields are flooded with sea water pumped in from the near-by Gulf of Thailand, dammed, and left to dry naturally in the sun, when the water has evaporated, it leaves behind dazzling white crystals, thats when the workers step in, the work is backbreaking and extremely labor-intensive, women can be seen scooping the salt into baskets, the men carry a pole with the baskets attached to both ends on their backs, and today the temperature was 46 degrees! its hard to comprehend working in this heat, its hard enough cycling, but to do such hard labour is remarkable to see! as you can see from the photos, the salt is piled up and taken away to be cleaned and bagged for sale on the roadside, in local shops and internationally.

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