Jake Catlett Photography

Rubber 101

Have you ever wondered how rubber is made?  No?  You haven’t?  Well, I never really wondered about it much either until I realized that rubber plantations look really beautiful and are a great place to take photos.

Rubber, in case you didn’t know, is made from tree sap.  I think that chewing gum made from natural sources also has rubber sap in it, but again, I’m not positive.  The Vietnamese word for chewing gum is “keo cao su”, which literally means “rubber candy”.  So, it’s not a completely ridiculous assumption to make.

Rubber plantations are plentiful in Southern Vietnam, and also in many areas of Cambodia and Thailand.  I’ve never seen a rubber plantation in Laos, though.  In fact, I’ve never seen one in Cambodia, either, but I’ve been told that there are extensive areas of rubber production in the eastern provinces of Mondulkiri and Rattanakiri.  That makes sense as rubber is widely grown in the Vietnamese provinces of Tay Ninh and Binh Phuoc, which are respectively near and bordering Mondulkiri.  Rubber is usually grown in areas with expansive, flat areas, however that’s not always the case.  Binh Phuoc is quite rolling and hilly, and rubber can be found across the province. Well, at least in the parts of it that I’ve been to.

The trees are tall, thin, with leafy tops, and they stink like latex.  Latex comes from rubber, so I guess that’s why.  The trees are grown in long, parallel rows, which offer great opportunities of pictures with a tunnel-like vanishing point.  These rows of trees often stretch on and on into the distance until you can’t really see where they go anymore.  The plantations are a really great place to take a girl on a quiet date for a picnic or something like that.  I mean, I’ve never actually taken a girl on a date to a rubber plantation, but the romantic in me tells me it would be cool, as long as she wasn’t allergic to latex, didn’t mind the smell of it, doesn’t mind sitting in the dirt or dead leaves with ants all over the place, or doesn’t mind getting dirt in her teeth and her eyes on the motorbike ride out there.  You may or may not want to mention to your date that condoms come from rubber trees, depending on whether or not she might think that you’re trying to say that you want to use one.  Or if she’d be interested in that at all.  I would suggest gauging whether or not she’s irritated with you for dragging her on a 2 hour motorbike ride from the city to sit around a bunch of stinky trees before making the decision.

The rubber is extracted from the trees by cutting a spiral of bark about 6 inches wide out of the tree, extending down the trunk about a meter or two.  The white, smelly rubber sap slowly oozes down the lower groove in the cut on the bark, and a little spout is added at the bottom so it drips neatly down into a little ceramic bowl tied near the base of the tree.  After some time (I don’t know how long) somebody comes along and dumps all the little bowls of rubber sap into a bucket, and then takes it to a factory or something where I can only assume that they do some other stuff with it.  In Thailand I’ve seen villagers making big mats out of it that they dry in the sun and then sell on to rubber companies.  In Vietnam the plantations tend to be owned and operated by the companies themselves, and so it’s a far less common sight.  Either way, after that stage I don’t know what happens to it, other than it winds up being made into balls, tires, condoms, and probably quite a few other things.  The factories that process the rubber would probably be a hell of a lot less open to me just walking in and taking photos than the people on the plantations would be, so I’ve never really tried it yet.  Anyhow, the inside of the factory would probably be hot and ugly, and my imaginary date would definitely be pissed off if I tried to take her in there.  I figure by this time she would just want to go home and get the dead leaves out of her hair and shoes.

Oh, another thing, these cool lichens grow on the side of the rubber trees and make weird little blotches and circles with neat shades of green in them.  I like those, too, so sometimes I photograph them, as you can see from the picture above.

So, now you know as much about rubber as I do!  Which isn’t very much, but it was probably more than you knew before, and anyhow you got to see some pretty pictures, so it’s probably best if you don’t complain about it.