If you were traveling in
Southeast Asia, perhaps in Indonesia, Thailand or Vietnam, what
agricultural crop would you expect to see the most ?
If you were exploring the island of Bali in Indonesia, or the Philippines, you would see rice terraces carved into the hills and mountains all around you.
If you decided to continue your journey into the rich river deltas of Thailand, Vietnam and Laos, you would be surrounded by plots of flooded rice paddy fields on level land for as far as the eye could see.
Turning north into the foothills of the Himalayas in northern Thailand, Laos and Burma, you would enter a region where swidden agriculture (burning fields to plant a new crop) for growing rice in mountainous areas was traditionally practiced.