The West has wheat, and the East has rice. Rice is so important to the Vietnamese that the very word itself is synonymous with the word for ‘eat.’ If you ask somebody in Vietnam if they have ‘an com?’ you are literally asking if they have eaten rice. But in fact, that is the phrase used to ask whether someone has eaten, whether they have eaten rice or not!

Vu Pham captured this little girl gliding through ripe rice fields on her bicycle just outside the city of Hue in August 2010. See more of Vu's images at instagram.com/soaipham.

