Khao ya koo is the Shan/Thai Yai name for a type of sweetened sticky rice. Other than simply being a sweet snack, the dish has strong associations with celebration, as it's only made on certain holidays. It also has ties with community, and as you'll see, is one distinctly local method of making merit (kwaa loo in the local dialect).
The process begins by steaming lots of recently-harvested sticky rice:
At the same time, blocks of raw sugarcane sugar are melted with coconut cream:
When throughly blended, the sugarcane mixture is added to the still-warm sticky rice:
The rice/sugar mixture is then stirred with large wooden paddles (also shown at the top of this post):
I only saw men doing this, and the process took as long as a half hour, giving the rice a creamy, almost oily texture. Towards the end of the stirring process (called kuan in Thai) crushed peanuts are added:
The rice is then allowed to cool slightly, and is divided into plastic bags or banana leaf packages:
And it is at this point that the merit part takes place. The bags of khao ya koo are then loaded onto trucks:
and the villagers drive through the various districts of Mae Hong Son, handing packets of the rice out to everybody they see:
In recent years this has been accompanied by a parade:
But the most important thing is still giving (and getting) that rice:
