Gold bonanza from rice region

IF it weren't for the heavy trucks thundering by and the exodus of young workers from the padi fields in Phichit, Lar Tarapong might never have known Thailand’s only gold mine was just down the road. 

The mineral found in the ores of this unusually arid patch of central Thailand, 300km north of Bangkok, is so fine as to be invisible to the naked eye, leaving rice growers unaware for centuries that volcanoes had deposited so much gold on their doorstep millions of years ago.