The Thai Pirate - Thai Blog and Travel Stories

The lucky fish at Wat Bankrang

You may think that Thailand is a fisherman's paradise, being that the country is blessed with hundreds of inland streams and rivers, and huge expanses of coastline facing out onto several different oceans.

In fact, Thailand can also be a very frustrating place for fishing fans, as we found out when family came to visit last October.

The picture above is taken at Wat Bankrang, a largish temple across the street from our house and located on the Tha Chin river in Sri Prachan. As you can see, the catfish around the temple are 'whoppers', and this is because fishing is forbidden in or around the temple grounds (I believe it's because you are not allowed to 'take life' within the temple boundaries). 

Fishing at other points along the river outside of the temple boundaries is fine, but as these boundaries stretch a pretty long way down the river, and the vast majority of the riverside of the Tha Chin has been bought up by residents, its not that easy to find a spot.

There are many other smaller rivers and streams, located at the roadsides etc around Sri Prachan, but, they don't have such large and attractive fish, and they are generally hard to catch.

You can imagine the frustration of farang fishermen, who stand on the banks of such temples and try to scheme of ways around the rules, and arguments as to why fishing should be allowed.

As visitors are encouraged to feed the fish, they develop into great, big, greedy buggers, who are very much unafraid to leap out and take bait from your hands.

A red rag to a bull, for many UK fishermen!

Places to visit in Thailand 14 - Bung Chawak Zoo, Suphanburi

(I had to have a go with the python, two ten year olds were daring me).

Bung Chawak Zoo, Suphanburi, great day out in the country. Last weekend we had a visitor over from England as well as a friend of the family from Thailand, both young 'uns. Sunday afternoon and we decided to have a day out, off we went to Bung Chawak Zoo.

Bung Chawak has quite a good selection of wildlife, lots of lions, tigers, elephants etc, most lying completely still and as far away from the crowds as possible. Everybody tries to get their attention, whooping and calling out, but the beasts seem to know that, by completely ignoring you, you are more likely to go away.

I was a little apprehensive going to a Thai zoo, but it pleasently surprised me. The zoo isn't very big, nothing compared to say, Chessington, back in the UK, but the animals seem to have plenty of clean shelter, and lots of water. The only real improvement I would suggest would be to increase the zoo's size and give them all a bit more space, but this applies to pretty much every zoo I've visited.

The walkways and tropical surroundings are really pretty, overall the zoo is a very nice place to relax. There are a few little cafes and shops selling novelties; the zoo itself is located on the banks of a large river, which helps cool the place down, as well as offer other attractions (fishing / paddle boating etc).

There are a couple of nice restaurants opposite where you can get a good plate of food and cold drink, away from the masses of over-excited kids (who are not that terrible to be honest). Watch out for the chaotic car park though, if you ever visit you will see what I mean, the phrase 'make it up as you go along' applies.

Pricing is always a laugh in Thailand. There is always this and that written about 'dual pricing', either by tight arse farang, whinging on about it, or the other side, 'do-gooding' foreigners who seem to want to give away all their 'hard-earned' to the poor lickle Thai's.

Throughout Thailand there is essentially a two tier system, one price for Thai's and another for foreigners. I think at the zoo it was 20 baht a Thai and 100 baht for farang. I am not too bothered with this system, everytime I try to reason about the why's and wherefores behind it, it just gives me a headache, I'd rather just pay the extra.

Having said that, I'm not one to chuck money away either, so I guess my view is, get away with it if you can; my method of getting around the dual pricing system is to hide while a Thai pays. If that isn't practical, an ear to ear grin, with loud 'saw wat dee krub' (with wai if they are older) often does the trick. The more Thai language you can throw into the mix, the better....... I find if you are genuine enough with your greeting, and your Thai sounds strong, this usually gets you through without too much bother....

.......and if it doesn't, well, another 50p bites the dust.

At the end of our trip were the pythons in the pictures above. I've never really fancied hanging a large python around my neck, but as the kids in our party leapt in with both feet I had to 'keep face'. All I can say is that they are bloody heavy, and the one that sat on me disliked me as much as I did 'it'. Pretty much the same thing happened with the very likeable 'dressed up' Orangutan; the kids loved sitting next to him, but he took one look at me, and we both decided, we were never going to be best buddies.

Bang Chawak is a good place to go for a morning or afternoon if you are entertaining young ones. The animals at this zoo seemed pretty well looked after and there is a good selection for everyone to see. You do find at Thai zoo's you can generally get closer to the animals than you could back in the UK, and its easy for little hands and feet to get inside the cages of half tonne lions and pacing, hungry, siberian tigers.

BUT, by far the most dangerous thing at this Thai zoo is the car park.

Snake bites in Thailand. Poor little Pinky

Snakes exist in abundance throughout Thailand, as little Pinky will testify.

I came into the office at 7am to find a very sad looking, bloated faced Pinky sitting before me. Little Pinky had been on a reconnaissance mission on the grounds overnight and had fallen prey to an attack from a common Nor kiel, or green snake. (the picture above right was taken after Pinky had been given the all clear, after the mad rush to the vet. The picture above left is Pinky after recovering from the bite).

Green snakes are very common, and can be found mainly in trees where they blend in so well. Now and again when walking through Pornchai one will fall out in front of you as you stroll. They are small and very shy, quick to slither away, so Pinky probably cornered or harassed it to make it turn on her. Thankfully they are only mildly poisonous, non-life threatening, even for mutts in most cases.

Should Pinky have been bitten by something a little bigger or more poisonous it may have been a different story. On this occassion a quick rush to the vet sorted it all out, and after an injection and 7 days of drugs she is as right as rain. The swelling in her face is a reaction to the toxins in the venom.

One of the reasons Thai's keep mutts is to flush out pests and snakes and frighten off potential intruders, so Pinky was just doing her job. She's a bit too good at it though!

British Angler lands huge Stingray in Thailand

Jeez, I posted before on big fish in Thailand, but they just keep getting bigger.

This h-u-g-e giant freshwater stingray, weighed in at 350kg (55 stone).

The catcher, Brit Ian Welch said that he was nearly pulled over the side of the boat when the thing took the bait: "It buried itself on the bottom and the main fight was trying to get it off the floor. I tried with every ounce of power but it just would not budge. After half an hour my arms began shaking and after an hour my legs went. Another 30 minutes went by and then I put a glove on and physically pulled the line with gritted teeth and somehow I found the reserves to shift the fish."

The fish took 12 people to haul it out of the water, where it was tagged and let loose back into the Mekong River.

It has been booked as the biggest ever fish to be caught on rod and line.

Brilliant.

It's a dog's life (but not in Thailand)

These are the new 'killers' that guard the TEE Coffee Shop in Sri Prachan. Evil little feckers they are.

Mare picked them up because Leung, the previous guard dog / resident hound has gone MIA.

He arrived at the Coffee Shop around the same time I arrived in Thailand (about 6 months ago) and I am very fond of the little yellow critter. 2 weeks ago he decided to go walkabout, and hasn't been seen since.

We all hope that his previous owners came and found him, as it was strange that he had been neutered, so obviously somebody cared about him before he turned up at our place. That can happen. A few of the guys had a good look around the roads to see if he had been on the wrong end of a speeding Thai truck, but no dead Leung as far as we know.

He turned up at our place out of the blue, so maybe he has got a better offer?

These new additions to our mutt family were abandoned and doomed to have very short lives until Mare picked them up. They still live in constant peril from other dogs who might come across them and of course the traffic. I do what I can, as do others who work at the shop, but work priorities take precedence in Thailand. Dogs have to get streetwise very quickly.

A general rule of thumb is the older they get the tougher they become, giving them a better chance for a longer life, but dogs don't generally have long lives in Thailand.