Game Fishing in Thailand

So I'm drinking with my host family on a Friday night (I seem to become more fluent in Thai when I drink so I try to drink as often as I can) and they invite me to go fishing the next day. Using sign language (I've become quite fluent) I tell them I'd love to fish and I even act out casting a fishing rod out into the sea and reeling in a big one. I should have known this wasn't going to be "conventional" fishing when they all laughed and in sign language (they've become fluent with me around) told me rods would not be needed, indicating that we would be using our hands. Well, I figured that we would be in a nice stream of some sort catching fish with our bare hands--an idea that appealed to me. So I got up early the next day and my host brother was ready to take me fishing but I had to do a quick project with my PC language group wherein we had to map out our community. The project took a little longer than I thought and I got home at noon. But it was really pretty out--a little overcast so it wasn't too hot--and I told my host brother I'd love to still go fishing though its later than we had originally planned for. So we hop on his truck and I'm all excited to hang out by a stream in the heart of a Thai province and I have my camera all ready to take some amazing pictures when I begin to notice the road we are on isn't exactly the type of road one might imagine leading to a nice stream. But we keep on going past sugar cane fields and eucalyptus farms until we get to what seems to me to be a rice field. Well, it turns out to be a rice field--a very muddy, and mucky, and muddy rice field...and as much as I start to wish that maybe...just maybe... he wanted to show me what an old rice field looked like or maybe he was picking up a few friends or that maybe my host dad was a planter and they actually owned this field (at this point of my homestay I still don't know what my host father does. My sign language skills, while good, aren't that great...yet) But as he begins to turn off the engine and invites me to head out, I realize that this IS THE FISHING GROUND. So we head out and I figure "when in rome..." so I'm ready to start grabbing for fish in the mud (though I'm still holding on to the image of a nice stream) but we are told that most of the fish have been caught already. Of course I'm wondering how many fish could possibly be caught in this site and wondering even more what type of fish could possibly live here. But I see that there are 5 huge barrels and when I take a peek, I see literally hundreds of fish! I had never seen fish like these before...well, I also never really expected fish to live in mud...and it was actually pretty cool seeing them swim around the barrels. I took a pretty cool video but I can't seem to upload it unto this blog so I'll try to put it on youtube under scary mud fish so you guys can check it out.

But anyway, it was funny because the next day, I was hanging out with a couple of PC volunteers in a little shack sipping on beers and exchanging stories when EJ, one of the volunteers arrived and was like, "Guys, you'll never believe this but my family invited me to go fishing and..." Turns out his family didn't use just their hands. They actually had this little electric rod that they'd dip in the water and the fish would all jump out.

Ah, the simple pleasures of living in a province in Thailand!

P.S. Dinner that night was fried fish...I didn't need to bust out my ENglish-Thai dictionary to ask where the fish came from!

Our fishing grounds

A water buffalo chilling with the fish

We had a post fishing party over here. Had a couple of brewsky's with the fishermen