Fishing Village and Shopping

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Geo: 12.8, 99.9667

We struggled out of bed at 7am after I again had a sleepless night and made our way down to breakfast to eat as much as we could as fast as we could then caught Mr Long's van down to the fishing village. Mum and my aim was to get down there as early as we could so we would see the village when it's really 'alive' and at 7:40 when we got there it still well and truly was.

The way it's set out is that on one side of the road is the piers and restaurants and the other size is the houses of the rich, but if they have so much money I don't see why they would live in Thailand's smelliest place. On the side of the road with the water, there will be a 20m wide wooden pier, then a huge room for ice, then a few restaurants and bamboo houses then the exact same thing is repeated. The piers were all split into two sections; the first would be for unloading and sorting the fish and the second would be where the fish were packed with ice. At first we felt uncomfortable and observed from 5m away but then I thought ‘stuff it' and stood less than a meter away; some gave us weird looks but as soon as I smiled they smiled back and went back to work. Everyone was circled around a metal chute (that didn't shoot), a person would come with a bucket of fish from the boats, tip it over, and ten people would crowd around the 3m long chute and sort fish into ten buckets; we couldn't work out what/how/why they were sorting them. There were people on either sides of the chute, at the front were people who were getting the buckets off the bridge-things from the boat - to get the fish out of the haul there would be two men with a 20m stick and a net - the fish from there was put into the baskets which were passed along and at the other side of the chute were people who would weigh the baskets, they only ever took out a few fish and were happy with the weight. You could tell that everyone had done what they were doing before; everyone was in sync and made it look effortless.

The other end of the pier, the ice crushing, despite how boring it sounds, was just as interesting, blocks of ice 1x.5x.5m would be carried into a box type thing where the ice would be violently broken up then into a tall chute to be broken up even further and shot into tubs which were then loaded onto trolleys or sorted into the baskets of fish. Amongst it all were people who were randomly taking fish which was fine by everyone, and leaving without paying. You would think after working all night they would be ‘tight' with their catches but we saw a fish being thrown at a mother cat who quickly scurried off with it. We watched this for a few hours, along with one other pier and not once did it get boring.

Further along we watched the locals cook and sell their products, I wouldn't say they were busy but they certainly weren't quiet either, only one person we saw up there spoke English and he was very happy to talk. The workers/locals seemed to have their own fashion; quite a few people had white face powder on, something we haven't seen at all this trip (probably because it looks horrible) and all the boys/men had huge stretchers in either ear, and while yes, that is common at the moment, they generally aren't in both ears, as big or on everyone - only one in every 900 maybe. The people who were selling their catches did everything with precision, we watched as people effortlessly took one crab at a time out of a bucket of 30 without being nipped once, they put a luckerband around it and packed it for selling, still alive. I must admit I have no idea about prices of seafood at home because I don't eat it but I know it's fairly expensive, 1kg of crabs here was 40 baht (which is pronounced like the Simpson's character, Bart) which is the equivalent of $1.25 AUD, for a night and days work!

Just as we were leaving we spotted a large sign saying ‘OILET' on an old building so we hesitantly went in to find what appeared to be someone's home; we quickly used the toilet and made a run for it not knowing whether we had just trespassed or not. On the way home we passed small market stalls which were aimed at the locals, meaning everything was cheap; something we had to take advantage of! One of the stalls sold sunglasses, clothes and hats, we left with nothing as it was hard to look due to everything being so cramped, we turned around and in a 2x2m tent behind their stall was their house, we felt terrible for not buying anything and debated turning around but we were just too hot.

As soon as we got back we jumped in the pool with no plans of getting out for quite a while; Nana, Pa and Phil joined us in the spa. After lunch, mum and I decided to walk up the street to buy the fan that I fell in love with (and could afford thanks to dad); Nana joined us so she could take Pa's washing down to the laundry, which is on the side of student accommodation. We went on a few shops and came to the fan and dress shop. The two workers, one who was asleep most of the time, obviously weren't the owners as they had to ring up for the prices of things which ended up working well as last time we asked the price of my fan it was 350B and we were told it was only 270B. After fetching us chairs, directing fans on us and offering suggestions we walked out with my fan (thanks dad) and two dresses for mum. Nana decided to turn around but mum and I kept going. At Soi 2 is a huge handbag, shoe and souvenir shop which we have been to and bought from every other time; we walked out an hour later with two handbags, purses and souvenirs'. On our way back we stopped at a 7-11 equivalent which really gave us an idea of where all the Asians who move to Australia and start up shops come from, as it sold just about everything you could think of in a small space.

After a relaxing swim Nana, Pa, Phil, Evelyn, mum and I all headed out to Da Restaurant for our last sit-down dinner; to ‘welcome us off' as Mum had said. Thailand produced its first sunset while we've been there; well I'm not really sure what it was as when we were looking at it our backs were facing the sun. Dinner was very nice, although it was very hard to share five dishes - and 2 small bowls of rice - between six people; you only get a spoonful of each dish. We shared stir fried mixed vegetables, S & S pork, fried chicken with cashew nuts, 2 spring rolls, 2 rice, 4 sprite & 1 beer for Nana ($5.00 each)

While walking home we stopped to get an ice-cream but Phil and Evelyn had already had one a few hours ago so didn't feel like one which of course meant that no one got one, so when Pa found out we were walking down to the hairdressers which is past the 7-11 he was keen to tag along. The hairdressers were shut, but we went into the 7-11 anyway, Pa grabbed a paddle-pop and opened it, before Nana grabbed herself and me a Magnum; Poor Pa-the look on his face when he realised we got magnums was priceless!

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