It’s taken a ridiculously long time to finally find the right time to write this blog entry. My excuses run all the way from the holiday season’s work schedule (busy) to general laziness and it’s leaning more towards the latter excuse. Anyway, without further adieu, the Bangkokhooker gives you “The Long Awaited Deep Sea Fishing Trip part 1”
I had been waiting a long time for The Long Awaited Deep Sea Fishing Trip, about a year actually. It all started when I got back into fishing again sometime during the end of 2008. I was still quite inexperienced at the time and I went with my girlfriend and one of my best buddies, Paramee on a lure-fishing trip at Srinakarin dam, a freshwater reservoir in Kanchanaburi province. The trip was exceptionally fun. We got drunk in our tent the first night at the national park with the help of a gigantic bottle of red-wine, fished and caught some spotted barbs before spending one last night on a dodgy-looking boat house for B1000 a night. I’ll write about that little adventure some other time. It was during this trip that I thought about the idea of taking some friends out on a deep-sea fishing trip. Soon after we went back to Bangkok and the hectic thing called life decided to continue whether we liked it or not. Paramee had to head to Australia to continue his Master’s degree (should Master’s be capitalised?) and the dry/winter season soon came to an end bringing back the turbulent tempest of the tropics that’s feared by every ocean fisherman.
Finally, a year went by. I became a little more knowledgeable about fishing, told some friends about the fishing trip and Paramee came back for his Australian summer holidays. For research, I went onto the siamfishing website and posted this question in Thai, “I have never been deep-sea fishing but my friends and I would like to go do some deep-sea fishing not too far from Bangkok. Where should we go?”
It took a little under an hour before I got my first and only response: “head on down to Bang Saray (บางเสร่), you will not be disappointed”. This prompted me to check out some photos the other members of the website have posted under Bang Saray and judging from the photos of men with ear-to-ear smiles hugging giant fishes in their arms: This’ll do!
We all met up at around 1pm at my home in the Sukhumvit area of Bangkok. The crew consisted of: Suchote, my childhood family friend; Saumil, an American man of Indian descent who’s working on an innovative project regarding carbondioxide and algae; and good old Paramee.
We stop by the nearby Japanese supermarket, Fuji, to stock up for our supplies for our overnight fishing trip. Some bread, peanut butter, honey, onigiri (Japanese rice balls), beer and a 1.5 litre bottle of sake to hopefully drink with some freshly cut sashimi (or to wash away our pathetic disappointment in not catching anything).
After some unplanned u-turns and a couple of stops to ask for directions we finally arrived at Bang Saray. Paramee, who was riding shotgun to keep me company, had already drunken four Heineken tallboys, was considerably tipsey and loud. He can’t help it, when we’re together we like to be cartoonishly loud just to bring out some laughs. God forbid if we gave into to the kind of macho male yelling guys with popped collars give into. That’s a first-class ticket to sexually frustrated agressive male country.
We finally met our guide, Tor (ต่อ) a man of the sea in his late thirties (I think) with a set of fangs that made him look like a tanned, skinny, jolly orgre.
“Let me go shower and we’ll head off”. In his hour shower break, we got ourselves aqcuainted to our fishing boat, a bright green ten-metre wooden vessel with a small little cabin on the second floor. The cabin comfortably fits three people with a ceiling so low that you can barely sit up without hitting your head. Also on the second floor are two benches the face one another with each bench barely fitting two.
We gathered on the second floor to share together a drink of sake while watching the sunset. We drank to the sunset and we drank to an adventurous trip.
Tor returned.
It was time to go.
To be continued…
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