Field Trip to Central and Southern Thailand
by Zhou Hang
from his website http://www.ikanpemburu.com/
Aquarticles
27th July - 3rd August 2004
After the Terengganu trip I spent a busy day in Singapore, and then on 27th July, Francis,
Benny and I flew to meet Azmi in Bangkok. Azmi had taken the long bus ride from Sungai
Kolok and had reached Bangkok early in the morning. It was great to see him again!
My initial plan was that after Terengganu, Azmi and I would first collect Betta
simplex and Betta sp. 'Southern Thailand', then meet up later with Francis
and Benny in Bangkok. But I was told that I couldn't enter or even exit Thailand by
land with my Chinese passport. No choice - we made a big change in our plans. So apologies
to Azmi - he would have to fly back to southern Thailand again later.
Our great host, Nonn, invited us for dinner on our first night. We had long and funny
conversations - and of course don't forget the fantastic Thai food!
The next morning we visited the famous Chatuchak Market. A train station
was just in front of our hotel, which was convenient. Road traffic is a killer in Bangkok,
and trains are probably the most efficient way of getting around.
Click on photographs for enlargements. Then go
"BACK."
This is the market directory. The pet section is in the north-east part.
  
We saw a small store selling birds' nests. Azmi soon showed his talents and became our
bargainer. I bought a nest, but wasn't aware that this would only encourage them to pluck
more from the wild until Nonn pointed this out.... Sigh.
The lotus is very popular in Thailand. There's a type called 'Queen of Siam'!
These are two-spot gouramis.
 
Soon we reached the aquarium shop area. Not many people around. The majority of fish were
farm bred ones, and didn't really attract me.
My main purpose was to get a fish net here. And I found a nice one!
 
This is a shop specialising in equipment...and another with reptiles and exotic pets.
Probably one of the better shops. It had a pretty good selection of healthy fish.
Small animals like squirrels are found in the market too. Birds, dogs, cats...any pets!!
Francis is a orchid collector. This small wild orchid joined his collection.
After a fruitful visit to the market we went back to our hotel to wait for Nonn, who
was to take us to Mahachai.
Mahachai is south-west of Bangkok. It is the habitat of the famous Betta sp.
'Mahachai', which is a fish from the Betta splendens species group, and very
close to Betta smaragdina.
This is the net we had bought that morning. Pretty good and easy to use.
The photo session was finished. Now it was time to get wet!!!
 
A closer look at the biotope. This is a very unique habitat. The water was not really
clean, which is typical for this group.
  
We wanted to find bubble nests, but just couldn't find any. Two-spot gouramis, croaking
gouramis etc. were caught, but only a few bettas, and they were either juveniles or
females. It seemed the males were hiding somewhere else!!!
I gave up. Not a single male caught in my net.
 
Suddenly we noticed there was another guy in the swamp. And gosh, he was holding a bag of
male fish!!! He and his partner had caught 60 or 70 fish, the majority male, in just one
hour.
 
Here is a male, and one of the few females.
While Nonn was talking with the collectors, we set up a phototank.
Beside the swamp was a factory. This was an industrial area, and I wonder how long these
little jewels will survive here.
We bought everything the collectors had caught. Now we needed females to pair them up.
Everyone was happy!
 
We moved on to a mangrove reserve nearby to see a beautiful crab. No joke!!
When we reached the resting point, mud skippers were watching us curiously. Ha ha!
This is how he can get so many good shots!
It was getting dark, and time to say goodbye to this beautiful place.
The 29th was a day for us to do some shopping, especially since one of
our members wanted many souvenirs.
 
At lunch, I didn't notice that I had ordered a bull P*N*S claypot!!! Halfway through, when
I realised something was wrong, it was already too late! ....A close up!!!!
 
This was in Siam Square. Our good friend was talking with a lady while he was smoking
outside the cafe. I don't know what were his intentions, but I was sure that he had a
wrong target! Finally he noticed the camera. Hahaha!
  
After a long day of walking, it was a must to go for a foot massage. It's easy to find one
on the street. It can get rid all the pain.
 
The Calypso was performed in our hotel, so why not? I had never seen this in Bangkok
before. Not bad at all.
The next day, we decided to go to a famous fishing park, where
visitors can challenge one of the biggest freshwater fish in the world - The Mekong Giant
Catfish. That's a fish listed in CITES Appendix 1!!
To get there we needed a taxi. Our bargaining guru showed off his skill again.
It's located in a slightly remote part of the city.
Besides the Mekong giant catfish, visitors can challenge the Siamese giant carp and up to
50 other species of game fish. The records are: Mekong giant catfish - 210 lbs!! ,
Siamese giant carp - 200 lbs!!
We rented two rods and that was more than enough. A friendly chap helped us to prepare the
lure and cast. He told us we couldn't fish for their big Arapaimas!
 
Bingo - first hit!!!! Basically we hooked nothing else but the Mekong giants. When
lifting them up from the water, grab their pectoral fins.
  
Everybody gets the chance to pull. It was catch and release, but still unfortunate for the
fish - they have to suffer every day to grab a meal.
So this is the biggest specimen! Hmm??? Don't look big??
How about this??? Try this one, sure it looks big!!!! Still the same!!
Look at his expression! Number 1 - Haha!!!!
The 31st was our last day in Bangkok, Nonn was to take us to a golf
course where he had found Betta splendens. I am not sure if these are a pure
breed, but at least they look to be so.
 
On the way we stopped at a paddy field. In this canal we caught some familiar gouramis and
also a tiny labyrinth fish that was interesting. It was Trichopsis pumila, aka
the pygmy gourami. It was my first time catching this fish in the wild.
 
Again, everybody into the water! It was right beside the main road, but still I noticed a
healthy number of species.
 
A beautiful male Trichopsis vittata (croaking gourami), and new to me - Boraras
urophthalmoides, the least rasbora, showing brilliant red in the wild.
An Ottelia species was growing nicely here. Big plant - could it be Ottelia
alismoides?
 
We came to this canal, and to the right could see people playing golf.
But that didn't stop us looking for fish.
 
One of us lost his cell phone in the muddy water! We spent a long time but without getting
much. I caught two female bettas, but again no males. No juvenile fish either. They seemed
to have disappeared.
So Nonn started calling the workers to ask where exactly they caught the males a few days
earlier. Ha!!
  
Meanwhile, I don't know where the idea came from, but Azmi and I decided to swim to the
other side to try our luck. That proved to be a stupid idea. On the way to the other side
Azmi lost his net, and on the way back, I lost my net!! Gone, end of the catching! But it
was my first time swimming when catching fish.
We paid the price, but nothing in return. Ha!!
These fish we did catch. Two species of snakes were caught in this canal too.
On our last day as a group we went to the market again. But this time to
the Seven Days Market. (This is an earlier picture).
A nice store specialising in local wild caught fish. Wonderful selection and many fish
that I had not seen before.
We bought these bags of Betta albimarginata and Betta ocellata.
They also had B. smaragdina, B. simplex and B. prima in stock.
I was busy taking pictures.
One of my favourite fish in the shop, Osphronemus exodon, the elephant ear
gourami.
These are rare, wild caught Colisa lalia!!!!! (Dwarf gourami)
And lastly, albino Pangio myersi (Khuli loach).
There were many many more native fish but I didn't photograph the majority of them.
After this, the four of us visited Nonn's fish room. Very nice cave fishes he's
keeping. Too bad we were in a rush, or else he might be worried about his precious stock
going missing!!
We four then went to the airport. Francis and Benny flew back to Singapore, while
Azmi and I took a short flight to Krabi to continue our collection trip.
The next morning our schedule was tight. We wanted to collect two
species of betta from two different areas in one day. We were to start very early to try
to finish collecting Betta simplex and then move on to collect Betta sp.
'Southern Thailand.'
Without taking breakfast we got onto motor bikes. And then it started to rain. Both of
us immediately got wet and were shivering in the strong wind. We couldn't really open our
eyes in the rain and had no idea how long would take to reach the habitat, but we couldn't
turn back halfway. We had to get the fish and go back to the hotel before 11:00 am to
catch a bus!
 
We turned onto a small muddy road, and were pretty confident that we had come to the right
place. After long enduring the cold, we finally reached a pond.
  
Many people visit this place. Our timing was wrong - the pond shows its true beauty on a
sunny day. Minerals are the cause of the sky blue colour. But according to the information
we had, this pond wasn't a good place to collect our fish.
There was a house near the pond. We went to check whether anyone was around and found the
kids knew of our fish too! Our drivers helped us question the kids, and we were told that
many Japanese come here for this beautiful fighting fish.
So he and his younger brother took us to a stream by the village.
 
A flooded small canal. One skinny Chinese, one wired Malay plus two naked Thai kids jumped
into the water while our two drivers watched us from under a tree.
We didn't have enough time or strength to stay in the water for long. This was probably my
toughest experience in terms of collecting fish. But within a few scoops, Azmi caught a
beautiful male!
 
A number of mouth brooding males were caught, but of course we released all of them.
Within 20 minutes we had caught more than enough. I knew there were some other interesting
fish in the water but I just couldn't take it any longer. I was screaming for a hot
shower!!
We suffered in the cold for another 30 minutes or so to get back to our hotel. After a
hot shower and a belated breakfast we quickly got onto the bus to our next stop. On the
bus, we realised that we were the only two Asians besides the driver. We needed a rest as
there was another challenge awaiting us!
The bus stopped halfway and stayed in the same place for more than an hour. That was a big
loss of time for us. When we reached our destination it was already past 3 o'clock in the
afternoon.
Language was the main problem here. It wasn't easy to find an English speaking driver to
take us where we wanted. We visited a few places but they all looked the same. I tried to
explain to the drivers that we wanted to go to a forested stream, but they never got what
I meant. No choice - we had little time left so we simply gave up. We should have stayed
in that place for a day longer. At least I have an excuse to visit there again in the
future!
We bought our train tickets for the overnight train back to Bangkok. Azmi's flight was on
the next day, while mine was a day after that. We had nearly three hours to roam around
the town.
A variety of edible insects were available in the night market.
A local sweet, but watch carefully - those are not house flies, they are bees. I don't
know, maybe they thought the bees were cleaner - the owner never chased them away!!
 
The durian was good! It wasn't the normal big Thailand durian, but more like the Malaysian
durian. Good taste and good smell. We took some food onto the train and had a late
dinner. The train ride was very comfortable.
We reached Bangkok in the morning, and went to the Chatuchak Market again. Azmi wanted
to take some fish back to Singapore.
A cock fight!
Azmi went to the airport in the afternoon. Selamat Jalan!!!
I spent my last day shopping. These insects were very cheap and nice.
Traffic was a real killer. I nearly didn't make the flight. I reached the airport less
than 20 minutes before departure. Phew!!!!!
Copyright(c)Zhou Hang 2004
Go to the next article in this series:
Field trip to Southern
Pahang, Malaysia
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