We're seven hours away from Luang Prabang on the Mekong river when the slowboat suddenly turns around in the water. We're all confused; are we stopping for more passengers? The boat circles round again and a tourist shouts down to the back "they're trying to catch a fish!"
Passengers run to crowd one side of the narrow boat. We can see the catfish in the milky brown water swimming near the surface with its whiskers sticking out. It seems to be gasping at the air and is moving quite slowly. My view is obscured but I hear someone shriek "there's a man in there!" and in a few moments I see him - he's paddling in the water after the fish and trying to catch it in a plastic waste paper basket. He's not having much luck; the slow-moving fish is actually fairly agile and keeps jumping out of the basket.
The boat swings round again. The man has given up with the basket; we see him run down the length of the boat in his pants (MANCHESTER UNITED on the waistband) to retrieve a big pole with a hook on the end to try his luck with that. As he's about to launch himself in again a local fisherman glides up on a narrow speedboat and hooks the fish out with a similar pole in one swift movement. Our man looks dejected, but the fisherman turns his boat towards ours and has a brief exchange with him. After the two men come to an agreement the fisherman quickly beheads, guts and slices up the fish, giving our man half of it, and speeds off to the bank. All parties satisfied, the boat continues on its journey.
No comments:
Post a Comment