Let's Eat Some Bugs: A Global Travel Diary: Fried chicken, Harry Potter, and a few enormous catfish

Once again, the events of the last 24 hours have been so mind-blowing-ly awesome that I'm just going to get right to it. First off, if you ever come to Bangkok, eat fried chicken on the street. It's insanely cheap and insanely delicious. The stall we chose, en route home from costume shopping at Platinum Mall (or Pratunam Mall, depending on your ethnicity / English language skills), offered a big piece of crispy fried chicken over a bed of rice with local cucumbers and a sweet chili sauce for 35 Baht ($1 = 31 Baht). You may remember cat-hater and bug-eater Ross Clements from previous posts. Upon sampling one bite of this delicious local fare, he promptly declared that this was his "new go-to lunch". I'm leaning toward agreeing with him. How could you say no to a plate that looks like this?

I thought for a brief moment that the fried chicken had made my day, but I was proven wrong pretty quickly. After class, we went to a bar in the Thong Lo neighborhood called The Iron Fairies. The tiny, dark hole-in-the-wall is a blacksmith shop as well as a restaurant and wine bar with its own fantastic cocktails (some of which include absinthe...lucky us), and what it claims are "The Best Burgers in Bangkok". I'm not quite ready to make a definitive statement about the burger quality in the entire city, but it was a pretty hip spot. Witch's Tavern was our next stop, basically a British dive pub with outlandish specials like free pizza on Wednesdays and free drinks for ladies on Tuesdays to entice potential patrons. Our crew referred to this succession of bars as the "Harry Potter evening" - a night replete with witches and fairies. While Friday night happy hour ended at 9PM so we were out of luck on the specials, we were drawn in by the Thai cover band that was playing some of our fave American tunes. Not going to lie, they were legit. We're talking U2, Bruno Mars, Bon Jovi, Adele, and pretty much any request we yelled out from our beer-soaked table. One of those requests happened to be "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey, which every classic rock fan knows is an awesome song in and of itself, but last night felt especially awesome because I got up on stage and did the lead vocals (thanks, Dan Haspel and Joe Delgado for egging me on and charming the band into making this happen). The band was great (despite the fact that the drummer may have been pushing 65 years old) and I had a blast performing for my friends and the one creepy long-haired shoeless drunk American bastard who was dancing around like a moron....just like good old times at The Keg of Evanston (don't worry, Rocket Pockets, you guys are waaaaay better). Only issue was that the Thai accent turned the backup vocals into "street rights; pee pole", as opposed to the real words, "streetlights; people". Good times. After all that, waking up this morning at 7AM wasn't pretty, but boy was it worth it. Here's a photo to get you started:

Yep, we went fishing. For giant catfish. Well, I should say that four of my friends went fishing while I sat in the bungalow, took photos, and worked on my tan, but I did save myself $175 by not reeling one of the big suckers in myself (Dad, are you proud? I'm being financially responsible!). We got picked up early in the morning by Damien of Siam Fishing Tours (one half of the ambiguously gay duo of Damien and Jules, who run the joint) and taken out to Bungsamran Fishing Park, a stocked pond 45 minutes outside of Bangkok that was teeming with monster catfish. Literally teeming. The water looked like it was boiling, only the bubbles were catfish. We got settled in our pond-side bungalow (fully-stocked with beer of course - essential nutrition for any good fishing trip) while our guides baited the hooks with ball-shaped mounds of ground rice husks. The idea is to cast the bait balls into the water, where they disintegrate and cause a feeding frenzy of catfish, during which one of the giants/narwhals/Loch Ness monsters will accidentally bite the hook (or get speared through the tail or fin, as we saw several times). Then you reel it in. This is far easier said than done, especially since the fish we hooked weighed between 19 and 44 kilos (42 and 97lbs). I can't say from experience since I was saving money by not catching my own (Dad, are you hearing me?) but from the effort exerted by my buddies, you can tell these things put up a fight. It also helped that Dan Haspel kept saying "man, this one's putting up a fight" when he was reeling it in, which saved me from having to use my powers of deduction. All in all, each fisherman/woman caught at least three giant fish well worthy of Chuck Testa's taxidermy services (congrats to Kate Whitcomb for having the best record - not one fish got away from her lucky hook), drank at least three giant beers, and had at least one giant, delicious plate of Thai food that was brought to us in our bungalow by waiters. See Exhibits A-G below. Fantastic day. And now it's time to party.