Lobster in Phuket.

While chartering a sailboat in Phuket, I fished a little bit using a rapella at the end of a handline that I tied to one of the boat's stanchions. Since I wanted to catch the fish, not drown it, I rigged a "bobber" on deck by wrapping a bit of line on another stanchion and clipping it off with a clothes pin. That way when a fish hit the rapella the tension would pop the clothes pin and alert us.

For two days I rigged and rerigged my fishing line and clothes pin without success. Then on the third day I had a hit. And the darn thing took the bait while I was below decks so I never even got to see my "bobber" snap free. Hauling the line in hand-over-hand took a while and I even questioned whether there was even a fish on the line or just some stray bit of ocean stuff. Eventually, the "ocean stuff" came close enough for us to see that we had a barracuda - long, skinny, big teeth...

Shortly after landing the fish a local fisherman in his long-tail boat came alongside and offered to sell us some of his day's catch. His wife smiled as she held up some squid. No thanks. Needle fish? No thanks. Baby shrimp. Nope. Big prawns? Hmmm. Lobster? Let's talk.

I climbed aboard the grubbiest, smelliest boatI've ever been on to pick out some big juicy prawns and plunk them into a bucket that the leathery man's wife was holding. Then I turned to the fisherman and asked for that lobster he'd offered and added it to the bucket. Then the negotiation began.

He held up three fingers and slowly counted out loud: one-two-three. Three hundred baht (about $9.50). No thanks. We went back and forth and finally I climbed back aboard our boat, picked up that sorry barracuda and offered him my fish and 100 baht ($3.00) for the bucket of lobster and prawns.

Deal.