Feeding Fish Green Beans

On the unofficial list of The Strangest Things Thais Like To Do On The Weekend, on of the tops on the list has got to be feeding large schools of fish. Yep. Just that: feeding large schools of fish. It sounds simple, and perhaps boring, but Thais love it. Just imagine a huge pond full of hungry fish, and then you, standing above it, with fists full of food to toss in at your leisure. The fish swarm the places you’ll most likely throw the food and but then dart wherever you choose to toss it. Okay, okay, so that might not sound as illustrious or fun to you, but Thais (and I) live for it.


Throughout different spots around the country: rivers, lakes, caves, and in this case waterfalls, unusually large schools of fish have spawned. How or why they are there (or why Thais are so united in there awe of them) is beyond me, but the perpetuation of the (un)natural phenomena is obvious. Where there are large schools of fish, there are people selling food to feed them, and thus there are people buying the food, and then tossing the food into the water joyously, enjoying the spectacle of pounds and pounds of fish mobbing the bits in the water. Does it really seem so amazing that fish would spawn in great numbers in ponds where they have no predators and are constantly overfed?

In Thailand however, we don’t ask these questions. There are just too many questions without answers. For example: why do they feed fish at Khao Cha-mao green beans? I too thought foot-long crispy green beans an odd choice of food at first, but evidently, the fish love it. Most people snap the beans up into smaller pieces, presumably to maximize their feeding time, but as the picture shows, our Thai friends at the waterfall liked to make the fish earn their greens. They laid the beans out, just beyond the fish’s “reach” and watched them bravely attempt a flop out of the water, across rock just for a nibble.