Raw Urchin Meat

This morning found a group of women sitting in a circle on the beach. Around them orbited a gang of little kids, some on bicycles, some with orange bottles of soda. They sat around two plastic tarps -- one blue, one green. In the center of the group was a mountain of black sea urchins. The cinadrians? Plucked fresh from the sea waggled and twitched their long black spines in protest to the salty air. The pile seemed to shiver and jive and even the broken husks that sat in smaller radiating piles were twitching their spines feebly. The women used an array of tools, one a long piece of wood, one what looked like a pick-ax, one a crow bar like wrench, and pulled the urchins one at a time from the pile. Then the pounded the urchin with the tool to break the brittle, but very sharp, spines. The detached pieces of spine littered the sand like drifts of needles. The pounded a circle around the center photosensitive “eye” of the urchin. An eye which looked like a white star flecked with bright blue spots like glinted here and there on the black body as well. Once they had pounded a nubby ring of spikes around this eye, they could pull out the center. Along with the eye the hard heart of the urchin slipped out from the rest of the hollow body. Inside was a yellow and brown mass of insides, which the women expertly carved out with a twist of their thumb. Working in pairs, the pounder and scooper & and cutter and cleaner, who could be distinguished by their hands: The pounder by her black stained hands glittering with the pieces of black spine clinging to the backs of her fingers, the cutter and cleaner but her wet clean hands, clutching a pen knife to seperate the brown guts from the spongy yellow meat. They collected the meat in big plastic tubs of sea water, tossing the empty husks into piles behind them. The radial children retruned now and again without streached palms. They squatted next to their mothers, who would reply with either a stern scolding or a piece of raw yellow meat.

I came across the women on Pattaya beach, just in front of one of Lipe’s bigger and fancier resorts “Bundaya Resort”. Several smiled when I came over, and answered that the sea urchins were called Hoi, and yes I could take pictures. One small girl, who I guess has come to recognize me, greeted my thigh with a head-butt and refused to release it from a fierce hug even at the embarrassed urging of her mother. I took a hundred or so photos in the next hour.

When the pile began to dwindle, men came trudging up out of the sea. They pulled behind them blue oil barrels filled with the twitching urchins. The men, several of whom I could see now were large boys, were shirtless and wore masks and snorkels. They dragged the blue barrels up the sandy beach and replenished the mountain with its twitching rocks. A young boy – maybe three or four years old – helped gather the broken husks and pile them back into the empty barrels. He carefully approached the piles, plucked a piece at a time between his chubby fingers, and chucked the spiky shells into openings in the drums.

There was the sound of crunching shells, and occasional bursts of gossip as the women worked. After a while, a LadyBoy came over and joined. She squatted next to the tarp, balancing her beautiful handbag on her leg, and hacked at the urchin with her crowbar-wrench, all the while tossing snips of gossip among the other women or chattering at the children. Once she had broken into the Hoi she would pass it to her neighbor and so her hands were not blacken from the Hoi juices, and in fact, her fingernails were long and pink. I liked her immediately.

Once I got the courage up to ask questions, I was met with a slightly warmer brew of being completely ignored than I experienced with the noodle makers. I sat between a woman in a blue skirt named Julie and woman in a green skirt with a yellow shirt. I found out the Hoi were delicious raw and with lime and very spicy chilies. They were even better cooked, or in Tom Yum soup. I asked if I could taste and the group rumbled with laughter. “The farang wants to taste’ said someone. And Julie dipped her hands into the babypool like tub of brown water and pulled out a piece of meat about the size of an almond. I held the meat with my fingertips: it was wet and very spongy or porous. It was a dark yellow, and had a smell like piers or fresh seafood that made me think instantly of my summers growing up in Maine. “What flavor does it have?” I asked. “I don’t know” laughed Julie, and “sweet, sweet” said someone else. Everybody glanced up at me and I grinned and put it in my mouth. It was delicious, strong and sweet like an oyster.

I asked if they sold the meat, and they said sometimes at Pak Bara pier. One kilo sold for one hundred bhat: about three dollars. I looked at the circle of women carefully navigating the spiky, poky, dangerous creatures with expert black stained hands and I figured each hoi produced about five of those almond sized slivers of meat in maybe two of three minutes of cracking. I asked how many Hoi today? “many Hoi” someone finally answered. I asked if it was dried first. No one understood, or no one answered. I asked in one month, how often they collected Hoi. No one answered. I asked if they collected Hoi often. No one answered. I asked in Lipe had environmental problems. “Yes”, said the woman in the yellow shirt “Trash and the coral”. “The coral is degrading?” I asked. “yes,” she said. “Why is it declining?” I asked. “It is white” she said. “Do you know why it is white?” I asked. “It’s the same as everywhere, in Phuket, and Krabi and Taroutao” she said.

When I had filled an entire SD card, I just sat for a while with the women. Watching the kids run into eachother on their bicycles down the beach. One girl came over crying, and the mom in the yellow shirt scolded her. The Lady Boy mimicked her. She said to me, “she likes to sing songs”. A few men helped cleaning the urchins, though most went back to the sea or retired in the shade of an empty resort restaurant behind us. Now and again curious Thai workers from Bundaya or curious tourists peered over. One Bhundaya worker had curry hair and I knew him from the first day when he rescued me and my bags from an embarrassing walk across the island from the ferry. “one month has gone quickly” he said, when I told him I was on the island for only three more days. “Yeah,” I said, “that is really true. I’m sad.”

I ate and ventured into the Urak Lawoi village as rain clouds started to sweep in ove the island. I found Pi Maew and her husband Bom in one of their bungalows, making a map of how to get to their resort from the mainland. Being one month familiar with the place, I could make out how to follow it, but I wasn’t so sure a new tourist would be able to do the same. I asked her for suggestions on who to interview. She suggested I go over to the church, which was open minded of her since in her interview she talked about how she has issues with the islands Christians, mostly over how they intentionally went on singing late into the night after she asked them to stop since her guests at her bungalows were complaining about the loud music coming from the nearby church.

I went over and the people I met (a family, pastor, wife kids, and two LadyBodys -- I’m not sure how they were related, or where the Ladyboys are coming from all of a sudden) were very friendly, nice, folks who spoke slowly for my understanding benefit. The fisherman talked about an idea to make artificial reefs, so that the big boats couldn’t take the fish from these reefs, but the Chow lay could go fish there. Apparently, they’ve made this type of reef in Krabi and it works well. Little fish come live in concete coral, than bigger and bigger fish come along too.


Next, I interviewed Pi Boonchu, my boat driver of yesterday’s snorkeling trip and my diving trips. Now, I must go to bed because it is midnight and I don’t have time to write so much more. I hung out with Maew and Bom and took photos around LIpe and the trash cleaning up group made a bar-b-que all day and we met for another wonderful dinner, this time at Darius and Bees house. I interviewed Darius more, lovely, and will go fishing tomorrow on a Chow Lay boat. Either, it will be a chance for participant observation for Chow Lay fishing, or for Chow Lay taking Farang fishing and Farang fishing (Onna and Pauli) or for both!