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THAILAND-RIVER-ECONOMY-TREASURE
Thai ‘Indiana Jones’ divers scour Bangkok’s murky river for treasure
BANGKOK, July 31, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Kneeling before his homemade metal
scuba helmet, Bhoomin Samang prays for good fortune before he dives into the
day’s work — scouring the bed of Bangkok’s Chao Phraya river for sunken
treasure.
The 62-year-old is part of a small community known as Thailand’s “Indiana
Jones” divers, who brave the inky-black underworld of the trash-filled
waterway in search of coins, china, jewellery and scrap metal.
“We look for old coins, sometimes we are hired to find lost objects in the
river,” says Bhoomin, a veteran diver who has been scouring the river for 30
years.
Sometimes the find is more macabre — the divers have stumbled across
skulls and skeletons as they feel their way along the river bed in total
darkness.
“If you’re afraid of ghosts, you can’t go in because you can’t see
anything. But we’re used to it,” he explains.
Trained foreign and Thai Navy SEAL divers were recently at the centre of
global attention for their daring rescue of 12 boys and their coach from a
waterlogged cave in northern Thailand.
But the “Indiana Jones” divers use more makeshift equipment and operate
under the radar in the middle of the country’s urban metropolis.
Wearing shorts and T-shirt, Bhoomin jumps off his motorised skiff into a
river strewn with city sewage and debris. He is able to breathe thanks to the
boxy helmet that weighs around 20 kilos (45 pounds), and is hooked up to a
rubber tube that connects to an air tank aboard the boat.
The tank pumps oxygen into the helmet to keep water out, allowing the most
experienced divers to drop down to 30 metres (100 feet) below the surface.
After 15 minutes underwater, Bhoomin resurfaces with a cotton bag stuffed
with mud.
He pans it out on a metal dish, revealing several 200-year-old copper and
bullet coins with pictures of 19th century Thai kings Rama IV and V on them –
– artifacts divers call “regulars”.
The coins trace the history of the Thai capital’s lively waterfront, whose
traditional stilted homes are increasingly being knocked down for
development.
“In the old days, we lived on rafts and had floating markets. Villagers
lost their jewelry and money in the river,” he said.
An unfinished small Buddhist amulet was also hidden inside the mud.
– Into the deep –
The divers can turn a decent profit. Selling a few copper coins can make
them some 500 baht ($15) — nearly twice Thailand’s daily minimum wage. If
lucky, a piece of jewelry or a rare coin in good condition can be sold for up
to $300 at Bangkok’s antique markets, while their loot is fattened out by
scrap metal.
But the divers’ fate is in limbo as urban development threatens their
riverside community, which stands on weathered wooden stilts.
Bangkok officials have ordered the families to relocate away from the river
as part of the junta government’s gentrification plan for the city.
The divers fear that without direct access to the river, up to “90 percent”
of them will lose their livelihoods.
But that’s not their only tension with the law — taking artifacts is
technically prohibited and can be punished with fines or jail time.
Bhoomin, however, defends the trade, saying divers only go for the small
stuff.
“We don’t take big artifacts like Buddha statues… (if officials really
want something), they can go down there and take it,” says Bhoomin, who dips
into a box of salvaged spectacles and sunglasses whenever he needs them.
Then again, the lure of something special is always just around the river
bend.
“We don’t know what we will find or where we will go today, said 29-year-
old Somsak Ongsaard, another diver.”It’s exciting.”
BSS/AFP/ARS/1631 hrs