Insanely Cheap T's in Thailand

Ryan Bridgman

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Jan 30, 2004
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Well I jst returned from a business trip to Bangkok, Thailand where I checked out the pet section of the Chatuchak Market. There were quite a few places selling T's and other spiders but the prices were unbelievable. Here is a translation of the prices;

Adult Female H.Lividum - 25 baht = USD$0.75/UK£0.45
Adult Female Thai Black - 15 baht = USD $0.38/UK£0.22
Adult Female Malaysian Earth Tiger -50 baht = USD$1.10/UK£0.85
Adult Female 'Chinese' Black - 100 baht = USD$2.10/UK £1.30
Adult Female P.Murinus - 250 baht = USD$7/UK £3.90
Adult Female P.Regalis - 130 baht = USD $3.10/UK £2.00

And other T's were ridiculously cheap apart from the B.Smithi which was 15,000 baht which is about $400 or £220!!!!
 

TheDon

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Apr 19, 2003
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OMG!! I wish the price were like that here... i would have bought all of those for that price
 

conway

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damn your so lucky,get some more stuff nxt time ;)..people might b interested..;)
 

Hallidaykill55

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Jan 15, 2004
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Honest question.

How does one just on a simple business trip manage to bring back into the countryu foreign species of tarantula? Must you purchase some kind of special permit? Just curious.
 

Earth Tiger

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That's really insane!! You cant get a Chinese Black Earth Tiger (S. hainana) that cheap even from China! I will visit Thai to get some later!
 

Mister Internet

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Re: Honest question.

Originally posted by Hallidaykill55
How does one just on a simple business trip manage to bring back into the countryu foreign species of tarantula? Must you purchase some kind of special permit? Just curious.
I don't understand it intirely, but there is, at minimum, an import licensing fee, an inspection fee at customs, and a day or two wait to clear the border. I think there's a vet check too, but that may just be for herps. Point being, it's not cost-effective until you can bring in dozens at a time... although at these prices, that might make sense. ;)
 

PapaSmurf

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its becus they arent sold as pet but as food isnt it:p my moms ex-boyfriend told me he read somewhere that they enjoy eating T's and other spiders in over there:? anyways thats what i herd lol.
 

Earth Tiger

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No, very very few Thai people eat tarantulas. Many do eat insects and scorps, but not tarantulas. Only those elderly people living in remote areas of Thailand still have the habit of eating tarantulas. They eat raw Thai Black's legs with beard, and squeeze the content of its abdomen to act as jam.
 

Aviculariinae

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I think there is a picture of rick west eaten one somewhere!Well if you cant beat them,join em.,
 

Ryan Bridgman

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Just to clear up I didn't buy any of the T's - I just was shocked at how cheap they were. Buying and then exporting them would be relatively complicated - you would have to clear the T's with both customs and with animal health services. This would bring up the prices considerably. But if you lived in Thailand, you would have yourself a real bargain!
 

Lopez

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I'm not condoning such an action, but there's always smuggling.....
 

Ryan Bridgman

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They had loads of other cheap inverts, like Madagascan Hissing cockroaches and these really scary looking centipedes (jeweled centipedes?). And Mantises are everywhere - you can just pick one up in a garden.

In fact one of the sellers had a tank with a baby tiger shark! There was also some dogy people selling aye ayes in brown paper bags - pretty sure that is illegal mind......

As for eating T's - the hill tribe people aroung Chiang Mai in the north eat the Thai Blacks. My wife is Thai and her father has eaten one - apparently it was kind of oily. I myself have tried the locusts once - kind of like dry roasted peanuts but soft in the middle. Other bugs eaten are these 'Mang Da' black beetles which are cruched up and mixed with chillies to make a condiment. The Lao and Issan people from North Eastern Thailand eat pretty much anything - one delicacy is 'Kai Mot Daeng' which is red ant eggs - yum yum ;)

Of course your average Thai rarely eats anything wierder than chicken, pork and prawns (even eating beef is relatively rare) but the Chinese restaurants sell wierd and wonderful seafood like Sea Abalone (a kind of sea slug) and jellyfish. Hmmm. Who's hungry? :)
 

Earth Tiger

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I think there is a picture of rick west eaten one somewhere!Well if you cant beat them,join em.,
I think he was eating a T. blondi or something like that ... if it was a T. apophysis ... well he had a luxury meal ...

BTW, did u PM me? I got the PM full notice only :D

I'm not condoning such an action, but there's always smuggling.....
Well, according to Code Monkey a smuggled T means it is illegally removed from the wild and taken away from the country. Most developing countries like Thai do really care what inverts are being taken out ...
 

Ryan Bridgman

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Yeah - you would be looking at a jail term if you illegally smuggled w/c animals out of Thailand. If it happened to be a CITES protected species you would be bashed very hard. Also, if you were caught at customs in the UK and the T's didn't have their documentation you would be prosecuted there even more.
 

Earth Tiger

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in fact most developing asian countries have a vague definition on "protected inverts". Taking china for example, their regulations on protected species can be translated by one customs officer to cover all living creatures, while by another officer to cover a few species of beetles only. Most customs officers of china are in between these two extremes and in general exotic animals like tarantulas and scorpions are not allowed to be taken away. Laws and regulations have little meaning if you are in china, since as long as the policeman wants, everything you do can be regarded as breaking the law ...
 

Mister Internet

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Originally posted by Lopez
I'm not condoning such an action, but there's always smuggling.....
If you're not condoning it, there's certainly no reason to bring it up.
 

Tescos

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think you may be hard pressed to smuggle a tarantula spec that is listed on CITES out of asia being as the only tarantula specs (that I know of) which are listed under CITES are Brachypelma and they come from the Americas!;P Unless of course you brought the brachy from an Asian pet shop.Even then with a declaration saying that it was captive bred and not wild caught (you can make these yourself belive it or not!) I think you would proberly get away with it. Anyone fancy proveing this can be done?

As for eating them I have seen video footage of people in I think was Thailand selling roasted tarantulas by the plate load, on the sides of roads so it looked to me that in at least some parts of Asia ,tarantulas are quite a popular delicacy. YumYum a welcome break lol:D
 
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Lopez

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Plus most customs officials have more important things to worry about - for instance invert smuggling out of Brazil, Colombia and so on still goes on because frankly the drug trafficking and murder rate are far more deserving of government attention.
I'd imagine a similar situation is also true for Thailand, Burma, India et al.
Most big busts (Baumgarten) are almost guaranteed to be down to tip-offs.

I know a couple of people who have successfully posted inverts from Far-Eastern countries back to themselves in the UK too....

Of course this is likely to become dodgy ground for these forums quite soon, and probably shouldn't be discussed in depth. :)
 
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