How to translate "bytes" objects into literal strings in pandas Dataframe, Python3.x? : <p>I have a Python3.x pandas DataFrame whereby certain columns are strings which as expressed as bytes (like in Python2.x)</p>

<pre><code>import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame(...)
df
       COLUMN1         ....
0      b'abcde'        ....
1      b'dog'          ....
2      b'cat1'         ....
3      b'bird1'        ....
4      b'elephant1'    ....
</code></pre>

<p>When I access by column with <code>df.COLUMN1</code>, I see <code>Name: COLUMN1, dtype: object</code></p>

<p>However, if I access by element, it is a "bytes" object</p>

<pre><code>df.COLUMN1.ix[0].dtype
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "&lt;stdin&gt;", line 1, in &lt;module&gt;
AttributeError: 'bytes' object has no attribute 'dtype'
</code></pre>

<p>How do I convert these into "regular" strings? That is, how can I get rid of this <code>b''</code> prefix? </p>
