python - presto - timestamps and decimal(38,18) returned as strings?

Why are presto timestamp/decimal(38,18) data types returned a string (enclosed in u'') instead of python datetime/numeric types?

presto jdbc:

select typeof(col1),typeof(col2),typeof(col3),typeof(col4),typeof(col5),typeof(col6) from hive.x.y

result is

timestamp timestamp bigint decimal(38,18) varchar varchar

desc hive.x.y
#result is
for_dt  timestamp   NO  NO  NO  NO  1
for_d   timestamp   NO  NO  NO  NO  2
for_h   bigint  NO  NO  NO  NO  3
value   decimal(38,18)  NO  NO  NO  NO  4
metric  varchar(2147483647) NO  NO  NO  NO  5
lat_lon varchar(2147483647) NO  NO  NO  NO  6

attempt 1
#python
from sqlalchemy.engine import create_engine
engine = create_engine('presto://u:p@host:port',connect_args={'protocol': 'https', 'requests_kwargs': {'verify': 'mypem'}})
result = engine.execute('select * from hive.x.y limit 1')
print(result.fetchall())
#result is
[(u'2010-02-18 03:00:00.000', u'2010-02-18 00:00:00.000', 3, u'-0.191912651062011660', u'hey', u'there')]

attempt 2
#python
from pyhive import presto
import requests
from requests.auth import HTTPBasicAuth

req_kw = {
'verify': 'mypem',
'auth': HTTPBasicAuth('u', 'p')
}

cursor = presto.connect(
host='host',
port=port,
protocol='https',
username='u',
requests_kwargs=req_kw,
).cursor()

query = '''select * from x.y limit 1'''
cursor.execute(query)
print cursor.fetchall()
#result is
[(u'2010-02-18 03:00:00.000', u'2010-02-18 00:00:00.000', 3, u'-0.191912651062011660', u'hey', u'there')]

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