Beasts, all beasts
Do you know what I see when I've been drinking? (Well well?). All critters, so many critters, all around me. On my blankets, on my pillow, look. In my ears, in my nose and in my hair. They all run together. Bugs, bugs, Entire armies walk on the ground there. Look, they're advancing along the ceiling.
The above text by Peter Koelewijn regularly swirls through my head during my stay in Thailand. The text was once performed by Ronnie and the Ronnies. The somewhat older among us can sing along with the song from 1967.
There is no shortage of critters here. I am confronted with it every day in Hua Hin. A small summary.
Ants
They are tiny those Thai ants. They keep me company while working on my laptop. They brutally run across my keyboard and even the screen. According to my girlfriend, a few had also ended up in my muesli, which are bad luck and are now in my stomach.
mosquitoes
The Thai ladies are small and slender, but that certainly applies to the Thai mosquitoes. Tiny and therefore oh so treacherous. They become active at dusk. They mainly target my feet and lower legs. They now look battered.
Tjitjak
The little green lizards approach the artificial light. They are lightning fast and seem to stick to the wall or ceiling. Because they eat those annoying mosquitoes they are my favorite animals. I once heard from a tour guide that he was awakened from his sleep in the middle of the night by a hysterical tourist. She demanded another hotel room because there was a small crocodile on the wall…
beetles
These are not small and slender but colossal. A fat boy walked jauntily around the bungalow. Also delicious as a fried variant, according to the ladies from Isaan. Give my portion to Fikkie.
Soi dogs
Speaking of Fikkie, these critters are definitely not to be missed. The Soi dogs or street dogs. Many expats curse them. I'm a real dog lover so they can't easily go wrong with me. When I go cycling with my comrade, such a calf biter sometimes tries to scare me. A big shout from me and they run off with their tails between their legs. It remains to be careful, especially when they cross. Before you know it you have one under your front wheel and that is less pleasant.
At the Moo Baan where I stay they provide the necessary barking and howling. I don't mind it. It's part of Thailand. There are two that we occasionally feed or toss a dog bone that we buy from Tesco. And so I have two friends for life.
Apes
Today we drove to Khao Takiab. This temple on the hills near Hua Hin is teeming with monkeys. They are used to tourists and therefore deserve the predicate 'cheeky monkeys'. We witnessed a spectacle that caused much hilarity among the bystanders. A Thai had parked his gigantic pick-up truck as close as possible to the temple (obviously). The cargo box was neatly covered with a tarpaulin. A monkey discovered that he (or was it a she?) could pull the Velcro loose.
Underneath, he found the jackpot. Grapes, oranges and other delicacies. Proudly he went to eat his loot on the roof of the pickup. That was also the starting signal for dozens of monkeys to imitate this behavior. The pickup truck turned into a monkey mountain. The Thai owner who rushed over tried to save what could be saved. She had reattached the tarpaulin, but even faster the other monkeys had it open again. She gave in and had to watch passively as the supply of fruit and other delicacies were confiscated by the monkeys.
toads
As it should be in Thailand, we take off our shoes outside. In addition to the many flip flops, there are also my sports shoes. I wear this when I go cycling. It is still early then and with sleep in my eyes I sink my feet into the sneakers. This time I was lucky and so was the temporary shoe resident. A fat toad had chosen my sneaker as his night quarters. I put it in the garden. My girlfriend came to look and let me know that you can eat them. No thanks.
I haven't gotten drunk here yet, but I'm curious to see what kind of Thai critters pass by then...
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Small ants? Occasionally we have an ant infestation of indeed small ants with an invasion of large whoppers. Especially in the kitchen. For days I feel like a mass murderer.
Small and petite?/ Starting to change more and more.
I've been coming to Thailand for about 15 years now and I've been living there for the last 8 years.
But the beautiful Thai slender females are expanding quite a bit.
Thick buttocks and thighs especially. Of course I'm not talking about the schoolchildren, although !!!!!
By the fast food restaurants
Because of the many coffee shops with tempting sweets that the Thais love
Breakfast in the morning with bread and spreads
the many sweetened drinks even the milk etc. and of course alcoholic drinks.
Many years ago, all women wore jeans or something like that. They even went swimming in the sea in them.
Now the pants have become so short. Horrible to see (LOL)
Yes those dogs.
Thais love it but know nothing about parenting.
Every house in my street has 1 or more copies,
But raising the dog is not one of them. Just let it bark and howl.
All dogs are in awe of me. In the Netherlands I did a lot of dog training. I had a Malinois there that I still miss. And here a golden retriever that is well trained, of course.
Gerrit
And those frogs
Beautiful concerts in the rice fields in the rainy season. 200 meters from my house.
And the garden specimens are so fantastically beautiful. Bright colors and often very small
I've never eaten them here Som loves it. Her friends too, by the way.
I just think of the frog legs in France with a delicious garlic sauce.
I just get itchy reading your story Khun Peter.
Horrible beasts.
You know where I also ran into monkeys in HH?
When you cross the railway at soi 70.
And then keep driving/walking/cycling straight ahead.
So don't follow the bend to the right to Hin Lek Fai.
I walked there last year, exploring the area a bit and suddenly it was swarming with monkeys along the road. Not surprising because people threw food there.
At first we thought there were some cats walking around, but when we got closer they turned out to be monkeys. Nice to see, but I did go to the other side of the street. Nice to view from a distance.
Enjoy your time in HH.
The frog in your shoe was probably a toad. Toads (just like the Tjinktjok) can be found a lot around your house because of the many insects we attract. In addition, toads are less dependent on water, actually only for reproduction. You can recognize toads by their warty skin and short hind legs; frogs jump (many times their body length), while toads (mainly) walk. I would be careful eating toads, some species are poisonous. Small pets can die from skin licking alone; people can become quite ill or (at best) hallucinate.
Nice those ants, mosquitoes, beetles and Tjinktjoks. In addition to the animals mentioned, we also regularly find snakes in our garden (including Red Necked Keelback and sometimes a single cobra), Scorpions and Centipedes. The last two are only dangerous if you are allergic or have a weak constitution, but a bite does hurt badly. We have already found scorpions in our kitchen cupboards. How did they get there???? We have given them a neat spot in a corner of our garden. They are nocturnal animals and normally you will not be bothered by them. I catch snakes myself and release them far outside the village. The Thai here think I'm crazy, they prefer to chop them into pieces; this despite the fact that many snakes are protected species. I have experience with snakes and don't recommend everyone do the same. Walking around is often a better remedy.
I recently read somewhere that LED lighting does not attract mosquitoes because it does not emit UV rays. Whether this is true I do not know, it does not apply to energy-saving lamps anyway.
We have no bugs in the house because the pest control sprays here 6 times a year. Since the floods there are no ants anymore. We do have very large snails that eat all young new plants, so I kick them flat. I think you can also eat those snails, but I won't start.
I think the big mosquitoes are the worst, they just stay on your lower leg when you walk. If you have it in your house, you will be attacked within 10 minutes, resulting in a large bump.
I haven't seen cockroaches for ages either, the last one was in the Irish pub when suddenly a huge whopper came running from behind the sofa. The staff quickly grabbed him and threw him outside but in the meantime 6 guests had already stood up haha.
Cockroaches were much more common in Thailand a few years ago is my memory. Can remember about 10 years ago in Krabi the whole sewer was crawling with those animals.
We always keep the screen doors closed and have 2 fans above the entrance of the house. Works pretty well but the mosquitoes and flies still manage to get in.
Indeed, last month I replaced all the lamps for LED lighting.
A few weeks ago I noticed that there were almost no mosquitoes in the house
while everything is still open.
Could that be because of the LED lighting? I thought.
So apparently it is true.
It is a myth that mosquitoes are attracted to light. It is true that you can see them better!
Mosquitoes react exclusively to body odor, or rather: the carbon dioxide emitted. Amino acids then determine who is the (un)happy in the group: one smells better to the mosquito than the other. Foot odor is especially attractive!
The only thing (besides mosquito nets and screens) that keeps mosquitoes away is incense and DEET.
Absolutely not true. Unfortunately, mosquitoes are attracted to light. You can see that not only around the outdoor lamp, but also the famous Tjinktjok knows this. We have a TL beam hanging outside the barn, every evening at least 4-5 of these mosquito enthusiasts sit between the lamp and the fixture, waiting for their chance. They indeed also like smells, especially my legs are loved, but I can assure you that my fluorescent lamp does not give off any smell.
You have LED lamps in all kinds of colors. They can also emit a lot of UV to catch mosquitoes. Just look at the electrocution lamps. The effect of this is debatable, so whether mosquitoes react specifically to UV light is something I want to leave open.
Mosquitoes do react to light, they just often confuse it with the sun or the moon. To fly straight, they must keep the sun or moon at the same angle to the direction of flight. If they do the same with a lamp, they will automatically fly in circles due to the short distance.
So they don't particularly come to light, but by misinterpreting it it is very difficult for them to get away.
Bugs have bugs too. The nice dog that belongs to my apartment complex, which I sometimes walk, turned out to be full of hundreds of ticks. The staff got to work with it and removed a glass jar full of it. Filthy beasts that suck themselves full of blood. For the time being, injections etc. don't really help, because when I lift his ear I see about ten crawling around again.
In Pattaya I also noticed that the takaab, a gigantic centipede, is advancing, or it is the season, that is also possible. Not all fresh..
BramSiam, watch out for that takaab/centipede/centipede, they can bite quite a bit. A bite can give you a lot of pain for a few days. If you are allergic to wasp stings, for example, you can even get into serious trouble with a bite from such an animal. In the (sub)tropics, these animals reproduce all year round. The sudden emergence is therefore not seasonal. Because these animals lose a lot of moisture, they do need a humid environment to survive. So if it is very dry in Pattaya, they can look for humid places en masse.
The fact that the apartment dog has a lot of ticks may have to do with his / her health. An anti-flea/tick shot does not always help. Go to the vet and indicate that the animal has a lot of ticks, he will probably get some vaccinations (worms / antibiotics). Our dog walks outside a lot and rarely or never has ticks. Gets a cocktail every month at the vet against fleas / ticks / worms / etc.
If the animal always has so many ticks, he/she undoubtedly has blood parasites for which he/she needs medication, otherwise he/she will become very ill and die…..
Peter, when I worked as a psychiatric nurse, I had a patient (alcoholic) on the night shift who hid behind my back because he saw all sorts of bugs. I didn't see any critter. Funny that an illusion, or he really saw it can make it so scary. If necessary, you may hide behind my back. Haha,
Evert
In Budapest I once stayed in a 'hotel'. That was in fact a student flat that functioned as a B&B avant la letter during the summer holidays. On a Commodore 64, students who stayed behind ran the entire tent on a self-made program. Fantastic. There was also a kind of disco in the basement, where I had filled myself up unreasonably. Around six o'clock in the morning I woke up in my room and I saw the wall next to my bed moving in all directions. Ok, I had been drinking a lot, but something wasn't right here. Quickly looking for my glasses to examine things more closely. It turned out that there were thousands, if not thousands, of ants moving down from the head of the bed, and more towards the foot of the bed, the same numbers moved up again.
A look under the bed gave the impression that the actual resident had had the flu and had dumped the fruit baskets offered to him with good intentions.
The ants obviously paid no attention to me at all, but I still packed my backpack and went to look for another shelter.
For some background on the song itself: http://www.allemaalbeestjes.nl/wp-content/uploads/flipbook/1/mobile/index.html#p=1: