Living like a Buddha in Thailand, part 5

Of course, Isaan also knows plagues. Just think of mosquitoes, ants, rats, scorpions and centipedes. And snakes of course. That's what this part is about.

mosquitoes

Dengue and malaria occur locally in Thailand. You can only get sick if you are bitten by a mosquito that has previously consumed blood from a carrier of the dengue or malaria virus. And because malaria mosquitoes (Anopheles) and dengue mosquitoes (Aedes) hardly ever fly further than a few hundred meters and also not be carried away by the wind, the infected person must live/work in your immediate vicinity if you want to become infected yourself. Incidentally, the local authorities take quick action if there are cases of illness (or even preventatively) by combating the mosquito population. You can of course also do something about this yourself by removing stagnant water, such as in rain gutters. However, rain barrels can also be a source and some plants and trees can also hold puddles of water. We ourselves have a pond, but mosquito larvae don't get a chance there because they are eaten by the fish. We therefore do not suffer much from mosquitoes – not even on our island – but in the evening we often turn on a fan to keep the mosquitoes at a distance. I never use a product with DEET, although there may of course be circumstances that make it desirable to use it. Mosquitoes in my house are rare and limited to less than one per month because we have mosquito netting on the windows and keep the door closed at all times.

Malaria mosquitoes are active at dusk, but dengue mosquitoes are also present in the early morning and afternoon and can bite.

Other insects

Red ants are everywhere here, but especially in fruit trees, which makes picking fruit not always pleasant. But even if I just walk through the garden I get bitten almost every day, often even several times. Fortunately, the bite only hurts for a very short time. Large black ants can also bite but are not common here. But there are also two types of black ants measuring less than a millimeter that are common here. One species tickles you but doesn't bite. You only feel the other species when they bite and then it is often several copies that are on your body. When they bite, they roll up, making them appear even smaller and therefore only visible if you look very closely. At first you feel them but you don't see them. The pain, however, lasts for fifteen minutes. Unfortunately, the latter species sometimes also penetrates your house because a minuscule hole is enough to get an entire army into your house.

Tip. Ants bite with their jaws and then inject formic acid into the victim through their abdomen. They are therefore stuck at two points and are therefore relatively difficult to remove. I have experienced several times that after a bite of a red ant I made one, two and sometimes three unsuccessful attempts to wipe them off my body. Only to find out on the last successful attempt that the ant had landed on my hand. It is better to grab the ant with your thumb and forefinger and then throw it away.

Tip. Ants are very easy to get rid of with chaindrite, which comes in an aerosol can. It is a relatively harmless product because you can also buy it in a Dutch garden center. Ants usually follow a trail and a few puffs here and there on the trail is all it takes. It also works against termites and cockroaches.

In addition to ants, termites are of course also found here and they even know what to do with some hardwood species. Incidentally, a mushroom species grows on some termite mounds, which is considered a delicacy here in Ubon, but also in Bangkok. Very tasty indeed because we have that kind here too.

Cockroaches are virtually non-existent here (the last time I saw one was over a year ago) and that may be because we have a lot of lizards in species and numbers.

We also have spiders here, some of which are poisonous, two types of scorpions and also poisonous centipedes. Be careful when you put on shoes or sandals that have been outside! It can be very painful and in rare cases even fatal.

Tip. We leave the outdoor lighting on at night, which attracts flying insects and therefore also lizards in large numbers. Some lizard species even eat scorpions and millipedes, and those insects are apparently eaten before they have a chance to enter our homes. At least we've never had a scorpion, centipede or even a cockroach in our house. One spider. Unfortunately, all those lizards attract snakes.

Of course we also have flies here, but we hardly ever see them in the house. In fact, it only bothers us at lunch, which we normally use in the open air. They seem to come a long way because the number of flies strongly depends on what food is prepared. Shrimp and, to a lesser extent, fish on the barbecue in particular attract many flies. However, the number of flies also depends on other factors and my wife thinks it is mainly due to the use of chicken manure. We do not use chicken manure ourselves, but cow or buffalo manure.

Tip. Fly paper catches a lot of flies, although it is unfortunately an unsavory sight. With some wind or even with a fan it can end up in an unwanted place, so we tie it to a heavy object with a rubber band.

We eat dinner just like breakfast and lunch outside. It is better not to use a lamp above the dining table in the evening because flying insects always come to it, which then sometimes end up in your food. But with lighting at a distance of about two meters you usually don't suffer from it. Usually, because termites come at light when they fly out in huge clouds and two meters away is definitely not enough. The solution is then to have dinner in the semi-darkness or to sit inside. But even inside you are not safe unless you have curtains that adequately block light, otherwise they always manage to get in.

Wasps also occur here, which attack you en masse if you get too close to their nest. A sting is very painful and the pain lasts for a long time. If you have suffered multiple stitches, it is better to go to a hospital. It happened to me twice that I was stung, but luckily in both cases I was too fast for the rest of the people. One of the many, many benefits of continuing to do sports!

Pets can naturally contract fleas and ticks here in the countryside. Fortunately, ivermectin is a quick solution and you already have a cure for about 30 baht. There are plenty of offers on the internet. And it's always handy to have ivermectin at home because it also works against viral infections such as COVID (also against omicron) and has been approved for human use for decades. An excellent alternative, of course, to a vaccine that is only approved for emergencies. Luckily I never had to use ivermectin.

Snakes

We probably have about 10 species of snakes here, of which the cobra is not even the most venomous. One of my wife's employees was once bitten on his foot, but because he was wearing a boot it had no adverse consequences. My wife got the venom of a spitting cobra in her eyes years ago. She was alone at that time and we didn't have any neighbors then. She quickly rinsed her eyes and was able to call a friend just in time, who then took her to the hospital. She suffered from it for a week, but fortunately there was no permanent damage. If she hadn't been able to use her phone or had there been no water nearby, things would have turned out differently.

Most snakes make themselves out of their "feet" when you come near them. Most, not all. And even the species that normally avoid you can feel cornered and attack you anyway. For example, I once saw a video in which a man left his house and then crossed his walled courtyard diagonally to a gate. In a corner of that courtyard was a 2-meter snake that attacked the man when he reached the gate. The snake probably crawled under the gate to get in and found its only way out blocked. Fortunately, the man saw the snake coming and was back in his house in no time. So you always have to be careful with snakes. And non-venomous species can also bite. And if you are bitten by a poisonous snake, an antidote can prevent a deadly outcome, but it remains a very nasty and painful event with sometimes lasting consequences.

Snakes can be found everywhere. For example, I once saw a five-foot snake crawl into a bag. I sometimes see them in my pool. And the box for the on and off switch of the outdoor lighting is also an attractive place for boomslangs because lizards also enter that box through a one centimeter hole at the bottom. It has already happened three times that a green boomslang fell out of that cupboard when I opened the door. The box sits on a concrete pole at a height of one and a half meters, but that is not an obstacle for a boomslang. In our area, the PEA has secured all poles to which electricity wires are attached over a length of about 70 cm with metal foil. Metal foil is too slippery, even for boomslangs, so the hoses cannot short circuit. When the light went out at our place, it was indeed because the pole on our land was not yet secured in that way. The boomslang was electrocuted when it attacked a tokay gecko. The snake and the gecko were dead, of course, but strangely neither were blackened.

Every month I come across a few snakes on our land alone and every year it happens that such a snake does not intend to take off. And I assume that snakes that do that are venomous snakes that are aware of their fearsome capabilities.

I will describe a few instances of encounters:

Once I was walking with a dog on a leash when I suddenly saw a snake in front of me at a distance of one and a half meters. The dog walked on for a while and then sat down right next to the snake. The snake was not at all interested in the dog, but only kept an eye on me. When I withdrew, the snake disappeared. The dog hadn't noticed anything all this time.

Another time our dog barked at night and the way he barked should have alerted me. I went out of the house and then around a corner and a few feet away lay a snake that had already reared itself ready to attack. Also this time the snake was not interested in the dog who, by the way, kept a safe distance of 5 meters, which I interpret as an indication that it was a dangerous snake. Again I retraced my steps and the snake disappeared.

In my experience, when a dog is alone, it will only bark at the snake, sometimes from a very short distance. But I also once experienced two dogs chasing a snake after which the snake disappeared into a tree. The dogs stopped barking under the tree. The snake then dropped from the tree and ran off. The dogs with their noses on the ground behind them. But the snake was faster than a dog following a trail with its nose and disappeared somewhere. The dogs soon lost their way and the two of them continued to sniff somewhere the snake hadn't gone at all. I suspect they were content with chasing the snake away and preferred not to confront it.

A third example was when I walked under a tree. I felt something hit my cap – I often wear a cap to protect my eyes from the strong UV rays – and took two more steps before turning to see a boomslang lying on the ground. The snake disappeared into another tree. Boomslangs sometimes hang from a branch to see how they can get to the next branch or tree. So I may have stumbled upon it by accident. But possibly it was also an attack by the snake and my hat protected me against a venomous bite because I have little confidence that my current head of hair offers sufficient protection.

Our Thai employees usually go to work on our land well protected: with boots, a hat and clothing that sometimes only exposes the eyes. Very sensible and partly because of that there are few deaths from snake bites in Thailand. I'm not that sensible: shorts, flip flops, cap, usually it ends there.

Twice I have experienced a snake in the house. Once a snake so small it might have crawled under the door. But the second time was a complete surprise to me. Once when I walked into my office I saw a green boomslang of about 70 cm stuck against the wall at a height of one and a half meters. When I came back with something to remove the hose he had dropped to the floor. Unbelievable that that snake can climb a wall that was indeed not smooth as glass, but whose irregularities were much smaller than 1 mm. How did that snake get in? He probably followed a chingchok lizard (house gecko) through the outer wall. Chingchoks are the only lizards that come into our home and they do so in large numbers. You can find the droppings at the bottom of the walls and the eggs in your wardrobe. They enter through the windows, which are closed with mosquito nets that have a flexible rubber seal on the sides, but there is just enough space at the bottom of the seal to allow such a chingchok and a boomslang through.

Are snakes found all over Thailand? Probably yes, even in the cities, but a second cousin who lives in the city said when asked that she hadn't seen a snake in years.

Tip. Purchase a rod at least two meters long with a crosspiece of say 40 cm at the end. Hold that crosspiece in front of the hose and in many cases the hose will wrap around it. In this way the hose can be removed safely. With a hose of two meters it is better to look for a different solution.

But always be careful; in this century about as many people have died from snake bites as people from COVID-19; and of course it is not the old people who mainly fall victim but rather the breadwinners so you can expect the impact to be greater than from COVID-19:

“Every year, an average of 100.000-150.000 people die after being bitten by a venomous snake,” says Mátyás Bittenbinder, a biologist and toxicologist affiliated with Naturalis (Biodiversity Center in Leiden) and VU University (Amsterdam). “However, the actual number of fatal snake bites is probably much higher, because many deaths go unrecorded. In addition to the at least 100.000 people who die from the bite of a venomous snake, there are also an estimated 500.000 people each year who survive the bite of a venomous snake, but are left with permanent damage. “Blindness, muscle damage, joint pain, ulcers, kidney and liver disease,” Bittenbinder lists. “And sometimes parts of the body have to be amputated.” You often see mild symptoms appear within 2 to 3 hours after the bite, such as swelling at the site of the bite and a metallic taste in the mouth. Life-threatening effects often only develop later (https://www.scientias.nl/met-zeker-100-000-fatale-slachtoffers-per-jaar-is-de-giftige-slangenbeet-een-groot-en-onderbelicht-probleem/).

So go to a hospital if you get bitten by a snake, even if it's a small snake. In every city there is probably a hospital where a counter serum is available.

Possibly due to the presence of snakes, we have few problems with mice and rats. I have never seen them in the house and outside I see them less often than the squirrels that live here. So it's not too bad.

In the sixth and last part information about how the other farangs are faring here in Ubon. It will probably not surprise the reader that I cannot resist taking the opportunity to make some moralizing remarks.

To be continued.