......The ground beneath us, the walls beside us, the ceiling above us was constantly full of action.
The first morning at breakfast as Emily and I sat outside, ants crawled along our table, the wall and even around the food.
No one seemed to notice or care, except us Americans.
In our bathroom that first night, ants and small winged critters walked about the walls and floors. Every night I checked my bed before settling in and threw the ants out from beneath my covers.
As we lay in bed that first night, we marveled in disgust at the clumps of ants on the ceiling. The same colony of ants seemed to stay with us the entire time, but they moved their civilization to different points on the ceiling each day. We wondered what made them move. Was there a food source on the walls above us? I really don't care to investigate this any further; the thought was disturbing to me and if I wanted to get any good sleep, I had to pretend they weren't there once I turned off the light.
The second night there, Emily and I felt like we were being watched in the bathroom. Sure enough, on the wall was a small gecko, casually staring at us like he owned the place and we were intruding on his territory.
He crawled around the toilet, over the shower and paused, glaring at me. Unsure of what to do, I turned off the lights and closed the bathroom door for the night.
The next morning I went into the bathroom to wash my face and there he was, in the same spot, still glaring at me.
Emily and I decided that he was kind of cute, definitely wasn't dangerous and seemed to be doing no harm, so we thought we could live at peace with him.
But that all changed once he escaped the bathroom and came into our bedroom..... At 2:00 am we both woke up to a noise that sounded like a cartoon character laughing. "WHAT is that?" Emily asked in the dark. There it was again.
"I think it's the gecko," I whispered.
It was the most obnoxious sound. I didn't even know geckos made a sound.
"I think he slid under the crack in the door from the bathroom."
We turned on the lights and there he was halfway down the wall. "We have to get him." We both agreed, and we were determined to trap him.
To make us more determined to bid him farewell, there, in the middle of the floor was also a small lump of white gecko poop.
Yes, he now needed to go, as he was creating a problem.
I grabbed a water glass. "Let's trap him."
Emily looked at me wide eyed and laughed. "With that?! You think you are going to trap him with that small water glass?!"
I looked at it. Yeah, I guess it wasn't the best. Instead Emily grabbed the trash can. "This will work. You scare him towards me, and I'll put this over him."
With a few shrieks and laughs, we managed to trap the little guy and successfully escort him outside of our bedroom. From that night on, we never left or slept without a towel shoved in the bottom of the door crack.
Every morning when we opened our door, it looked like an insect massacre occurred during the night. Thousands of small winged bugs lay at our door, dead. I'm still not sure what killed them all every night outside our door, but their graveyard was a reminder to me to secure any small entry ways.
One day, in the quiet of the afternoon, two girls on our team were screaming at the top of their lungs from the room next to ours. The racket went on for a good hour. By this point, it didn't even faze Emily or me because we knew exactly what was taking place in their room.
Apparently there was a spider as big as their fist scurrying around the ceiling in their room. They ended up vacating the room, refusing to live there until that spider was gone and the crack in the ceiling where he emerged was covered up.
During our nightly debriefing sessions, our team would sit outside; throughout our conversation, people would constantly be shrieking and swatting at things. We were continually interrupted by gecko laughter and the symphony of buzzing and croaking around us.
I thought of home and just about every house in my neighborhood has a pest control service who comes quarterly to do a spray or inspection for ants, spiders, rodents.....etc.....
However, we don't have these guys creeping around..... I took this video as I was walking to breakfast one morning....
In Thailand, critters and humans live in harmony; people are truly unfazed by their cohabitation and I've seen some of the Thai people silently giggle at us Americans when we screamed and dodged something flying toward us.
I don't think I will ever get over the view that bugs are intruders in my living space. I don't think I will tolerate them crawling on me or near me. However, after being in Thailand, they don't bother me as much as they used to,...... but I'm still grateful for my pest control service!!!
Our standards for living are so so different. Our convinces and comforts are something we take pride in and refuse to live without.
And that was more apparent to me than ever before when I visited the Hill Tribes in the mountains.
I will talk about my experience there in my next post.
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