Wild Times in Bangkok

When you move 6000 miles across the world to a different continent, it’s probably to be expected that you might encounter some unfamiliar flora and fauna in daily life. Bangkok has what’s described as a “tropical monsoon climate”, so the first difference is that we have giant versions of the indoor plants we had in the UK growing in our back garden. I’m not even sure there is a difference between an outdoor and an indoor plant in Thailand! But even though we get to take in the striking colours of plants like the Hanging Lobster Claw, which I believe is native to Hawaii, there is also no shortage of the much more familiar marigold plant, thousands of which were grown to honour the late King.

Snakes in the Garden?

The exotic plants have so far proved harmless and easy to adapt to, so I shall switch focus to the ‘fauna’. Before we moved here, I had heard horror stories of pythons crawling out of toilets and biting people in somewhat delicate places. If this scenario ever does present itself to me I imagine I will immediately drop dead from shock, but fortunately, I have only seen one snake so far and it was just slithering across the road whilst I was safely contained in a car. I still screamed like a baby though.

A Smaller Menace

The less terrifying, but still equally as menacing in their own way, are the mosquitoes. I don’t why, but they love me! They can’t get enough of me! Apparently, after 1 year I will develop some sort of resistance where they will either stop biting me or I will stop reacting but I’m not so sure. I still average around 3 bites a week and that’s despite all the steps we’ve taken to eradicate the little blighters! Did you know that mosquitoes don’t like marigolds? Nor do they like rosemary, mint, and citronella so we’ve surrounded our patio with these plants. We have also invested in various electrical contraptions designed to basically kill them all, my favourite of which is the electric swatter which emits a satisfying crack as it fries the unsuspecting parasite.

The Circle of Life

I remember one of my friends once talking about slugs that looked like bananas, that could be found in India I think. I have no idea if Thailand has similarly freakish types of slugs, but I was quite relieved when I saw my first Thai slug and it just looked like the normal UK version. I watched it through the window, innocently slithering along, and thought how it was strange that I hadn’t seen more slugs in the last few months. Then something quite surprising happened which shed some light on this mystery. A toad jumped out from a hole in a brick and into the path of the slug. It sat there for a few moments, long enough for me to beckon Chris over to the window to witness what was about the happen next. I knew the slug’s days were numbered but I wasn’t sure how the toad would go about consuming his prey. I prepared myself for things to get a bit messy, but the toad just seemed to suck in the slug in a nanosecond and then promptly hopped back into its hole. It was the best thing I’ve ever seen!

Living with Lizards

Small House Geckos are also a very common sight, although we don’t see that many in the house. We did have one that got trapped in our kitchen sink when we’d neglected to any washing up over the weekend. I’m not sure how long the poor little thing was in there for, but it wasn’t moving that much as we tried to scoop it out; they normally dart around very rapidly. We placed it in the sun to warm up and minutes later it had disappeared, either having recovered its body temperature enough to scarper, or been unfortunately eaten. We will never know. Any others that make it into the house are calmly ushered out the door with a spatula.

I was just about to write that I don’t think I’ve seen a Large House Gecko since I arrived when I looked out the window and there was one on a tree in the garden. These guys do bite, so I kept my distance but captured the photo below. They also make a lot of noise at night!

A Terrifying Encounter

Another not so welcome creature that we’ve met sporadically is the cockroach. Up until last Sunday, we’d only seen the odd one outside the house, generally on the cusp of death as whatever nasty pest control chemicals that are secreted around our property take effect. The most traumatic encounter occurred just last week when Chris opened a kitchen cupboard to retrieve a bottle of Pepsi Max. After moving said bottle, a giant cockroach scuttled up the wall and through a gap in the shelf to the next section of the cupboard. Cue much screaming, running around in circles, throwing muesli and other cereal-based products across the kitchen! I’m not sure why, but our initial approach was to try to capture the beast in a plastic cup – who knows what we then intended to do with it! I really didn’t want to splat it as that would be messy and I was concerned about spraying a load of nasty chemicals in the kitchen. But after our attempts with the plastic cup provide futile, and with Chris screaming “Emma, it’s a f*cking cockroach in our kitchen, get me the spray!”, I gave in and the spray was released. The cockroach did not like this and flung itself onto the floor, but now clearly disorientated by the deadly bug spray, was unable to get far before I threw a dog bowl over it. And that was the end of that.

Other grim wildlife experiences have involved dead things. I got in the pool the other day and found two dead baby birds which I had to fish out with my bare hands. I found a third after I completed forty lengths. Chris discovered a dead millipede in there earlier when he trod on it. On the plus side, I guess we’re keeping our immune systems in check!

I suspect the rainy season will awaken more horrifyingly disgusting creatures so look out for the next update around June.