It’s a Bug’s Life

Well, since I am supposed to be writing about life in Bangkok, I’ll write about something small, literally. Bugs. Bugs in Bangkok far exceed anything I experienced in the U.S, with the exception of perhaps the black widows that fascinated me in the desert. Here the bugs are many, they’re ugly, dirty, and they are sometimes sizeable for a saddle. Yeah, I guess that describes most bugs. Anyway, here’s the chain of bugs in my life….

Fucking Mosquitoes

It’s not big shock that mosquitoes are alive and well here in Thailand. Even in a big city like Bangkok they thrive as squirrels and sparrows thrive in the Midwest U.S. And for some reason that is still unclear to me, they LOVE me! I have scars all up and down my legs to prove it, and have NEVER gone without at least 2-3 bites on my body at all times (often much more). There was a time when I was bitten every single day. Due to some measures by me, that has lessened (like making my house a fortress rivaling Fort Knox). Within my first 4-5 months in Thailand I caught Dengue Fever. Talk about knocking the fuck right out of you. Pretty painful stuff, and the hospital, though fine in terms of service, was fairly uncomfortable as I slept on what felt like a stone slab in the Arctic.

The worst is when I’m standing in a room full of Thais, or eating dinner with many friends, and suddenly, I begin to get bit. NO ONE ELSE will get bit! Not a nibble, not a scratch, not a nothing! ONLY me. Is there something about A- blood that female mosquitoes are madly attracted to? I don’t know, but it’s something that puts me into a rage just thinking about it. The other annoying thing is that I appear to be mildly allergic to them. They burn like a match on my skin. So of course, I scratch them like mad. Lovely.

If there is ONE mosquito in my house, I’m dead. I’ll be bit 4-5 times before I kill it (I can now quite accurately kill mosquitoes in midair by clapping them between my hands and smashing their bodies into my palm), or by patiently waiting for it to simply die. Every single night, I sleep with a mosquito “coil” in my room (an electric version). If I don’t, I’ll be bit by morning.

The Sensitive Ant

When I first arrived in Thailand, the arrival of the teeny tiny ant was troubling. They were amazingly organized and could appear by the thousands in just minutes. And they were so damn hard to get rid of. I felt like I was holding My Lai massacres in my kitchen daily. The problem was that unless I ate on top of a mountain, surrounded by a large ocean, there as no way to prevent the onslaught of ants. All it took was a single crumb. One crumb to fall from a cookie, cracker or piece of toast. God forbid anything with sugar in it. Immediately, as if the impact of the crumb onto the counter created a 8.0 Richter Scale earthquake in the anthill (somewhere behind the walls of my apartment), ants came massing out and surrounded the crumb until it disappeared. As long as they were out, they might as well look for something else edible, which then prompted me to make a mad dash to clear every possible, tempting thing. I have never been particularly a neat person, but I’ve always been pretty good about not leaving food around (it’s books, papers, and clothes that cover my floors). The ants were a menace. They came out in such force and I soon learned that killing them left a near noxious odor. It reminded me of the “stink bugs” I’d kill as a child which rivaled a skunk in funk. Then suddenly, the ants just disappeared. They stopped coming. I could leave a fruit pie in the middle of the carpet and one won’t show. Go figure.

Enter the Termite

If I was still in the U.S,, my house (apartment) would have been condemned a LONG time ago with one of those house-sized pieces of saran wrap surrounding it. Instead, I have lost a foot high stack of books and teaching materials, have had to have an exodus of all canned food and glassware from the cupboards, and once in awhile give a karate kick to a particular beam to watch it splinter and fall (it makes me feel powerful). I’ve been wondering if the disappearance of the ants has anything to do with the termites. Do they EAT ants? No… do they have wars with ants as ants have with themselves? *shrug* Anyway, termites TOTALLY suck. IT’s amazing what they eat, or at least try to. They leave this awful strange substance behind which to me looks like thrown up wood. They even made an attempt to eat through a can of tomato sauce, leaving their spew on it the now label-free surface. The strange wooden network they left of my foot-high stack of books was both fascinating and revolting. And guess what? Termites bite! I have been bitten twice by them! It hurts, but leaves no real damage.

The Dumbass Weevil

Weevils. FUCKING weevils. Do you know what these things are? They insane, grain-eating bugs that can swim about as well as lemmings. They look like small, black rhinoceroses. They go for all my rice and pasta. Once a bag of pasta is open, I have to hermetically seal the thing to prevent a weevil invasion. Usually, all my efforts are in vain. Even with various clips, they meander inside. Once I forgot about a half bag of pasta in the back of a cupboard. OH. MY. GOD. They had turned it into this dark green mass of mush. I almost puked my guts out.

The other interesting thing is that they seem to have a thing for suicide missions to my cats’ water bowl. Every day I have to rinse out their bowl because a small group of weevils are found dead in its bottom. Ritual suicide? Like the ants, weevils seem incapable of being stopped.

Don’t let the Bedbugs bite

The last bug on my list is what I’m afraid may be a bedbug, but I can’t seem to prove it. For sometime now, I have been bit at night by some insect. The bite has been so painful, that it wakes me up with a fantastically intense burning sensation (as well as itching). It leaves little red bites behind, a little harder and smaller than a mosquitoes. My mosquito coil seems to be inconsistent in preventing the attack of these things which only go for my hands, usually the right (the only part of my body besides my face that is outside of the blanket). I don’t know what this bug is and it’s driving me crazy!! I have stood the box spring on their ends and scoured the floor. I have vacuumed and sprayed bug spray. I have washed the sheets (in bleach). I have put the mosquito coil as close to my face and hands as possible. I never see anything. According to one website, a bedbug only comes out at night, but seems to be a fairly large, reddish bug. And slow-moving! I have tried a few late night surprise raids where I switch on the light from the darkness trying to find one. Nothing! Is it a bedbug? If not, what? How can I stop it? Argh…bugs! Bugs! Bugs! I’d much rather have one of those spiders-as-big-as-your-first climbing around my walls then these night vampires. If you have any idea of what my night visitor is, please let me know.