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Beer and cockroaches.

Pinklao is full of cockroaches. Walk down the street and you see them scuttering along the pavement. Sit on a plastic stool at one of the street side stalls and you'll see them staring at your feet, trying to work out whats suddenly blocked their path, and whether to crawl over or around you.

Late last night, MSN-ing a friend in London, I saw a gigantic one. It must have been a least 10 centimetres in size and it crawled up the chair opposite me, and looked like it was planning to head over to where I was sitting.

When I first came to Thailand, the sight of a cockroach would make me freeze with fear and scream my head off. I was really scared of them. 10 months later, when I moved into the apartment block where I now live, I was getting a bit better. Hysterical screaming, I reckoned, made me look stupid. The cockroaches couldn't understand it and it certainly didn't make them go away.

2 days after I first moved in here, I saw one on my bed. It didn't look that threatening. It was just sat there like it wasn't really sure where else to go. But, it was a cockroach and I didn't know what to do with it. I waited, hoping it would go away. 5 minutes or so later, it was still there. I didn't want to kill it, no way was I going to go anwhere near it to try and make it move, and, with it slap bang in the middle of my bed, there was no way that I would be able to get any sleep that night.

Eventually, I had to call security and ask them to come upstairs and help me. I did try saying 'cock roach - ma-lairng saab' to them but their English and my Thai were both pretty bad. I don't think the guard had a clue about what was wrong. He just knew that the foreigner was in trouble and came to my room as quickly as he could.

When the security guard asked me what was wrong, I pointed at the cockroach. He looked at it, picked it up with his fingers, chucked it out of the window and couldn't stop laughing. "It was only a small one, you don't need to be scared" he said.

Last night, I didn't make a sound other than tapping my keyboard. 'WOW' I typed. 'A giant cockroach has just walked passed me.' My friend and I started talking about cockroaches (anyone planning to come here will be horrified to know that Thailand's cockroaches seem to be around 4 times the size of ones at home. Anyone thinking 'so what, I should still be able to splat them with a shoe as usual' be warned. Some types can also fly too. Anyone wanting to go to England will have nothing to fear. Cockroaches back home are tiny.)

Back home, when people want to get rid of cockroaches, one thing they do is to give them beer. It works. In one of the houses that I lived in in London, we used to do it a lot. Just put a dish of beer outside the kitchen (or whatever place is infested) at night, go to sleep and wake up, ready to stare at, and collect the dead cockroaches in the morning.

At the time we reasoned that this was a fairly humane way of killing them. OK - the cockroaches died but they got to drink beer too. In their last moments, they must have been happy.

I know I have cockroaches in my room. I night I sometimes hear them scurrying around. My friend suggested I do what we do at home and feed them beer. I'm not so sure that this is a good idea.

I'm kind of curious as to how many cockroaches are hiding-out in and amongst my stuff. There's probably loads more than I'd like to believe.

I think there's maybe only 2 or 3, nothing to worry about really... but what if 2 or 3 is could is nearer 10 ???? what if 10 were really 20 ??? Just the thought of seeing a dish full of 20 or so giant, drunken dead cockroaches - and having to find some way to dispose of them, makes me squirm with fear. Seeing it for real ??? I don't want to think about it.

Maybe its best if I don't know the answer.

Create Date : 11 สิงหาคม 2550

Last Update : 12 สิงหาคม 2550 0:49:11 น.

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