Oh My God, What Is That Thing?

I have a warning to pass along and you should take heed of it. Thailand is an amazing country with warm and friendly people, beautiful scenery and delicious food. But it’s not without its dangers and I knew that before I started. I expected questionable hygiene, new illnesses, maybe even a political protest or two. So far I’ve been right about the hygiene, I’ve only experienced the same sicknesses I get at home, and I don’t live in a political hotbed so things have been peaceful. I also knew there would be some surprises, things I couldn’t predict until they actually happened. And that’s certainly been true.

But I never expected what happened this weekend.

Let me set the scene. Our destination this weekend was Kanchanaburi, which I loved while I was there (briefly) during orientation. I rode elephants and swam in the River Kwai and had a great time, but there’s so much more to do there and I knew this would become a favorite place for me. So we left very early Saturday and made our way to the Wild West of Thailand.

Leg room was minimal (and I’m not exactly a giant) and we had to dodge the ever-persistent taxi drivers who were trying to convince us that we didn’t really want buses to Kanchanaburi, we wanted taxis to Ayutthaya or Bangkok.

(“You want taxi? Where you go?”
“To Kanchanaburi, on a bus.”
“Taxi to Ayutthaya, only 1000 baht.”
“That’s great, but I’m not going to Ayutthaya. Also, I want a bus. Notice how we are having this conversation at a bus station.”)

But still, the trip went quickly. And then there were waterfalls. Kanchanaburi has a lot and we only saw a small selection, but they were so pretty. I also love that it’s the low season now and there aren’t tourists everywhere. Out last stop was Sai Yok National Park (a kind park ranger gave us a lift in the back of his truck and saved us a 30 minute walk) and it was practically deserted. Which meant that the floating bungalows on the Kwai River, in view of another waterfall, were almost all empty and waiting to be rented.

That’s right, I slept on an adorable floating bungalow on the river. With a waterfall as my backyard. We took advantage by jumping off our floating porches and swimming to said waterfall. Which we then climbed and jumped off until the only things holding us up were the lifejackets the bungalow owner thoughtfully provided. So we made our way back and, after we showered off the river, had dinner boated over to us. But you have to have somewhere to eat dinner, so they also towed over a barge, complete with roof and tables. I was pretty impressed. No one’s ever given me a dining room before.

And then it happened.

I was lazing around in my bungalow, enjoying my post-dinner-on-a-barge afterglow and staring at the ceiling. And after a bit, something caught my attention. I stared for a minute, but my brain didn’t want to process what I was seeing, so when Jenny came into the room, I pointed it out. And I didn’t like what she had to say.

“It’s a spider.”

But surely that can’t be, I thought. Because that thing on the ceiling is bigger than my hand. And it’s brown and white. Spiders aren’t white. And so when Katie Poor came in, we consulted her. To my relief, she reassured us that it wasn’t a spider, it was a sprinkler. And it did look like a sprinkler. Unfortunately, Jenny (who is too smart for her own good) pointed out that the bungalows didn’t have flush toilets. Why would they have sprinklers? And then, as if to answer, the sprinkler scurried across the ceiling. The three of us, being mature adults who have braved traveling across the world to live in a developing country, ran out of the room screaming. We screamed so loud that we woke up a Thai family a few bungalows down and brought the owner over at a jog. When he saw the mutant spider, he chuckled and told us not to worry, it was only a little spider and it didn’t bite. Which implied that there were bigger spiders around that did bite. The only part of the exchange that was reassuring was that he killed it for us.

You might think that I felt ridiculous making such a scene over a spider. But you would be wrong. Because I can deal with small, normal spiders. But I cannot deal with Godzilla-spiders that are brown and white because the white is actually the egg sack they’re carrying around. You may take a moment to freak out.

So here is my warning: Kanchanaburi is breeding a master race of super-bugs. They’re in the development phase of the plan now, but if we prepare we might stand a chance when they’re ready to destroy the world. And sadly, we have to defend against more than one species. As a found out a little later, it’s not just the spiders that are big in Kanchanaburi.

Brittany, Katie P. and I were playing cards (Jenny, probably sensing that something upsetting was about to happen) had gone to the other room to sleep. Suddenly Katie P., who had been lying down next to the open window, shot to her knees, put her hand behind her back and screamed. At this point, I was confused, but then Brittany screamed and I thought, maybe the spider came back from the dead. So just to cover all my bases, I screamed too. This is the point where I felt a little ridiculous, because the owner heard us again and came back. Brittany and Katie P. said “Mai pen rai, it’s a cricket, we can handle it.” And I looked at them. A cricket? Really? But then I saw the cricket.

Hold out your index finger. If you have small hands, hold out your middle finger. Triple the width, add wings and six legs and you have the size of the cricket. We spent the next twenty minutes trying to herd the monster cricket in the direction of the door, using whatever resources were at our disposal; including but not limited to: throwing shoes, throwing water bottles, swinging a lifejacket from the strap in an attempt to nudge it out, and blowing it with a fan.

Katie P: I’ve got it! We’ll use the fan and the air will bother it.” (Unplugs fan and maneuvers it into the prime cricket blowing angle. Nothing happens. Katie moves it closer. Cricket is unflappable.)
Me: It’s not moving.
Katie P: I bet it’s loving this. It’s probably thinking “It was hot in here before and I was going to leave, but now that I have this refreshing breeze I think I’ll stay a while”.
Me: We could try the lifejacket again.

Finally we (meaning Katie P.) sucked it up, grabbed the shoe it was sitting on, tossed it out, and slammed the door. Eventually the cricket hopped away and we knew victory.

So parts of the weekend were frightening and stressful, but I would absolutely do it again because the next morning I woke up and outside my door was a waterfall. A much nicer way to start the day than roosters or construction.