My brother Adam and I are outside of a row of guesthouses on Soi Ram Butri, about a block off of Khao San Road in Bangkok, in search of bargain accommodation. We are feeling the heavy humidity and heat and are eager to get some relief. We can see multiple other red-faced tourists, many from the US and UK, who appeared to be suffering from the same malady. Being our first trip internationally, we had just begun the first stages of becoming acclimatised – it would take us weeks to eventually be able to wear jeans in this weather.
We had flown into Suvarnabhumi Airport late the prior night and asked our taxi driver to take us to a guesthouse we had found in our Southeast Asia guidebook. Our initial guesthouse was nice and immaculately clean, but we had paid around twenty bucks CAD for a night – unsustainable for our our two-month travel budget.
We had already been warned to stay away from Khao San Road by trustworthy friends, who spoke about the shady things that went down in the area. Scams, aggressive touts, tuk-tuk drivers with agendas, and questionable items being sold were things we were to keep an eye out for. With so much talk of the area, of course it was one of the first places we headed.
Many guesthouses post their prices and we found one place that charged around ten dollars a night. Following our friends’ advice, we ask to view the room ahead of time – we want to avoid surprises after all. The person at the desk, obviously used to people asking for such viewings, hands us the key for an inspection. A quick view of the room tells us that, well, it was slightly dingy, but the sheets were clean and that’s what mainly counts in our minds. Satisfied, we head down and pay for three nights.
The street itself is relatively busy and has a healthy amount of tourists. It’s nothing like the heavy crowds and nonstop noise on Khao San itself. Looking down our street, we see that there are several other guesthouses, interspersed with food stalls and restaurants. Across the street there is a walled complex where we hear the occasional rooster crow.
We immediately check out the nearby 7-11 store. 7-11 is an everything store here and there’s one on every corner. People pay their bills here, buy phone cards, and shop here for a huge array of interesting treats. There’s something about going to familiar stores or restaurants in foreign places, that fascinates us. We want to see what’s different and interesting. Entering the store, we are hit immediately with a blast of refrigerated air. We scan the variety of chip flavours and see lots of seafood and spice combos. There are a ton of milk based drinks, iced coffees and juices filled with squishy chewy bits. Pop or juice costs around 50 cents. I’m loving the name of local water brand, Freshy Cool, which goes for around 30 cents a bottle.
We pay for our stash of items and once paid, are greeted by the local thank you, “kop khun kaaaa” along with a bow and hands held together as though in prayer. I had learned some Thai phrases, but I’m caught off guard and awkwardly return a “oh, uh, top khun uhh” and bow in a similar manner, my bag between my hands and awkwardly run out. I didn’t expect to do that in a 7-11. I’ll have to practice a bit more.
Heading back to the guesthouse after a day of wandering, we begin to relax and unpack. We don’t mind the lack of tv and we talk about what we’ve seen that day. The room’s yellowish light highlights the walls as it gets darker outside and we can see that the cleaners aren’t tall enough (or maybe don’t care enough) to reach the upper portions of the wall. I can see a border of yellow wall that turns to a darker brown as it gets closer to the ceiling.
We talk for a while and I sense that this dusty portion of the wall is slightly animated, almost like my imagination has started to become overactive as dusk descends. Looking closer, I can see that the dust has more of a hairlike multidimensional quality to it. I suddenly realize that this hairlike stuff is actually spiders upon spiders, hundreds of them, content in their undisturbed refuge, out of reach of cleaners rags. The spiders are reasonably sized, but very thin, so it is hard to see what they are until you are up close and personal. They remind me of our daddy-long-leg spiders back home, except much harder to see. I’m kind of horrified. We are here for three days, prepaid. I wonder if this is a normal and acceptable thing that we aren’t supposed to bat an eye at. Maybe if I don’t bother them, they won’t bother me – after all, they seem to have stayed put so far.
I take a shower (you have to take them twice a day due to the humidity) and notice spiders in the shower, moving as the water pours down . I maneuver so as to not disturb them. I notice spiders by the toilet and take a look under the seat – yup, more spiders. When I’m done my shower I find Adam in the main room trying to sweep and squish the spider network. No use. It just moves them around the room – there are too many, probably thousands. I sit on the bed and reason that the spiders might stay up there while I sleep. I mean, I don’t really have much of a choice but to think this. I get ready for bed and think about spiders crawling on my face, on my bed, into my luggage. Then I decide I have to put it out of my mind, accept my fate, and go to sleep.
I wake up at 4:30am, mostly due to the time change. We’re in a time zone about 18 hours ahead of home. Our room has a balcony that overlooks the street and I can see that the complex across the road has buddhist monks who are getting ready for the day, burning a wood fire. I hear the roosters crowing every once in a while. I see a few people in the street, getting ready to set up their stalls. I don’t really see any tourists up yet.
I know there are a multitude of spiders in the room, but they seem not so bad in the daylight. I grab a Birdy brand can of iced coffee that I had purchased in 7-11 and sit on the balcony slowly sipping it while I observe the scenery. I can see plenty of greenery and large bright tropical leaves on trees lining the street. Running above and down the street are what appears to be a dangerous amount of cable wires attached to the street lights. But the morning is calm and I sit and take it all in. It will be at least a couple of hours before the breakfast stalls open.
I take my morning spider shower. Coming back into the main room, our spider friends seem to be still safely up on the walls, content with listening to the roosters crow and maybe also watching the monks go about their day.
The Buddhists, from what I’ve read, don’t kill spiders because they view them as sentient beings, creatures with feelings. It is one of the core teachings that living beings are not to be harmed. Perhaps we should decide to live in peace with the spiders, inspired by watching the peaceful monks go about their practice. From there on, we can greet the spiders each day and wish them goodnight every evening. In the shower, we can use phrases like, “pardon me” and “excuse me”. Alright, enough, I would like to think that the tenets of the Buddhist monks rubbed off on us and that we treated the spiders with that courtesy.
The truth is, we just let things be because (a) we were polite Canadians, (b) we were new travellers and not quite sure how to cause a fuss, and (c) we didn’t want to risk angering the guesthouse and risking a non refund and losing our money. But, what we did do was learn to live with the spiders. We learned to put negative or stressful thoughts out of our minds about creepy crawly spiders being around when we were sleeping. As long as we woke up safe, it was fine. Sure, we killed a few, but after a while, we accepted our fate.
Sometimes I think, hey, maybe if they were up front about this, it could be a selling point. Maybe they could reframe it as a spider spa – after all, we are near Khao San Road, where Leo DiCaprio infamously drank snake blood in his movie The Beach. It could be a way of getting exposure to a fear of spiders – train your brain. Maybe I would feel better about this situation if it were touted to have health benefits – nothing gets the blood flowing like a spider shower; or wake up refreshed after a nice spider sleep. Or maybe not…
However, the experience did provide a valuable type of initiation to our travels. After that, other experiences weren’t so bad. Walking at night, we would see cockroaches scurrying on the sidewalks (they’re super fast) and it didn’t phase us. We would see rats running out of buildings and into our path – mostly not a big deal. In one guesthouse room, I encountered an endlessly hissing giant insect of some sort that turned out to be more bark than bite. In a jungle trek, I battled a spiny caterpillar and a praying mantis on my own in my sleeping area. And all rooms in guesthouses after that were not bad at all – “you don’t have a giant spider infestation? Seems ok”.
This introduction forced us to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. In a way it trained me to be able to keep stressful things out of my mind when I needed to. This carried on into my own life both during the next few weeks and after this trip. I think in general I’ve become a braver person, pushing the boundaries of comfort and being able to do things I didn’t think I could do. I’ve faced much bigger challenges since then but have learned that there are times when I just need to not overthink things and proceed in the face of fear and that I’ll be better for having done so. Hey, maybe the spider hotel idea has potential after all.
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