In my previous post I’d mentioned how the bungalow Anna and I chose to stay in on the island of Koh Phi Phi Don had a few unwanted guests… It was in fact our first night there that “the event” occurred that made us question staying there any longer… Personally, I can handle a cockroach or two with no bother. However, Anna fears them like I fear spiders and in understanding that, I can’t simply brush her fear aside but rather must respect it.
After returning from the beach and exploring the town of Phi Phi Don, we arrived after dark to our bungalow in the jungle. Knowing that there may be “beasties” as Anna calls them, I approached the bungalow first turning on all lights to check for any critters (hopefully not seeing any spiders in the process as well!!). With no cockroaches in sight, I called the all clear for Anna to come on in.
As I sat on the porch with my tablet (the bungalow was very hot inside and had yet to cool off from the days heat despite the fan blowing) Anna, who just came out from a shower and was in the bungalow changing, let out a yelp and ran on the porch in her towel announcing that she’d spotted a cockroach on the churning fan. The fan in the bungalow was mounted on the ceiling and gently rotated around the room at varying angles. As Anna remained on the porch in fear, I went in to investigate…
At first I didn’t see anything on the fan as it gently rotated about. I thought perhaps she’d just seen an odd shadow that appeared to look like a cockroach, but nothing else. I kept watching as Anna persisted that she’d seen one. Nothing… I still didn’t see a thing. I persuaded her to go back in the room and get changed as there was no cockroach there. But as she started to go in and I was going out, once again she spotted it.
Sure enough, a cockroach just over an inch in size became visible on the INSIDE of the fan between the churning blades and the wire mesh across the front of the fan. Now there was an issue… The fear essentially was that at some point as the cockroach skittered along the wires of the fan, it would be catapulted out somewhere in the room at a great speed from the force of the fan… What to do, what to do…???
As Anna paced on the porch, I turned the fan off hoping that when the blades stopped the roach would figure out a way off the fan. It perfectly contentedly stayed on the fan however changing course here and there making its way along the wires and rim of the fan, showing absolutely no signs of going anywhere. I tried hitting the fan with items to knock the roach off but the fan was mounted too high on the ceiling for me to get anywhere near reaching it. I waited as the roach made its way to the edge of the fan where the gaps between the wires were greatest and in that instant turned the fan on full blast to try to force it out with the wind from the blades to absolutely no avail… Seemingly we were at a complete standstill. There wasn’t anything to be done. All the while that I was inside trying to get the roach, Anna started referring to it as a kamikaze cockroach since she was sure it would come flying out of the fan at any second…
However, with no other feasible options in sight to get the roach out, I coaxed Anna to come back into the bungalow to at least get her clothes so she could change in the bathroom. I agreed of course to stay in the room with her while she got her clothes together in case the roach suddenly did make a ground floor appearance. I positioned myself directly under the fan with my open tablet in hand going about things I wanted to look up while Anna gathered her clothes. She kept making references to the kamikaze cockroach and how it would surely get her. Staring at my tablet I started to chuckle at Anna and how dramatic she was being when within a split second, the roach suddenly dropped directly on my tablet!!!
I let out a scream just from the surprise and shock of the catapulted cockroach suddenly being on my tablet and subsequently flung my tablet to get the roach off of it. Anna, having heard my scream and then seeing the roach being flung off my tablet in (ironically and unfortunately) her direction went absolutely ballistic!!! She started letting out a series of long and loud scream as she tried in vain to get away from the roach as it skittered across the floor directly to her and toward the bathroom. All the while I was furiously trying to brush the roach away from running toward her, but it just kept on trying to get past her to the bathroom!
Finally, it managed to make it to the bathroom and went between the floor tiles to the outside and after a few seconds of calming herself, Anna and I both started to laugh hysterically!! What made the whole thing worse is we were both now standing inside the bungalow in full view of the front door, Anna still in her towel, laughing our rears off as the man from reception came tearing up the path to our doorstep asking if everything was ok! Bless his heart for coming!! He seriously must have thought we were being murdered by the initial look on his face, which turned disinterested rather quickly as we tried in vain to explain that it was “just a cockroach” that we were screaming at and then laughing at hysterically! He wasn’t amused…
Luckily that was the end of our odd entertainment for the evening and after that night, we didn’t have any further cockroach events so we stayed in those bungalows for the next 3 nights of our trip to Phi Phi. However we did rename our bungalow the “kamikaze cockbox” from that night on. It was a combination of the words ‘kamikaze cockroach’ for the above event and ‘hotbox’ since that first night was absolutely boiling inside despite the fan! The kamikaze cockroach prediction came true after all!
On to The Quiet Sides of Phi Phi
Ramblintraveler 