Thai Village Life – Windows, Geckos and the Soles of My Feet
Whenever I stay at our village house in Udon Thani Province I try to occupy part of my day by helping out Wonderful Wi with a few of the household chores. Nothing too strenuous, just bits here and there to ease Wi’s workload.
Each day I make our bed and tidy the bedroom, sweep clean the living room and inside kitchen floors as well as washing any dirty dishes, pots, cutlery and glasses that have accumulated in the house. Sometimes I’ll help to water the garden and I do also try to clean all the house windows during my short-term visits. And it’s those windows which have led me to writing this post.
All together there’s 16 windows and two glass front doors to our house and early last month I decided it was time to give them all a clean, inside and out.
The windows pick up a lot of dirt, especially the front ones which face a red dirt road whose steady traffic of pick ups, motorcycles, buffaloes and occasional large trucks, kick up clouds of red dust which inevitably makes it way onto the windows and everywhere else. It’s a grime that you don’t really notice unless you consciously seek it out.
I started on the outside, cleaning a bay of three windows by the driveway (pictured above right) and soon had the right-hand and middle ones sparkling clean. When I sponged the left-hand window I got a shock.
Are Geckos Lightning Quick?
How the hell did this happen? …. there were two dead and decomposed house geckos trapped between the window frame. I always thought geckos were lightning quick, obviously not. Have any of you seen this type of thing before?… I certainly hadn’t and the sight of the decaying geckos put me right off my window cleaning duties. Is yucky an actual word? With that in mind, I headed off to relax in the garden.
This was more like it. Windows 7, Cheers Beer, cigarettes, my favourite music CD’s and a great view through the soles of my feet. There’s also always plenty of passing traffic to throw my empty beer cans at.
Geckos really are very useful little creatures and if you’ll allow me to misuse and abuse an idiom or two…. Once in a blue moon, if you kill two geckos with one stone, don’t sit on the fence, because if you fall, a beer in the garden is worth two in the bush.
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Toes looking rather pale and good to get them out in the sun. Crusty geckos shot put me off breakfast. But I can relate with my own experience removing or scraping off from door frames. I guess better “dried up” than “recent and still with some elasticity” making extraction messy. Hope it’s cooler in Udon. What’s this saying about mad dogs and English men in the mid day sun ?
How – I did notice how white my feet were in the picture, I’ll pass on how because they saw enough of the sun. I didn’t scrape the geckos off the window frame, I couldn’t face doing that.
Now back in the UK.
Martyn , , I closed the front door last week just as a big gekco stuck his head in and caught him in the middle , scared the shi- out of me and Ciejay screaming for me to open the door and kill him , felt just like a murderer as I poped him on the head with my walking stick to put him out of his misery, till not a pretty sight, and my stomach was a little wosey all evening . BUT—– the worse was I let Ciejay read your post and next thing I know theres a bucket of soapy water and a brush and towel over my shoulder and it’s off to the outside windows and, do we ever have the windows the old fashion ones with all the little panes , thats for the post thats just how I wanted to spend my afternoon and I’ll be in the hammock looking thru my tired feet tomorow . great post, scary pictures .
Malcolm and Ciejay – Nice to hear from you. The geckos gave me quite a shock, I thought they’d be too quick to get trapped.
My apologies for getting you fixed up with window cleaning duties, but, I bet that old hammock felt great the next day.
I occasionally see them squashed flat as pancakes in the door jamb, I also inadvertently spray them with baygon, damn I hate doing that. I think they are fantastic little creatures to have around.
Daz – I had to Google search Baygon – never heard of it before. Wikipedia lists it has an effective killer of household pests. I wonder if it’s been sprayed on a few meals in the past.