Human Survival in The Tropics On Samui

Human Survival in The Tropics On Samui

LIVING IN THE TROPICS – A SURVIVAL GUIDE.

Some serious guidelines to surviving life in a tropical climate.

I was sitting at my bar the other day talking to a friend of mine from Sweden who had recently arrived in Thailand from that rather icy country. As usual, it was a hot and sweaty day. Recent light rain had at least kept the dust down. When it’s dry the dust gets stuck all over you in your perspiration. When it has been raining and the dust has settled - It’s funny how the sweat trickles down your neck, then the wind vaporizes the water and you get a nice little layer of salt on your neck.

Harry, from Sweden, had just noticed that and was wiping franticly at the rear of his neck with paper towels – leaving a nice trail of soggy paper wads all over his neck. As Harry carried on and sipped his beer, he asked me how I survived month after month in the sweltering heat and humidity of the tropics. I told him that I guessed that I’d got used to it living and working in Fiji several years ago.

Harry then asked if I had any pointers for him – to help him survive the incredibly hot and sticky weather, and the bugs that had been attacking him, and the stomach aches from eating the wrong food, and, and…. The newly arrived Harry was having some problems with being in the tropics.

I am sure that many of you know about life in the tropics. Humidity, mildew, insects, lizards, infections, skin rashes, diarrhoea, never-ending heat and sweat, falling coconuts, cyclones, you name it the tropics has got it. That is the bad side. The good side? Many people living in colder climates dream of living in a “tropical paradise”. The only good side is that once you get there – to live – you are living the dream you used to have. That is the good part. Here are some pointers - on how to survive the rest of it - that I gave to Harry that day.

Never assume that you do not have diarrheal, always roll up your trouser legs if you squat to take a crap.
Never assume that you do not have diarrhoea, only fart in the toilet, never in bed or while wearing pants.
If a gecko lizard shits on you from the ceiling – this is good luck. (They are very small lizards)
If a tookay lizard shit on you from the ceiling – this is bad luck. (They are quite large lizards)
Before you put your shoes or boots on, strike the heal on the floor several times and shake the shoe out – it’s probably full of scorpions and centipedes.
Same goes for jackets, jeans, etc that have been hanging around
Don’t sit under coconut trees. Green coconuts weigh up to 3 kilograms and attain a speed of over 120 kph in a good fall. That can be quite fatal.
Always eat at cheap restaurants with the kitchen out front on the street – you can see and smell the food prior to cooking. Don’t trust fancy restaurants, you simply don’t know what’s going on out the back.
Always eat at cheap restaurants with the kitchen out front on the street – if you piss-off the cook or waiter you can watch them and make sure they don’t spit in your food.
If you get cut, always assume infection and treat the wound properly. It’s better than gangrene and the subsequent amputations.
If somebody says “yes”, they probably mean no. If somebody says “no”, they probably mean yes; this is typical of the tropics.
If you don’t need a piss right now, you aren’t drinking enough water and are about to die from dehydration.
Don’t waste time using quinine to ward off malaria. If a mosquito carrying malaria bites you, you will die anyway. The mosquitoes are all immune to quinine.
Don’t drink whisky from bottles with labels you don’t understand.
Don’t drink beer from bottles with labels you don’t understand.
Don’t eat the ice, you never know where it’s been.
Don’t throw spaghetti on the wall to see if it is “el dente”, in the tropics it’ll stick to the wall el dente or not.
Keep your floppy disks in Tupperware containers with sodium silicate parcels; tropical fungus has an appetite for the plastic disk material.
Same for audio and videotapes.
Better yet, get an optical or zip drive for your PC.
Clean the fungus off your leather jacket before it starts walking around the room.
Same for your leather shoes or boots.
If you see green-ish, furry stuff on your body, scrape it off immediately.
It’s uncool to point at somebody, touch someone’s head or hair or to whistle to somebody in most tropical places, very uncool.
In tropical weather, it is impossible to count how many beers you have drunk – beware.
Tropical beer is NOT full of chemicals; it is just the extra alcohol – and/or extra quantity - that gives the extra hangover.
If you are from a colder climate, never, ever assume you’ve smoked grass that strong before, you’ll end up on your back on the floor with palpitations of your heart and a major head-spin.
Any rash appearing on your arms or legs will appear on your face within a few days, use sunburn cream, it wipes out most tropical rashes.
Learn how to fix your car. There are no real mechanics in the tropics.
Learn how to clean out carburetors, there is water in the petrol.
No, you never, ever stop sweating. Hang out in an air-conditioned office building all day.
If you catch tropical cold from hanging out in air-conditioned buildings, take 10,000 miligrams of Vitamin C each day.
No, you never, ever need pullovers, cardigans or jumpers.
Yes, you certainly need water resistant clothing. Get a good water-resistant jacket.
Learn to enjoy rain. Rain all day. Every day. Day after day after day after day after…….
Wear a body stocking when you swim in the sea, it is full of jellyfish with stingers.
Normal insect spray works just fine for bedbugs and cockroaches; you will need it.
Watch out for the drop bears.
Don’t believe anything a talking fish tells you.
If you see a talking fish, take a bex, a cuppa tea and have a good lie down.
If you talk to a talking fish see the headshrinker immediately.
Except for occasional escape from the heat, avoid air-conditioning – opt for a fan where possible – air-conditioning will often make you sicker than you already are.
Don’t reach to far over your head when you pull off T-shirts, you’ll chop off your hands in the ceiling fan.

I believe that heeding the above guidelines will help to make your stay in the tropics more pleasant. Harry spent a few weeks in Thailand. It was the middle of the hot season. He drank a lot of beer – most people do here. Beer seems to evaporate inside you somewhere.

Harry went out and purchased the requisite pharmaceuticals, creams, salves and powders. He sought out and found deadly, strong insecticides. He ingested vast quantities of anti-biotics and beer. He ate at “outside” restaurants, smelling the food prior to its cooking and watching carefully that the cook did not spit into the pot.

Harry had a good stay in the end. Probably not because he listened to me and this bullshit. Just the beaches, the beer, the food, the sunsets and sunrises, the egg/toast/bacon/coffee breakfasts on the beach… maybe just that.

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