Last night I went to what's called a "night market." It is what it sounds like--a bunch of shopping opportunities under tents after sunset. A weighty aspect of the night market, however, which isn't stated in the name, is the biomass of the insect population it supports. Spiraling clouds of them are everywhere, particularly around bright lights, which are everywhere. While I was sitting at a small plastic table eating my pad Thai (which came covered by a thin layer of scrambled duck egg), I realized how strong a habit I have of idly leaving my mouth open. The bugs reminded me several times, with their dry wriggling bodies around the walls of my throat. They also reminded me how often I leave my eyes open, and that my hair, short though it is, is still long enough to entangle those tickly little bastards. Later, in a clothing/sunglasses tent, while looking around at the cheap and unbelievably stylish t-shirts (most of them too ironic for their own good), a moth about the size of my eye opening flew into my eye opening, fluttering its dusty wings and leaving behind a film of moth powder. It was the most violated I've felt since being here, and I had like three urinal massages at Rad that other night.
You know the feeling when bugs get down your shirt? On the back of your neck? In your ears? There's no end to the places they can infiltrate because they've got nothing to lose. But that's not quite true. They do value their lives, which I remind myself every time I kill one to make the death more satisfying. There are so many of them flying in every direction, however, that I can never be satisfied. Only disgusted, and the odds of their dangerous little games are stacked heavily in favor of pushing me past sanity. I can feel them for hours afterwards.
The Thai people have come up with an interesting way, not quite of handling these evolutionarily unstoppable annoyances, but perhaps of handling the emotions that result. They deep fry the fuckers, impale them on skewers, and display their mass graveyards alongside ice cream and noodle soup carts. They pile thousands of grasshoppers, roaches, maggots, beetles, flies, anything big enough to jam a bamboo spike through, under extra bright lights, bringing out the luster of their oily coffins and attracting their flying brethren to the grisly spectacle.
But this, everyone knows, will not teach the bugs a lesson. There's really nothing to be done except wave your hands around your face and brush them all over your body as if battling hallucinations. If you want the night market bargains, you have to pay for them.
