Arachnaphobia

Its 7pm on my second to last night in Boracay... and I'm nearly ready for bed! Why? Well its mostly because of a terrifying incident last night. It was 2am and I'd just finished watching Arsenal battle to victory over the unfortunate yet uninspired Liverpool, and just popped into my bathroom before my eyes closed completely. Now, I should point out, I moved into a room made mostly out of bamboo two days ago and, although spacious, its a little too close to nature for my liking, largely thanks to the big gaps in the floor opening onto the bare ground 4 feet below. I'd already discovered a rather large cockroach and been plagued by an increase in mosquito bites, which unfortunately turned out to be just a practice run.

So, this night, I shuffled bleary eyed into the bathroom and switched on the light, which immediately revealed the largest, fattest hairiest spider I've ever seen, hanging about 10 inches from my face in the middle of the room. Now, everyone knows I hate spiders, so might be prone to exaggeration about their size and hostility to justify my own fear. However, not this time, this one really was of tarantula proportions. It's body was easily over 3 inches long and more than an inch wide, while its legs were each as long as the distance from my wrist to the tip of my forefinger. I didn't know what type it was at the time, but I've since found a picture to match it, and apparently its a Huntsman (this is not the actual one, bit was just the same as this).


Now there was no way I could sleep with this monster in the next room! I shut the door in a panic, not wanting it to escape into my sleeping quarters. I needed a plan. No, actually, I needed a stick! The only thing available was the curtain rail, so I carefully removed the curtains, put on my shoes, and started to enter the bathroom. Then I saw my towel hanging up, so i added it to my armoury. I swung open the door and knocked the spider to the floor, next I threw the towel on top of it, then proceeded to jump up and down on the towel like a mental case. After about the 100th jump I deemed it enough to have made a spider pancake. I lifted the towel up, only for the spider to calmly meander out and across the room. Aaarrgh! I jumped out of the room and continued to poke at the spider with my 7 foot long curtain rail, until eventually it crawled out of the window. Relief. Or actually, I thought, as its not dead, what if it comes back in through the gap in the floor when I'm asleep?! With this in mind, I laid in the middle of my bed with the light on for the next 3 hours, until eventually my heavy eyes won over my irrational fear and I entered into a fitful sleep.

Insane isn't it? How I'm happy to let a lizard wander about my room wherever it wants, but as soon as a cockroach, or especially a spider, comes along, I turn into the old woman from the Tom and Jerry cartoons who leaps onto a chair and hollers whenever the mouse comes near!

Apart from my Steve Irwin-esque adventures, everything is going pretty well here in paradise. The only downside is that the weather has been pretty cloudy the last 4 days so my tan is not quite what I'd expect, but I'm sure its better than most of the people who have spent November and December in England or Korea! I have a friend arriving here tomorrow, which typically coincides with my last night! Then its on to Hong Kong to meet up with Martin and Pete.

More adventures to follow. And, hopefully, the only things to go bump in the night will be of the two-legged variety!