If you have gotten to the point of setting up house here in Thailand then you have probably already experienced some uninvited houseguests. No, we are not talking about your cousin Bubba dropping in unexpectedly. The houseguests we are referring to are the creepy crawlies that invade our homes here.

Some while ago a medical lab technician came to work in a hospital here from the US. A few of us helped move her in to a nice dormitory room on the hospital campus and, as it was late, we told her we would be by early the next day to check on her.

As we entered her room the next morning we noticed a peculiar sight. Her walls were covered with red splotches. "What happened", I asked. "I was invaded in here last night," she said, "there were dozens of these lizard things crawling all over the walls. It was horrible. But don't worry, I got rid of them with my shoe."

I guess she'd never seen a house gecko before. "ching chok", as they are called in Thai, are the common reptile mosquito control agents that live in all Thai houses. Please don't kill them. They are good guys, except for the tiny droppings that fall into our noodles as they scamper across the ceiling or the occasional egg laid in your shoe.

A relative of the house gecko, the tokay gecko, is about as long as your forearm, green with red or yellow spots. Late at night you may be shocked out of bed by a loud "tokay, tokay" repeated many times over. Although they look like something out of Jurassic Park they also are good guys. They help deal with some other really nasty critters. Like flying roaches.

When I lived in a wooden house, every night, in the few seconds from the time I turned the light off, to before getting under the mosquito net, I would be attacked by flying roaches. They probably had been waiting all day for this opportunity. These guys are about 3 inches long, and they fly. They would fly in the dark straight for my head and get tangled in my hair. I live in a concrete house now.

Centipedes sometimes get in the house. For most westerners a centipede is no big thing. Well, they certainly are "big things" here. They can get as long as eight inches and they have a bite that can put you in the hospital.

Flying termites will swarm during the early rainy season nights. There are 20,000 species of ants in the world, 3,000 live in bamboo alone. I think there are at least as many as that living in and around my house. You'll get used to the bites of red weaver ants. Their nests in the mango trees are filled with their white larva, a gourmet delicacy. Then there are the tiny itchy fire ants whose bites once almost put me into shock. And of course there are the ants that seem to love living in my toothbrush.

Forget about trying to kill them all or even trying to keep them out of your house. That's a lost cause. Just keep your house clean and don't leave any left over food out. If all goes well, you'll soon learn to live in harmony with all of god's creatures; like huge hairy spiders and 6 inch black scorpions. You'll know you have really adapted to life here when even that occasional cobra in your garden won't bother you.