Dosboy's Bits and Bytes

If there's one thing I really hate about SE Asia it's flies.  As in Musca domestica.  They're everywhere.  And they have no courtesy.  They fly right in your field of vision, into your eyes, up your nose, in your ears... they just don't care.  The mosquitos are annoying - but they're relatively slow and can be killed.  Ants can be frustrating as when there's one, there's a hundred - but they serve a purpose in cleaning up leftovers.  But flies?

Remember those Sally Struthers Ethiopia ads (well, not technically an ad for Ethiopia, but you know) where they have images of the kids with flies climbing on their eyeballs?  I get it now.  You just get so tired of waving the fuckers away repeatedly that eventually you just give up... and let them climb on your eyeballs.

I will say that Phuket isn't so bad.  But northern Thailand (and Laos apparently) are horrendous when it comes to these flying, obnoxious insects.  As with everything insect-related, the more urban a location is, the less insects there are.  And northern Thailand is about as rural as it gets, so it's understandable that the flies have taken over.

Anyway, that's my pet peeve for the day, as I sit here typing this post on a ~40kB/s internet connection in Vientiane, the capital city of Laos, on what is probably one of the faster 'net connections around.  With flies divebombing me and trying to drink my coffee.  And land on my eyeballs.