those mosquito plugs with the scent work great imo. only problem is they run down semi fast if you leave them plugged in. so i just put them in now and then, totally deals with them though. sometimes i even see dead ones on the floor, i think they suicided over how unbearable the smell of the scent is to them. before i was running round with that anti mosquito tennis thing, although fun to fry the shit out of them the plug is a million times more effective.
as for the sun…30 mins is enough time for me. anymore and i really need sun cream i’ve learnt the hard way.
There are these little sacks of Chinese medicine you can get that have a strong scent designed to repel mosquitoes and it’s a nice natural and eco-friendly alternative…if you yourself can tolerate the smell. I personally think it’s not so bad once you get used to it, but I can see how it could bother someone too much. A couple of my family members have them hanging on doorways, by windows, and in other mosquito entry hotspots, but I’m not quite certain where they got them. Probably a Chinese medicine shop. I’ll ask my aunt tomorrow.
was recently reading a book about taiwan and the old names people used were cool, we should bring them back. red haired barbarians(all dutch are ginger or what?) black bearded barbarians, savages, heathens and idol worshippers. adoga is quite boring really.
Hydrate with good ol’ water.
Stay away from soda and sugary drinks in the heat.
Wear breathable shoes.
Dont wear anything leather. Leather goes bad here faster than a huntsman spider can scurry across a room.
Dont kill the spiders. They are your friends…unless they are invading your bed or toilet, then its gloves off.
Dont step on the roaches…not sure if its true, but Ive been warned that goo on the bottom of your shoe attracts fellow roaches or could even contain eggs.
Dont wear flip flops when running for the garbage truck at night. Those trucks are roach parades…crunch crunch. Eww
Hot springs and tubs etc in wooded or nature-ish areas tend to be home to centipedes and other critters.
Ice does wonders to sooth a mosquito bite along with tea tree oil as others have said.
Buy an electrified mosquito tennis thingy as soon as you get here and keep the batteries in it fresh. Those things are seriously handy.
If your shoes get wet, set them on your dehumidifier. Oh yeah, buy a dehumidifier or a couple of them.
Winters are friggen cold to the bone because of the humidity. Dont kid yourself into thinking winters are not cold here. Add concrete boxes for homes with no insulation…you are living in an ice box.
Hire a professional to clean out your washing machine once a year. The inside gets nasty…really nasty with mold.
Do not go outside around noon. Just dont.
Enjoy the lovely views during the summer because in the winter the gals let the body hair go wild and cover up.
do step on roaches… its the easiest way to kill them. don’t give them the chance to fly at you. you might shit your pants.
another thing for the mosquitos. don’t scratch the bites. it stops being itchy if you leave it alone. it can scar if you keep scratching, i’ve seen some people with scars all over their ankles from it.
Let the geckos be, too. unless they start that screaming nonsense, in which case escort them out.
Squishing roaches is still the best way to kill them as long as you sanitize both the thing you used to squish it and the surface upon which it was squished. otherwise yeah, roaches do come and collect their dead. really economical system they have if you think about it…
menthol will do it, too, and you can carry a little tin or stick of it wherever you go so it’s very convenient. I like to use tiger balm because it’s got clove oil in it and that numbs the itchiness.
If you leave the lid open and let it air out when it’s not in use it doesn’t get quite so nasty. But a good cleaning is still called for every now and then.
About the washing machines…
We always leave it open when not in use, but even still the inside of the drum gets caked with mold and crud. Have you seen what it looks like when they take it apart to clean it? I was horrified the first time I saw it.
Haha. In this regard, I quite agree. Truth be told, my head jerks when I see the big nose. Can’t blame the locals for their observations. Now calling Koreans pancake faces due to their flat features would be considered offensive, but unarguably true. Hmmmm.
I wish I had that info handy. My wife sets up those appointments so I will have to ask her. Can anyone with a handle on Chinese link to washing machine cleaning services?
I could probably find one myself searching 洗衣機清洗 but I was just wondering if there was a particularly trustworthy company to hire for it…it’s always good to get a referral.
Another bit of tropical advice: When searching for a place to live, try to avoid renting or buying anything on the ground floor. Critters are more likely to enter your home. I have a friend living and working in Thailand who lives on the ground floor and it’s REALLY wild out there. I mean, I thought the big flying roaches here were bad enough. But imagine having snakes!
when you get to thinking about it, the subtropics/tropics aren’t really all that suitable to human settlement. we have to make a concerted effort to live comfortably here. the only things really thriving are those most ancient species that have had millions more years to adapt to these conditions, like plants, insects, and bacteria and mold. the people and manmade objects here all look totally ate up from the destructive power of heat and rain and humidity.
every flower I see is happy and beautiful; meanwhile we all look like sweaty hell. even stray cats and dogs look extra fucked up compared to the ones I see in temperate conditions.
i actually think most taiwanese people are suited to this environment. the humidity makes me sweat the second i leave an air conditioned enviroment. taiwanese are completely different. they wear jackets in 35 degree heat, i’ve seen some hiking in this heat with clothes covering their whole body because they don’t want a tan. people are even worried they are going to catch a cold.
A body does get used to the temperatures it’s most often exposed to over a period of time. If you grow up here you find yourself more resistant to heat and less resistant to cold.
But you still get people keeling over or even dropping dead in the heat if they’re not careful, so the fact remains that this is a pretty brutal climate for human life.
When we were first going out, I asked my then girlfriend, who was from the south, how people handled the climate before there was AC, and she kind of snorted and said they weren’t so stupid as to go live in a bunch of concrete boxes in a swamp.
