Living In Bali – Meet The Tokay Gecko
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
When researching living in Bali it’s funny how we never came across the strong possibility that we would encounter the Tokay Gecko.
You see the Tokay Gecko (a.k.a. the pitbull of gecko’s) is a well known inhabitant of this area, and is particularly partial to rainforest trees where they forage for spiders.
Well as it turns out, the rainforest trees are not the only favorite habitat of the Tokay Gecko … as we were to discover on our first night living in Bali.
Allow me to explain.
It had been an extremely long day.
We’d started with a 2:45am wake up call in Auckland to catch a 6:00am Virgin flight to Denpasar via Sydney. The flight itself was like a scene out of American Pie. Aussie schoolies had overtaken 2/3rd’s of the plane so the possibility of sleep was slim to none.
We finally arrived in Denpasar at 3:00pm local time to a muggy 36 degrees C (96 degrees F) and spent the next two hours in immigration. It was official, we were on Bali time.
Now, where we’re staying is only about 50kms from the airport, but in peak hour traffic it took us three hours to get there.
The roads were smooth until the last 40 minutes where we had to climb slowly up a rough, potholed country track. And riding in the back of a Nissan Terrano was like riding a bucking bronco for 40 minutes. By the time we reached our bungalow we were definitely shaken and stirred!
So what does all this have to do with the Tokay Gecko you ask?
Wait … it’s coming. I’m simply painting the picture of our state of mind at this point in time.
So, naturally we arrived in the dark. We were surrounded by buzzing mosquitoes, flying ants, moths the size of golfballs and the night sounds of the rice paddy frog’s orchestra filled the air.
To say we were shattered by this point would be an understatement.
We had a quick dinner and then went as fast as we could to our bed.
Lights out, sticky and humid under our mosquito net we quickly fell asleep.
Until … in the deepest, darkest part of the night there was a loud KNOCK! KNOCK!! KNOCK!!!
We both woke with a start and my husband boldly called out,
“Hello!?!”
You see, we’re living in a bungalow with no western security. Anyone, or anything can climb over a balcony and have instant access.
This was a totally foreign concept to us.
We sat up and tried to peer through the darkness … and then this eerie sound filled the air.
In fact you can hear it here …
What this video fails to capture however, is that just before the Tockay Gecko starts it’s call, it knocks it’s foot loudly three times.
Why three times? I have no idea. But apparently if a Tokay Gecko poops on your head or calls out seven times you’re going to be lucky for life.
Well we didn’t know that at the time. Nor would we have cared!
All we knew was that someone or something was knocking loudly and then it made this horrific sound in the dead of night.
Seriously, we thought we were in a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” and all we had to protect ourselves was a flimsy mosquito net!
So we did the only thing we could. We huddled under the blankets and made a protection barrier out of the pillows!
It made for one hot and steamy night … and no, not the romantic kind.
You see, this Tokay Gecko went all night long! Sleep was not in his vocabulary. So for seven long, torturous hours we lay huddled under our blanket and pillow barricade begging for daylight. Naturally sleep evaded us.
However we must have dozed off at some point because it was the dulcet bubbling of the stream that runs beside our bungalow that stirred us in the morning. We quickly checked our fingers, toes and noses and to our utter amazement nothing had been pecked off during the night.
At breakfast we were asked,
“How did you sleep?”
We looked at each with tired weariness and began to explain our night’s adventures.
The owner’s smiled knowingly to themselves like this was an inside joke for newbies to the island.
You can imagine our relief when we found out that our imaginary monster wood-pecking bird turned out to be a tiny little Tokay Gecko who simply likes to roam the walls and ceilings in search of spiders.
We can laugh about it now … but at the time we were asking ourselves,
“What on earth have we done?”
So my recommendation to you would be, if you’re thinking of living in Bali, definitely take into account that a tropical paradise is to be shared by all, including the voracious Tokay Gecko.
But as you can see from this video we shot the next morning, we survived our Tokay Gecko initiation in good spirits.
It’s funny to think that twelve months ago we were living in a crappy two-bedroom apartment on the wrong side of town wondering what on earth we’d gotten ourselves into with this internet marketing business.
And yet because we chose to follow a super simple 3-step system we can now take off whenever we want, to wherever we want … just because we can.
How cool is that?