Lies, who is originally from Holland but has lived in Phuket for around 20 years, said she came into her house in Ao Makham to pick up something, and saw the 1.5 metre long snake entering her bedroom.
“It was sitting in the corner. I thought I would grab it behind the head, pick it up and throw it out the window. But that was a scary idea, because the snake got agitated when I got too close. I decided to back off and realised it might be poisonous.”
So she instead spent around 30 minutes trying to get the snake, believed to be a mildly venomous golden tree snake, into a cardboard box.
“I eventually managed to get it into the box, and then I put it out the window and it went immediately into a tree. I would have been really funny to see, because I was freaking out.
“I’m not afraid of snakes at all but it’s different when you’re so close to it, and you want it to do something.
“It took a long time before I had it in the box, I’m embarrassed to say more than 30 minutes,” she said with a laugh.
Lies, a yoga instructor at Bikram Yoga Phuket, said she had earlier heard some noise under the stairs and wondered if it was a snake or not.
“I was a bit surprised and it was quite funny. It couldn’t really do the small slither because the tiles were slippery, so it was thrashing wildly.”
Lies lives in a jungle area in Ao Makham, and says her garden and the trees around often attract a lot of wildlife. In the year she’s lived there, she’s seen two other snakes outside, plus another one she found in her living room.
“This is not the first time. I recently picked up the skin from a cobra on my windowsill. And I’ve also got two tokay [large geckos] in my house, they are a big problem.”