tney have food everywhere outside, i'm not surprised
i like taipei but it was offputting to see vegetables delivered to restaurants in open mesh bags just laid out on the sidewalk, in all the dirt and whatever
really put me off eating honestly, even in thailand you only see that in wet markets, not just on the street everywhere like that
you'll like never get them in canada in you live in a burbs house, there's no big tropical ones and you only get the small ones infesting if you're in a dirty place or your neightbors are dirty
yeah you gotta live somewhere cold. cold countries don't get the giant tropical ones that fly. if you live in a house in a neighborhood with other clean people (like not some gross slobs with trash everywhere) you will basically never get them. I first saw a roach when I moved into a big city apartment, previous to that I lived at my parent's house in the burbs and I never saw a roach in my life
I lived in Bangkok for about 5 years in two different condos and I only saw roaches there maybe a handful of times. But both the condos were brand new, no one had lived there before -- I spoke to other expats in other buidlings and some of theirs were infested. I also kept the house spotless -- like an insane ocd level of clean in that i never left the house without doing all the dishes, taking out the trash, never left a crumb of food on the floor, I kept all food in the fridge, even stuff like flour, crackers that don't need refrigeration -- the one time i did that i came home and there was a giant roach on the counter -- literally one time. But if your neighbors are slobs that will also attract them. The other thing is that I lived high up, around the 20th floor or so.
I lived in rural Issan for a while and the bugs were like enormous lol, spiders the size of your hand, butterflies the size of your face, huge bugs everywhere so don't go there.
I lived in Southern USA for a while also, Texas and SC and one place I had in Texas I swear I got PTSD from the amount of fucking giant roaches came into that house, so much more than I ever saw in those bkk condos. I kept it spotless but it was next to a vacant house with a giant pile of rotting wood which is where they come from, and man it was a nightmare lol.
yeah people from west really underestimate the level of ocd it takes to avoid them. i'm from a cold climate and you can leave the trash out, do dishes later that day or even tomorrow, store food in cupboards etc and you won't get roaches, you won't even really get ants.
in thailand no way, you can't leave like one tiny ass crumb left on the floor or ants will come and after that roaches, everything goes in the fridge, trash gets taken out right away, dishes done after every meal, you have to be super ocd about it to avoid them