My experiences in South East Asia are limited, but involved snakes. Not all snakes are pissed off and aggressive. For instance, a translator/guide once pointed what looked to a vine in the rainforest and said, “don’t let this bite you, because if it does, I don’t get tipped.”
Now for my experience, partly copied from a previous post here.
I have never met a cobra that wasn’t preternaturally pissed off.
Once, while taking a “restroom” break on a bus I ran into a cobra that was instantly pissed off by me. I was not using the flooded ditch for its newly intended purpose, but instead was looking at the freakish jumping stinging biting ants of doom- of which there are many in Southeast Asia. (One woman was covered in them, and gave no notice as we drove off. That is god like indifference.) I ran around the bus and then jumped in. The driver closed the front doors and it paced back and forth hitting the lower windows.
The bus moves on, and I think I am safe. Down the road some, no more than a third of a mile, but more likely a tenth, the damn thing comes swerving up the dirt road and towards the little village restaurant/shop/abode. Lucky for me the building had doors, or perhaps something like a baby gate with mesh. My love at the time thought it was funny. “What did you do? It looks pissed. Maybe it found it’s true love. Should I let it in?” My love just keeps laughing as I decide that I should go first, just incase. I run for the bus from the side door and hope it doesn’t smell or see me. If we missed the bus, we would have been stuck with the snake. Now that I remember, my love followed pissed that they had to worry about the snake following. “Don’t talk to me. I get why the snake hates you.” We didn’t talk much for the rest of that day. Travel- the best test for LTR, long term relationship.
Other cobras that I have seen in person, some up close, were also ill tempered. Like velvet ants, some organisms, are just highstrug or permanently pissed off- from our perspective. Then again, wouldn’t you be around humans who tended to stick you in alcohol or oil, and sometimes cook you.
