It was supposed to be a pleasant but uneventful couple of days. A quick trip to Singapore to renew my Malaysian visa, see Joyce and her family and check out any goodies that Singapore’s outdoor and camping shops might have to offer.
Instead, I got intimately involved with some wildlife. Bedbugs.
Staying at The Inn Crowd hostel, (where I’ve stayed comfortably and happily in the past), I was eaten alive on the first night. I reacted to the bites with massive swellings, all itching furiously. I gave up counting when I reached fifty. The next day, the dorms were fumigated and I went to bed still itching but feeling optimistic. Chomped again. These bugs were huge. They stomped about in broad daylight. I picked them out of my underwear before getting dressed. I bought de-lousing lotion. I found their babies scurrying about in my washbag, rucksack, socks.
Mortified to be coming back to Caroline’s flat in KL with possible hitch-hikers, I unpacked on the balcony. Sprayed everything with deadly, revolting ant-spray, soaked everything in extremely hot water, washed everything. Washed it all again. At double the temperature stated on the labels.
Being a Science teacher and a mother of an inquisitive child, Caroline has a microscope at home. So the nasties we’d found were soon being examined. In fact, for the next few days, I rushed to the microscope with every speck I found anywhere. Couldn’t tell if the itching was from old bites or new… but found myself in the unusual position of being overjoyed to find I’d just been bitten by a mosquito, or that I had ants in my bed.
My paranoia is subsiding now… though there could be eggs that survived the insecticide and hot washes, just waiting to hatch…
hought I'd better give it a go:
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