bed bugs

So these past few days, I've been getting bit by something. I've also been hanging outside by the hotel pool. I thought it was mosquitoes since they love me so dearly. But this morning I saw more bites on me and a few bites on my roommate. Strange that she had so many since there weren’t any mosquitos in the room… so after our morning muster formation I checked my bed just out of curiosity for bed bugs. I’ve had bed bugs before – when I lived in the dorms for culinary school in San Francisco, I was bitten almost to a point that it looked like I had a bad case of chicken pox.

Since that ordeal in San Francisco, I check the beds in all the places I stay at. Paranoia, I guess. But I have not crossed any more bed bugs and thought those creatures would be out of my life forever. Needless to say, I got complacent. The cruise line has put us recruits up at a hotel and for the first week, everything was good – at least I didn’t notice anything wrong.

You guessed it. After checking my bed this morning, I checked roomie’s bed. Holy smokes! I wished I never did that… just too disgusting to put into words. But yes, there were bed bugs – and lot of them. Not just little baby ones but big ones that looked like they’ve been living there for awhile. If you looked closely you could see their townhouses and condos – a whole village - lined up on the edge of the mattress and waiting for their next victim to fall asleep on their property so they could suck blood.

A call to the front desk brought in the floor supervisor, who then proceeded to check out the room. That resulted in another call to the Executive Housekeeper who looked around – and the more I looked around, the more I found – in the mattress, the furniture and a few just crawling around on the wall. They moved us to a different room down the hall and (supposedly) checked it. After we moved, I checked everything and it seemed ok. I could see some stains in the mattress from (I’m guessing) previous manifestations. But I didn’t see any bugs… roomie never seen bed bugs and was a bit freaked. We ended up having housekeeping wash all of our clothes which doesn’t really do anything since they can live through hot and cold wash water. But I’m thinking it was for a sense of security (more than likely false) just to think clean stuff will keep those creatures away.