Showing all 49 replies.
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I went to visit the house of a low-caste Indian villager once and a bedbug started crawling on me. In past visits I have seen lice and fleas crawling or hopping on my body, too. Like many pests, they are tired of tasting Indian blood and much prefer biting a white person.
Only once have I gotten bitten by them, it left a distinctive line of red dots on my foot. Didn't itch or anything. I'm a light sleeper so it's very hard for any vermin to crawl over me without me noticing.
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>>2882509
i got bed bugs from a hotel in upstate NY after getting into a car accident and needing to stay somewhere for the night. it took me 3 YEARS to get rid of them. i had to change my entire lifestyle, from how i slept to how i did my laundry. the only thing that got rid of them was bedlam plus and heavy dryer sessions that cost me a ton of money. avoid bed bugs like the plague. while i had them i had giant blisters all over my face, particularly below my nose, and sometimes around my body that itched and bled and made me look like shit. it was hell.
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>>2882509
>bedbugs
>but have never seen them personally despite staying in some dodgy hostels over the years.
did you... did you search for them anon?
even if you sleep in a room with bedbugs
it is not guaranteed that you take them home with you
unless you explicitly check, you could have slept in multiple rooms with them and never really notices other than a few itchy spots the next morning
they are a pita to get rid off
so it's still worth checking
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>>2882509
I recall being bitten 4 times:
- hostel in Brussels (2018)
- hostel in Tirana (2022)
- mountain hut in Slovakia (2025)
- hotel in Santiago de Compostela (2026)
After this experience, I pay a lot of attention where I put things.
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>>2882577
>a few itchy spots
it's impossible to miss their bites. it's a distinctive pattern.
bed bugs are reason enough not to travel. i encountered them at least twice while backpacking in south america, both times in chile. once in an airbnb and another time in a nice hostel.
it's also why i would never be an airbnb host. it's almost guaranteed that somebody will bring them in and infest your house
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I'm always surprised how I've been to the dirtiest country in the world (India), and not only have I never encountered bedbugs in my life, but you guys have encountered them in much cleaner countries. I know my luck is bound to run out some day, given that I really tempted fate by going to India.
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>>2882509
Yeah, about 15 years ago my mom and I went to a relative's wedding. The Marriott they booked everyone into was infested. The fucking things were swarming me in bed and I squished one. I was terrified that we were going to bring some back home and infest the place, but somehow we lucked out.
Except . . .
>>2882536
>Only once have I gotten bitten by them, it left a distinctive line of red dots on my foot.
. . . this. Somehow, about four months ago, I got bitten in exactly the "bedbug pattern" of multiple series of four bites in a line. Well, one series was only three bites. Eleven bites total, three then four then four again.
It only happened the one single time and I've been living back home for over three years now (stuck taking care of my geriatric mother), so I'm hoping that the spiders got them.
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>>2882800
>you guys have encountered them in much cleaner countries
They're an absolute fucking epidemic in U.S. motels. This started happening around the time the Indians were taking over the motel industry. Purely a coincidence I'm sure.
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>>2882509
I stayed in France and got mercilessly attacked. Woke up to hundreds of them on my body. Looked at the mattress and the underside was absolutely covered in black spots and eggs.
There was a thick wooly blanket that was also absolutely full of them. I threw it off the bed and into the corner. Bugs were clearly crawling all over it even in day time. But the cleaners kept putting it back on my bed every single fucking day.
I would've liked to change to another hotel, but my cards didn't work at all in France. Debit card didn't work in ATMs either. I had just a little bit of cash and barely made it to the end of my trip with about 10 euros left. A whole week of being eaten alive by fucking bugs. If it were a first world country, I probably would've slept outside, but France is too dangerous for that. Luckily at one point I met a girl by pure chance and stayed at her hotel for a night. Barely slept since the bed was too small for one person, much less two. But it was better than being gnawed at all night.
That trip was nearly 10 years ago and I'll still feel a slight itch on my body late at night and jump up and search my whole bed. I don't know how those little fuckers leave mental scars, but they do.
>>2882800
Same for me. I've been to absolute shitholes and stayed in the shittiest hotels imaginable. Never seen a bug there. Went to India as well and had no issues. Maybe those places use industrial grade deadly poisons or something, while Europe just doesn't do anything.
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>>2882800
>>2882837
Apparently it's a lottery. I've been to a third of the world by now, including some serious dumps (India and France as well), and, knock on wood, zero bug bites. Had household roaches once.
That said, I do scan reviews religiously for any mention of bugs, both recent and a history of issues. One word of them and you're out, not taking any chances. The one time I had a roach infestation was when I gambled on a relatively new place with little comments (probably taken down and reposted for the hundredth time).
I dread the day my luck runs out.
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>>2882837
>Maybe those places use industrial grade deadly poisons or something, while Europe just doesn't do anything.
I think DDT is still legally available and used widely in India. It's apparently really easy to make at home, BTW, just two chemicals to react in water.
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It's also an argument for packing light. If you pack light enough, you can fit your luggage into a garbage bag once you arrive at the location. The bugs will not climb through the bag to infest your luggage. If you just have luggage sitting around though, you are tempting fate. Never put clothes into drawers and the such that are provided for you. Good luck, friends, and God be with you.
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>>2882509
i firmly believe that if you can't afford to stay in a reputable name-brand hotel you shouldn't travel.
it's unironically more comfy to stay home than to go stay at some shitty hotel in a crap 3rd-world country.
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I think a good rule of thumb when traveling is just to never travel with anything you aren't prepared to blast in the dryer or throw out. Bed bugs are inevitable and show up even in "nice" properties, you will probably deal with them at some point in your life. Just keep an eye out for them and it's not hard to avoid bringing them home. Being paranoid about them is just pointless and excessive in the same way its pointless and excessive to be a germophobe.
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>>2883619
If you have a home, you should stay home. If you don't have a home, then you should travel the world.
>muh global hospitality name brand
NPC Amerimutt detected. You can't imagine a life without dependence on globalized megacorporations, can you?
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>>2882509
Not bedbugs. Worse than bedbugs.
>work trip
>they get me a room at a Days Inn
>website was a bait and switch
>completely different from photos
>motel style
>kinda rundown
>whatever, been in worse
>get checked in and head to the room
>room is decently clean
>very faint hum, think it's machinery or something
>get settled in
>start running a bath and strip naked
>go to turn on the light over the vanity
>push button style switch
>push the button
>wall around the switch caves in
>humming becomes louder
>hundreds of bees start pouring out of the wall
>tear ass out of the room screaming and buck ass nekkid
>main office now gets to deal with an angry, naked man covered in beestings
>have to wait several hours with only a towel to cover me before they can get the bees out and recover my shit from the room
Worst work trip I ever took.
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Bedbugs leave these characteristics lines of bites especially around clothing lines.
I've encountered them several times before but only like... one or two. The thing about bed bugs is that you can get thousands.
A lot of hostels now ban people bringing their own bedding, though people often don't bring their own sleeping bag backpacking these days anyway.
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I worked night reception at a shitty cheap hotel owned by Chinese. There were bedbugs in specific rooms always the same room. If someone called about them we'd call an externinator the next day and for a couple weeks it would be "safe" but they always came back. Clientele was 90% Chinese and Spanish travel agencies.
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>>2882509
had some family encounter them decades back in a resort hotel in Malaysia, then had a recent run with them around 2022 at an airbnb. though they're pretty much limited to bedbug bites then no more once you leave the unit. any hitchhikers will cook to death in a hot car in the sun at >30C. that would explain thirdworld shitholes in hot countries not having a widespread problem
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>>2886371
No dead bodies but plenty of moldy old furniture. It was a 4star hotel maybe 60 years ago, now it's a dump. I remember having to go in the basement where the generator for the AC was, and using portable fans to cool it because it would overheat and block. It was dusty as fuck and full of dead roaches