Bedbugs!

You can tell from the title that this isn't going to be a happy post.  Around 1:30am last night, I discovered and killed a few bedbugs at the place where I was staying (The Same-Same Lodge - it was recommended in Lonely Planet, but clearly did not live up to its billing).  I had been laying in bed for almost an hour, watching a movie to help myself fall asleep, and I saw a bug crawling on the sheet by the light from the screen.  Now, I had seen and killed a similar bug on the wall above the bed when I came in, but I didn't think it was a bedbug because it was clearly visible to the eye and I was under the impression bedbugs were very tiny and hard to see.  This time though, the bug squirted blood when I crushed it.  Then I saw another, squashed it, and saw more blood.  Yep, definitely bedbugs.


I flipped out, immediately packed up my things, tracked down the management and informed them of the situation and that I was leaving and wanted a refund.  Even though I had only been in the room a couple hours, they would only give me back half my money, because I had used electricity and water, and they claimed they had no way of knowing whether I had brought the bugs with me, since they had never had a complaint before.  Now, having seen and killed upwards of 4 bugs after less than 2 hours in the room and never having seen them before, I was confident I hadn't brought them with me.  I tried to stay calm and explain the situation, but they refused to budge and I left even more upset than I already had been about the bedbug ordeal.


So what do you do at 1:00am when you're on some island in Thailand, you've left your bedbug infested room and don't know what to do?  Why, you find a 24-hour internet cafe and email your former roommate in DC who happens to have written a piece for a travel guide on dealing with bedbugs, of course!  Unfortunately, the connection was horrible, so our gchat conversation got cut short.  Around 3am, confused and frustrated, I ponied up for a nice room at a resort/spa, showered, soaked my clothes in extremely hot water, and went to bed.  I'm hopeful my limited exposure to the bedbugs kept me from spreading them, but not informing the new place beforehand was not the right thing to do, so now I have to go fess up and probably sacrifice a rather large deposit.


For the record, I learned from Molly this morning that what you're supposed to do--and what I am off to do now--is find a new hostel, inform them of the situation, and theoretically, before letting you enter a room, they are supposed to wash your clothes at a high temperature, dry them at a high temperature, spray down all your belongings with something, and you take a shower.  We'll see how that goes.


This bedbug situation is a real pain, but I guess in the grand scheme of things, a lot worse could happen.  And the weather for the last week has been absolutely perfect, so there's that at least.  Always look on the bright side, right?