With the rise in backpacking travellers and increase in the number of hostels for travellers to stay in, bed bugs have made a remarkable comeback to haunt and pester the hardiest of travellers. One thing you have to know is that bedbugs are bloodsuckers who easily lift with baggage and they will inhabit even the cleanest of homes, so you may expect them while you travel around Asia and the rest of the world. However, the good news is that they do not transmit diseases. Bedbugs show their face only in the night, so don't expect them crawling on to the wall during daylight. As they are so small, we are able to see adult bad bugs, but not the younger ones and especially not their eggs.
1. How and what to pack
Certainly, no one would like to have these bloodsuckers as your trip souvenirs. There are different ways to prevent that from happening. First, we begin with the type of luggage used in your travel. It is best that you use a hard cover baggage, as that would prevent the bugs to cling onto you bags and use it as a free transportation to your home. Lighter shade baggage would allow you to spot these bugs if they happen to be wondering about on your bags. Next, we recommend that you pack your items such as shoes, clothing, toiletries and even books in sealed bags, similar to ziplock bags, separately before dumping it all into a 2 gallon sized bag. To avoid risk of getting the bedbugs crawling into your bags, you should open your baggage only when needed. While high temperature washing and drying of clothes is the best way to kill bed bugs, we would like to advise you not to take cold laundered clothes with you during traveling.
2. What to do with your luggage during you stay
This is the most crucial part of avoiding bedbugs. Try to place your baggage off the floor, as that is how these bugs travel. The bugs usually live or travel across the floor. By keeping your baggage a few inches off the floor, either on a luggage rack, or in a metal locker (not a wooden one because the bugs can live/crawling/ over wood) you are able to avoid this. Bugs often use luggage as something of a stepping-stone for getting into a bed when you leave it under your bed. Because Fernloft would like to protect our customers from bed bugs, we are offering a metal locker to every visitor, so don't hesitate to use it.
3. Keep beds from the wall
Even that we do not expect any bed bugs in our hostels, there is still a chance they will enter one of our clean hostels. Bugs are also able to enter a bed via the walls. To avoid this you could simply put the bed a few inches away from the wall, by doing this you can reduce the risk of bugs getting onto your bed. The ideal distance would be 3 or 4 inches, as they can jump, but even a few inches would decrease the risk. At fernloft, we place our beds a few inches away from the walls, as a preventive measure, so that our customers could have an uninterrupted bug-free sleep.
4. Washing of clothes
In case you do find that there has been a bout of bed bugs in your luggage, or even when you just want to be on the safe side, as mentioned before, one way to kill the bugs in your clothes is to wash and dry them at a high temperature. All Fernloft hostels are equipped with high heat wash machines, so don't worry, you can clean your clothes in our hostels. But, don't forget to steam clean your backpack or case also, when it is infected and you put your clean clothes in it, you did your work for nothing.
5. Don't hesitate to warn the Fernloft staff
While our staffs carry out stringent checks on the hostel premises daily, we would still ask that you to do a secondary check on your case, beddings and mattress, just in case, the bug may have hitched a ride on your bag or your neighbour's during your travel. In case you see any sign of bugs or bites while staying in our hostel, please inform our staff right away! It will be much easier for us to get rid of the bugs if we can catch them early on. All of our staff is well trained and equipped to get rid of these bugs, so don't hesitate to warn us! Remember, battle against bedbugs is a constant on-going one, thus prevention is better than cure.
Martin Wynn
