Bed Bugs

I'm curious, how many have ran into a bed bug situation on a cruise ship? I keep hearing about these problems all the time, this article in the NYT this morn got me to thinking again. We travel the world, stay in lots of hotels and staterooms. Never had a bed bug problem, except once. That was on a cruise ship and on the luxury line we sometimes use, of all places.

It is possible that once or twice in Hawaiian condos we ran into them, but I didn't get bit, my wife did, the doctor thought it was spider bites, she used to do a lot more snorkeling than I do and laying on the sand, maybe I got bit too but it never bothered me.

So when she started getting those little red welts on her legs on the cruise ship about three weeks into it, it was a 4.5 week cruise, and then I started to get the same with about a week left on my legs too, it certainly got our attention. One or two welts showed up a day or so after disembarkation, then we had no more problems. I read up on ships and bed bugs after that. I see where they jack the temperatures way up in the staterooms in order to get rid of them.

I didn't mention the problem as it was a great cruise and I couldn't figure out just exactly where they came from. After all, we had been up the Amazon and all over the Caribbean where bugs thrive. It wasn't until after the cruise and I had studied the buggers, that I was pretty sure they were bed bug bites. I'm almost certain it wasn't from the bed though. I think it was either the big couch in our mini-suite or the couches on the stern of the ship. We spent a lot of time in both areas reading in our shorts and all bites were on our legs. It was Regent's Seven Seas Navigator, a great ship. $$$.

I did a search of bed-bugs on this forum. My gosh. Talk about the huge volume of reviews where folks have had these issues.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/business/for-hotels-bedbugs-are-bad-enough-and-social-media-adds-to-irritation.html?hpw&rref=business&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

22 Answers

I have had bug bites now and then on the ships, I do not know what kind of bug

Never really gave it much thought, for cruising anyway. It is ironic that we do take that into consideration whenever we travel and holiday on land.

It will be interesting to see where this thread goes.

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