When you’re travelling around the world you can often bump into insects and little creatures that scare the hell out of you. I belong to such people too, so let me give you a little piece of advice.
As there are way too many insects, let’s just focus on cockroaches. They are good representatives of the scary insect world.
In Asia, cockroaches are spread out across cities and countryside. You can basically have the ‘privilege’ to meet them anywhere. I’m sorry to tell you that to keep clean won’t make them stay away.
If you’ve seen Wall-e, you surely remember that cockroaches can survive almost anything. Therefore, prevention is the best way how to have as little encounter as possible.
Rule no. 1: Do not leave any food leftovers around. That’s what they love munching on. If you’re staying somewhere longer and often don’t finish whole packages of food, just use sealable containers.
Rule no. 2: Take the trash out often. Roaches don’t care if the food is fresh or one week old – they love it all.
Rule no. 3: See any holes or cracks that might serve as a nice cockroach doorway? Seal them! You can’t block all possible entrances, but at least you can make it a little more difficult.
Rule no. 4: If you’re really afraid, get one of local sprays that work like killing machines. You spray a running cockroach and it immediately lands on its back with its feet high up, dead as a doornail.
You can of course always end a cockroach’s life by stepping on it. If you’re that brave, you better wear shoes, be fast and hit the head only, otherwise it can get ugly! I must say the spray is a real safety net. It saved my life several times while living in China. A friend of mine who lived on Taiwan once had a cockroach crawl into his sleeve while making a phone call from a phone booth! Good we all have our own phones these days.
Would you like an extreme solution? The team behind Backyard Brains raised over 10,000 USD in 2013 to fund their project of RoboRoach. You give a cockroach a little ‘backpack’ and control its movements. Beware, you first need to catch one and put the backpack on its little back! https://backyardbrains.com/products/roboroach
Second Smith
Sunday 26th of July 2015
Ah! I've been dealing with this problem in my current hotel room! Boric acid also works well, you can buy some pretty cheap and it will definitely get rid of the roaches!