Three years ago, I sat in an English pub, listening to a friend tell me stories about their trip to Vietnam. From whirlwind romances to charming locals, beautiful sights and oh-so-cheap and delicious food, as they told me about their travels my mind was filled with beautiful images and I knew I had to go.
Ever since that evening, I’ve had this idea of Vietnam as the most beautiful destination on Earth. So when I finally booked a ticket there, three years on, I was overwhelmed with excitement.
I travelled with my then-boyfriend and we decided to spend a month in Hanoi/Halong Bay and a month in Ho Chi Minh City. We decided that since this was a trip I’d dreamed of for such a long time, it was worth allowing two months to really experience life in Vietnam.
My First Taste of Vietnam
The first month in North Vietnam went well, although as with any over-hyped dream, it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. I quickly realised the image I had of peacefully driving scooters alongside the river, and walking hand in hand around lakes and pagodas was as far from reality as possible. The roads were filled with thousands of motorbikes and scooters, each one of them slamming their horn as many times as humanly possible. Attractions were heaving with tourists and locals who would push past us or pester us to buy something, or pay for a picture with their props and animals. The entire experience was overwhelming and nothing like I imagined. The only respite we got from the madness of the city was in Halong Bay, on Cat Ba Island and the deserted Tuan Chau Island.
I quickly realised that I’m definitely not a city person, which didn’t bode well for the second month I was due to spend in Southern Vietnam, in the apparently busier Ho Chi Minh City.
Any time we told locals how long we planned on staying in Saigon, they would look at us shocked and confused, or they’d laugh. Almost all of them asked ‘why would you do that?’. So by the time came for us to board our flight to HCMC, we were well and truly worried about what to expect from the Southern City.
The Saigon Apartment
We had booked a Saigon apartment that looked like pure luxury. It was modern, it had air con and a rooftop area with swing seats and a pool. The apartment was located in District 3, so not too far from the city centre.
When we arrived at the apartment, we saw a baby cockroach on the stairs leading up to our flat. My boyfriend looked at it with disgust while I insisted that it was cute.
‘I have no idea why people are so scared of these little things’ I said, ‘I don’t think they even bite, and they run a mile when they see us coming anyway’.
Oh, how naive I was. This was before I realised that cockroaches are living embodiments of the devil. These guys are pure evil. And before any animal-lovers jump to defend them, I have my reasons (below) for now hating these insects!
Anyway, we let ourselves into our room and were amazed by beautifully modern and clean it was. We took pictures before dumping our massive rucksacks in the wardrobe and running up to admire the rooftop area. It was incredible — the pool had a beautiful view of the city. We were impressed.
But the first night, the problems began. When we switched out the lights and went to bed, we heard scuttling sounds. Switching the light back on, we saw a group of 5 or 6 cockroaches that had emerged from underneath the wardrobe. Still convinced that these little critters were completely harmless, we switched off the light and went to sleep not giving it a second thought.
The Invasion of the Cockroaches Begins
But the next night, we awoke to the same scuttling sound, and this time there were even more — probably more than 10 cockroaches all running around on the floor of our bedroom. One had even made its way on to my bedside table. That was a little too close for comfort, so the next morning we asked the housekeeper if there was a spray we could use that would get rid of them. She gave us a spray and we went crazy, spraying every nook and cranny we could find.
We let the spray work its magic for a while, and sure enough an hour later, 7 cockroaches had crawled out from their hiding places and died in the middle of the room. It’s a little grim, and cruel, I know, but trust me, they deserved it for what their buddies did the following night.
At 3 am the next day, I woke up in a panic. There was something crawling on me, lots of things, on my legs, on my chest, my arms. My face. Yep, there were cockroaches all over me. And one of the buggers was on my face.
In a split second, I went from being someone who couldn’t care less about cockroaches, to sobbing like a maniac and screaming ‘please help me’ over and over while these horrible creatures carried on crawling all over me. And these weren’t small ones or babies, they were absolutely massive — the length of a finger, the width of a big toe.
My boyfriend tried to slap them off, but they were adamant that they wanted to continue their party on my body. And these guys are fast. They avoided every whack and carried on running all over me. It took a while to get them all off, by which point I was a mess. I was sobbing, and frantically scratching where tiny cockroach feet had been running all over me.
The Frightful Facts About Cockroaches
Eventually, I calmed down, but there was no way I could go back. I stayed awake googling cockroaches, what diseases they carry, their habits, and whether it’s common for them to crawl on humans while they sleep. I found myself reading academic papers on these insects — what else could I do? I couldn’t sleep.
And what I learned from my frantic google searches and academic reading only made me feel worse. If you see one cockroach, the chances are there are thousands of them hiding nearby. THOUSANDS. But the worst cockroach fact I found out was that the smell that comes from our mouths and nose when we sleep is a pheromone for cockroaches. So if you sleep in the same room as a cockroach, they will likely make it their mission to crawl inside your mouth, or up your nose. Once I found this out, I definitely wasn’t going back to sleep.
There was just one useful fact I learned, and that was that cockroaches don’t like light. If they can help it, they’ll only come out in the dark. So I tested this theory, I turned the light off for two minutes in the kitchen and closed the door. Then I switched the light back on, and sure enough, saw a bunch of cockroaches in the middle of the kitchen floor.
So now I knew I could sleep as long as the light was on.
But my boyfriend wasn’t having that. So I set up camp on the sofa in the kitchen, with the LED lights blaring. But still, I couldn’t sleep.
The Nightmare Continues…
I noticed that my face felt bruised and I gently touched my cheek, near my nose. It felt swollen, and if I pushed a little harder, it made a loud squeaking sound. It’s safe to say, I was super freaked out.
I panicked that I’d had an allergic reaction to the cockroach who waltzed his way across my face. But the more I searched google for answers, the more I came across videos of people with cockroaches stuck up their noses or in their ears. And this only fuelled my panic even more. Now I was panicking that a cockroach had actually crawled up my nose. Most of the cockroaches we’d seen were much bigger than my nostril, but we’d seen babies too, and one of these could have wiggled its way up my nasal passage.
I spent a further three nights too scared to sleep, and I don’t know if you’ve ever seen someone who hasn’t slept for three nights, but it’s not pretty. Each day I became more worried about my face. Most of the swelling in my cheek had gone down, but my right nostril had completely swollen shut. It was interfering with my ability to breathe, and I was having frequent panic attacks at the thought of a cockroach living in my sinuses.
So on the fourth day, I decided to go to see a doctor. I had an Amex card that included travel insurance, so I gave the number a call, only to find out that my card (and the insurance) had expired the week before. I was in Vietnam, potentially with a cockroach up the nose, with no travel insurance. I know, I know, this was my own fault — it was my first big trip, and I guess you live and you learn.
At this point, I should also mention I had almost completely run out of money. I was financially unprepared for the long trip, I was working as a freelancer and that month four of my clients had decided they couldn’t afford to pay me on time, so the bank account took a hit and I had about £20 to my name. So a doctor was out of the question. And my lack of money also meant we couldn’t move apartments. We told the staff at the Oolong Tea Garden Apartments what had happened and asked if we could have a refund on all or even some of the money we had paid so that we could get a different apartment, but they just shrugged and said ‘no refunds’.
They say money can’t buy you happiness, but I’d have been a whole lot happier if I’d had the money for a doctor, or the money to move to an apartment that wasn’t infested.
I waited a month until payday, by which point we were so close to flying home that I decided to wait to see a doctor until I got back to England.
So after continuing the rest of my travels with very little money, and a swollen, squeaky face, I finally arrived back in England.
I went to the doctor as soon as possible, who transferred me to another doctor, who transferred me to another ENT (ear, nose and throat) specialist. After being sent to a handful of different doctors, and having several nasal endoscopies, I was told that the good news was that there was no cockroach in my nose. The bad news was that I’d had an allergic reaction and the swelling had caused the cartilage in my nose to break. And to be able to breathe through my nose again I’d need surgery.
So the outcome? In three months, I have to have surgery to fix the broken nose. Surgery. All because of cockroaches.
I live in the UK, in the country’s most uneventful city, where the most interesting story in the local paper is about banning dressing gowns in supermarkets.
I travel and I write, because surely there are more interesting stories than that to write about and share.