Bangkok trains and their bedbugs

With the nationwide celebration of the Songkran Festival fast approaching in Thailand, cities across the country are getting ready for the multi-day event. This year, even Thailand’s rail services are busily preparing for the festival and its increased numbers of passengers on sleeper trains leaving from Bangkok. The need for the hurried clean-up act comes after reports on 10 trains that some unwanted nocturnal bedmates were feasting on the flesh of the passengers.

Santi Prompat is Thailand’s Minister of Transport, and he promises that the tiny freeloaders will be completely eradicated form Bangkok’s overnight trains by the beginning of the Songkran Festival. The State Railway of Thailand identified the pests as members of the Cimicidae family; a variant of bedbug that feeds on the blood of warm-blooded creatures like animals and humans.

The SRT says that two of the ten trains have been fully hosed down with powerful chemicals, along with seat covers being changed from velvet to a leatherette material, making it impossible for the bugs to settle in.