Travel Bug

By Alistair Barr

Alistair and Kimberly are busy professionals in London at the dawn of the new century. They are soul mates, but there's a tension in their lives. She wants globe-spanning adventure and escape. He prefers the familiar and dislikes change. Oh and he's really scared of bugs - spiders mostly. So what could go wrong when Kimberly proposes a year-long trip around the world to places where arachnids, snakes, wasps, beetles and other insects swarm, squirm, jump, crawl, buzz, slither and scuttle? Their tour takes them to the roof of the world in the Himalayas, the jungles of Asia, the steaming crowds of India and many other of the globe's most-interesting locations - all with their own special bugs for Alistair to enjoy. They meet an equally diverse cast of human characters, including Russell the Leopard Tamer, the Dal Bhat King and Essex girls Aime and Sarah. While traveling, the best and worst of the couple's characters and habits emerge and combine to amusing effect. But it's not all funny and things finally come to a head: What's the real reason for Alistair's insectophobia? Can Kimberly put up with it any longer, if she's going to satisfy her wanderlust?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alistair Barr
• Release date: Aug 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370543977

Alistair Barr

Alistair Barr is an editor and writer at Bloomberg News. He has written and reported for The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Reuters, MarketWatch and Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine. He lives in San Carlos, California with his wife Kimberly, two daughters Nora and Tessa, a Boston Terrier called Maisie and no bugs.

Book preview

Travel Bug

Wanderlust, Insectophobia and Sleepwalking Around the World

By Alistair Barr

Copyright © 2016 by Alistair Barr

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means without permission in writing from the author.

Distributed by Smashwords

Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

To my father, grabber of spiders and editor of this book. I finally wrote you a book Daddy. Stick around please.

CONTENTS

Prologue

The Italian Fly

The Maltese Wasp

The World’s Smallest Neo-Gothic Window

Close Shaves in Turkey

Protection in Egypt

Imaginary Encounter in India

Palace Hornet

Bending to the New

The Glowing Nepalese Spider

Russell the Leopard Tamer

Sars Soup

Near Death in Sri Lanka

Living (and Dying) Dangerously in Cambodia

The Crickets of Siem Reap

Fetuses and Dogs

Lazing in Laos

Thailand Toe Biters

Malaysian Sleep Maladie

An Imagined Guest

A Different Guest

All Black Macadamia Nuts

Summer Lovin

Insectophobia Gene

About the Author

PROLOGUE

Kimberly and I are soul mates, meant to be together until we are changing each other’s diapers in a special center for the memory impaired. But there’s a tension in our life. Kimberly is wanderlust personified. She wants to travel the world, no, to devour the world and all it has to offer. I am just scared of bugs: Wasps, bees and spiders in particular. Not spiders in a forest or the garden, where they are supposed to be. But when they turn up un-invited in the bath or nestle under your bed, then wait until you’re asleep and crawl into your mouth. Did you know that the average person swallows four spiders in their lifetime while they are asleep? Sorry, I’m getting carried away. Spiders don’t really try to crawl into your mouth when you’re asleep Alistair. You can go sleep tonight, don’t worry. Oh, and I don’t like change. Did I mention that? And new places that I don’t know. Wander-less shall we say? So when Kimberly proposed a seven-week trip around Italy after finishing law school in Washington DC and before she began at a big law firm in London, what did I say?

No, I’d rather stay in DC in our bug-free apartment and keep working as an editorial assistant at the slowly dying magazine where I currently am. Hell, I knew the way to the office and back. What’s not to like? Instead, I said sure! I would love to follow you around Italy, to cities I’ve never been to, surrounded by people we’ve never met, speaking a language I don’t know. As you will see, I would follow Kimberly anywhere, even to the world epicenter of bugs. I may not be much fun, but I follow. Kimberly did not know what she was getting into. I should have said You are setting off to see the world with a coward! But I smiled and sounded excited.

THE ITALIAN FLY

The bugs of Italy are pretty tame by global standards. But the cheese fly can actually be food in this country. On purpose. These flies belong to the Piophilidae family, the best known of which is Piophila Casei measuring about 1/6 of an inch. They infest cured meats, smoked fish, cheeses, and decaying animals. The larva is about a 1/3 of an inch long and is sometimes called the cheese skipper for its leaping ability. When disturbed, this little bugger can hop six inches into the air. They accomplish this by bending over, grabbing onto their own butts with their mouth hooks, tensing their muscles, and quickly releasing their grip. Spring action propels them into the air. If eaten, the larvae can pass through the digestive system alive - stomach acid doesn’t kill them. They will hang out in your intestines until they decide it’s time to leave. Then they will try to bore through your intestinal walls. Nausea, vomiting and bloody diarrhea ensues. You want to avoid these flies, right? Wrong. In some parts of southern Italy the larvae are intentionally introduced into pecorino cheese to produce Casu Marzu. This delicacy is created by leaving whole Pecorino cheeses outside with part of the rind removed to allow the female Piophila Casei to fly in and lay her eggs - more than 500 at a time. The eggs hatch and the larvae begin to eat through the cheese. The acid from the maggots' digestive system breaks down the cheese's fats making… well… very soft, cheesy maggot poo. It’s ready to eat when there are thousands of maggots munching pecorino and crapping out a softer version. It’s then cut into thin strips and spread on flatbread. Remember these larvae are cheese jumpers, so diners hold their hands above the sandwich to keep the maggots from leaping into their faces.

I was also attacked by a fly in Italy. Not a cheese fly, but a lowly housefly. Yes, they hang out on poo, carry infection and vomit on their meal before slurping it up. But I can handle flies. Most of the time. This particular Italian fly ruined what was an idyllic dinner Kimberly and I were having in San Leone, Sicily, on the shores of the crystal blue Mediterranean Sea. We were about two weeks into our Italy trip and things were going well. We had visited Rome, Naples, Taormina and the Amalfi coast staying in cheap, basic rooms or camping. After a day lounging on the beach in San Leone, we found a restaurant 500 yards from our campsite. The sea crashed 100 yards away and the golden sand, still warm from the day, lay three feet from our toes. We dined on Salmon Risotto, Tortellini Ragu and red wine. Kimberly was beautiful. Her blond hair shined from all the sun and a dusting of freckles covered her rose-and-peach cheeks. The Italian waiter made the moment so romantic. The risotto tasted like nothing we had experienced before. We toasted to paradise and said how much we loved each other. As I was bringing another delicious fork of risotto to my eager mouth, I heard a faint, then suddenly very loud, buzzing as the Italian fly flew straight into my right ear. I jumped up from the table, screeching and flapping my hands around the side of my head. Everyone in the restaurant stared. I started scrabbling at my ear with my fingers, hoping to get the evil thing out. What if it threw up on my eardrum? Would it dissolve and be slurped into the fly’s stomach. Would it just live there forever, feeding on wax and pureed drum? Would I hear again? After 30 seconds of panic, I stopped and listened. No buzzing deep in my ear. No sound of the first part my eardrum being vomited on and sucked. Instead, silence reigned. I looked at Kimberly. She had risotto all over her chest. A wine stain streaked across her crotch. The expression on her face was shock, mixed with embarrassment and a creeping anger. The other diners looked at me as if I had just had an epileptic fit. As I had moved swiftly to protect my ear from the merciless fly attack, I had jettisoned my risotto-filled fork, which flew at hyper speed across the table, pinning Kimberly in the chest and depositing its load efficiently. My thighs had bumped the table hard, launching my wine glass, completing a perfect liquid-and-solid food attack on my travel partner and soul mate.

What are you doing?! Kimberly whispered through gritted teeth.

There’s a fly in my ear! There’s a fly in my ear! I shouted, still fumbling with the side of my head.

Let me look, Kimberly said.

I released my ear. Kimberly peered inside and couldn’t find anything.

There’s nothing there. You’re just imagining, Kimberly concluded, correctly.

There wasn’t even a fly near you. And look what you did to me. My chest hurts from that fork you threw at me, she added.

I realized that I had essentially stabbed my love in the chest over a fly. But there was a fly and it did (nearly) fly in my ear, I argued.

How close I came to pain and injury only became clear years later when a moth attacked the earhole of Kimberly’s sister Kathleen in Kansas. Here is the victim’s harrowing account (if reading aloud please clear children from the room, or better, block their ears):

I was opening the sliding glass door to our backyard to let the dogs in. It was at about 9 pm. My head was turned to the side as I was calling the dogs. All of a sudden, a moth flew straight in and up into my ear canal. It was like huge wings flapping into an ultra-sensitive microphone. The more I screamed, the more the moth would flap its wings. So, I finally stopped screaming and it slowed a bit. But it was extremely unnerving and uncomfortable to have it incessantly flapping its wings against my eardrum. It was super-loud and uncontrollable. The moth seemed frightened. I kept thinking to myself that if this happened to me 100 years earlier I would have been declared insane and institutionalized. I yelled ‘moth moth moth!’ My husband Eric's parents were visiting from France and didn't know that English word so they stared at me like I’d gone mad. Eric thought I’d seen a burglar in the backyard, so he ran out there. Seeing that I had no help at that moment, I ran upstairs into the master bathroom to see if I could see anything. The moth was too far up into my ear, so nothing was visible. I tried pouring water into my ear to try to ‘flush’ it out to no avail. By then, Eric came upstairs and better realized what was going on. He tried to fish it out with tweezers, but couldn't reach it. He also thought about pouring oil into my ear, but wasn't sure if that was wise. Then, he called 911. An ambulance came and they were unable to reach it with any of their tools either. They recommended that we go to the emergency room. The moth was still alive and continuously flapping its wings. So, we drove to the hospital and they had to dig it out with a long pair of angled tweezers. It hurt a lot for about 5-10 seconds because they were pushing the moth into my eardrum when they were trying to reach it. On a pain scale of 1-10, it was probably a 7-8 for those few seconds. When they did finally pull it out it was still alive. I was relieved that it might have survived the ordeal, but then it died on the floor a few seconds later. This was the same hospital where I worked at the time. A co-worker in the infectious disease department got a good laugh out of the report she saw the next day indicating the 'extraction of a moth from left ear canal.’ Afterwards, my ear was sore for a few days and I did have dry blood come out of my ear. I don’t hear as well from my left ear because of it.

Had Kimberly known the suffering caused by insects in ears, she may have been more sympathetic to my plight at that dinner in Italy. But the moth would not attack Kathleen’s ear for years, so Kimberly just rolled her eyes at me. We finished the meal quickly and left, for our decidedly less-romantic tent. Note to men: If you want to cap a romantic evening off with passionate love-making with your hot dinner date, do not stab them in the chest with a fork and pour wine on their lap. It’s a turn-off apparently.

THE MALTESE WASP

Worst bug in Malta: The blister beetle, which contains a powerful poison, Cantharidin. This can be deadly to humans if ingested. If the beetle comes in contact with your skin it oozes the oily poison, forming blisters. A few years ago, Darren Mangion, a soldier in the Armed Forces of Malta, ate a blister beetle in a dare with colleagues during lunch break. Cantharidin is thought to be an aphrodisiac, so Darren may have been expecting firming of the loins and some lady action later that day. Instead, within 24 hours he suffered complete renal failure and fell into a coma. He was rushed to hospital, where doctors could only stand there and wait because there is no antidote for the beetle’s poison. In the end, Mangion was saved when, in a last-ditch effort, doctors injected charcoal-based chemicals into his system to absorb the poison.

Malta was an appendage to our Italy trip. Kimberly could not just explore one country on the trip, when there was a whole other one to discover just a short ferry trip away. This was when I met another lowly, yet disturbing member of the insect family.

On our third day on the island, we tracked down one of Malta’s few sandy beaches, the Golden Bay on the northwest corner. It was packed with pasty English (me!) and German tourists. Cigarette butts dotted the sand. Kimberly and I whipped out a new beach tennis set and played in the shallows of the warm, blue sea. After about half an hour, we ran back up the beach and collapsed on our towels. I rubbed sun cream into Kimberly’s back and she murmured with pleasure. I lay back to savor the sheer do-nothing relaxation of the moment. My bliss lasted a few minutes. A wasp hovered into my panic zone (about five feet), having tired of snacking on the half-eaten burgers and ice cream wrappers packing the trash cans at the top of the beach. I had judiciously cleared and sealed any and all food and drink items that might have attracted wasps. But no, this little bugger decided to buzz over just to mess with me. I think they are attracted to panic and fear. I jumped up and did my wasp dance. It is similar to a Native American rain dance, minus the meaning and beauty. The Maltese Wasp followed me as I hopped around Kimberly’s blanket swishing my arms around and ducking my head. About once every circuit of the towels, I stopped to check whether the wasp had gone, but it came ever closer, yoyo-ing around my head, as if to say you want a piece of me? I know your sort. I’m gonna sting your ass. I know you ain’t got no food, but I’m gonna do it just because I like stinging wimps. After four or five rounds of my Native English Wasp Dance, I gave up and sprinted away across the sand, past the other sunbathing tourists and past their children, who apparently were not scared of wasps. I stopped after a minute-long dash and discovered I had out-run the insect. Relieved, I walked back slowly to our towels. Kimberly was propped up on her elbow and had obviously watched my performance.

You’re pathetic, she announced then turned back to her book. I had to agree, but it felt good to be wasp-free.

A few days later, Kimberly’s wanderlust brought us to the Maltese equivalent of the world’s smallest gothic window: a tourist attraction so lame and so out of the way that after the visit even she agreed it was a misguided adventure. While researching the island, Kimberly had come across Popeye’s Village, a fake town nestled in the hook of one of Malta’s rocky bays. It was built as the set for the 1980 movie Popeye starring Robin Williams and now billed itself as one of Malta’s main attractions. To get there, we took a long, hot bus ride, which dropped us on a deserted road surrounded by parched agricultural fields in the northwest of the island. After walking for 30 minutes we came to the entrance on the edge of a cliff. The fee to get in was 2.50 Maltese lira, or about 10 pounds (half our daily budget). We shuffled down a winding path. As we rounded a corner the monstrosity appeared, perched on the right side of the bay. To the left a murky waterfall tumbled down, delivering what looked like Malta’s daily production of urine and feces into the ocean. The bay was a soupy grey-brown color, an odorous contrast to the dazzling blue that surrounds most of the island.

Walking into the village we came across a group of young locals re-enacting scenes from the movie. Popeye was a scrawny 21 year-old with arms as thin as Kate Moss and Pluto appeared to have a severe case of anorexia. As the soundtrack from the film blared across the town square, the actors mimed a fight scene less scary than my first-grade class’s rendition of the Trojan Wars. Then a boat ride. A chance to escape - just jump ship and start swimming to clear water and maybe reach Tunisia in a few days. About 20 similarly sweaty, disappointed tourist piled into an old 25 foot fishing boat with us. The captain kept us waiting a few minutes while he nipped off to the Popeye restaurant for a six-pack of beer and a packet of Rothmans cigarettes. I approved: The only sane person involved with this Village has to be blotto to bare the tragedy of the place. After downing the first can in one go, he started the engine and we chugged out of the murky harbor and into the sparkling Mediterranean. For 10 minutes we hugged the coastline looking at concave limestone cliffs