In Reply to: Head Lice 'kutu' posted by nitpicker on Wednesday, 21. December 2005 at 15:16 Bali Time:
... we (myself and 2 kids) most definitely picked up head lice on our recent trip to Bali, a first time for all three of us. I'm pretty sure I was the first of us - borrowed a motorcyle helmet while up in Sidemen, and when I took it off I was itching enough to become suspicious, but wasn't absolutely sure for several more weeks by which time both my kids were constantly scratching their scalps. Not that there weren't plenty of other places any of us might have picked them up! I have a photo of my daughter having a Balinese dance lesson in Ubud which I meant to post on the forum but haven't had time - in the photo, my daughter and her teacher are dancing, my son is running around them, and sitting on the edge of the dance floor just a few feet away is an older man carefully picking presumably-lice by hand out of a 3- or 4-year old's hair.
In addition, one Ubud hotel we stayed at (a hotel that has been recommended on this forum I should add - NOT Tegal Sari though, which was very very clean) never changed the bed linen, and the beds stank highly of mildew and just plain 'dirtiness', and my daughter definitely had bed bug bites (several collections of 3 bites all in nice neat rows) from there. I should add that this was not the only hotel we stayed in with questionable sanitary practices.
My 4-year old also spent a lot time prone on his back on filthy Bali streets and restaurant floors, 'playing dead' - oh my, I can only look back at our 2-month stay and shake my head in wonderment that we all didn't come down with far more serious ailments than head lice, bed bugs, and one-only bout of diahrrea (my daughter for 2 days, son for 2 weeks, me not at all - from a French-owned restaurant I should add, we never got sick at any Balinese restaurants! Just remembered too that the hotel with bedbugs is Australian-owned! To be fair though, most of the other hotels with less-than-acceptable cleaning regimes were not foreign-owned).
Back to head lice - we saw on a number of occasions women picking lice out of other women's hair in various markets. So clearly head lice is a problem, but I don't know how they deal with it besides hand-picking it. Considering the probable extent of the problem, it's surprising to me that we didn't see any children with shaved or close-cut heads.
Your post is rather, um, 'unusual', and 'nitpicker' sounds a possible prank occupation - however, having been through this experience and not being sure that we are all completely over it yet, I can say that if you and your occupation are for real, I'm sure you'll always make a good living!!! What a BUMMER trying to get rid of the damn things, especially with long hair, as the three of us have! And of course as an adult, you can't check your own hair/scalp now can you! But then who do you ask to check them for you?! Think about that one carefully everyone...!