Thursday, September 03, 2009

Bug Scare in Putra LRT

Date : 25 August 2009

Time : 9.20am

Venue : Putra LRT

I was wearing a short skirt and blouse for work last Thursday morning when I sat down on the last empty seat in the train. Both my thighs started to itch very badly in no less than 10 seconds after they came into contact with the seat! I started to scratch as the itch was getting unbearable and to my horror, I found that there were many tiny bumps on them not unlike mosquitoe bites. I jumped off the seat but cannot see anything on it that could have bit me although there were black stuff on the nooks and corners of the seat.


 First day

Anyway I rushed all the way back to office and showed one of my colleague. Apparently, she experienced the exact same thing just a few weeks back. I washed then applied sanitizer and then medicated oil to both my thighs and the itch slowly subsided but the tiny bumps had swelled and joined together to form one huge bump on my right thigh. The left thigh was not bitten so badly so I had one small bump there. They itch less as the days goes by and the bumps also became smaller. I counted and there were 13 bites on my right thigh alone.


Second day

Till today I don't know what happenned but after relating the incidents to friends, I'm surprised to find out that many girls in skirts had experienced the exact same thing at one time or another. This is how 'clean' our LRT is. An article came out in The Sun newspaper right after my unfortunate encounter and the girl related the same experience as well. Read it here or see the pictures here from her blog.

One of my friends helped me write to Rapid KL and below is the communication. For all I know, the reply we got is the standard reply to all complaints relating to cleaniness.


Anyhow, I'm not convinced of their commitment to keep the LRT clean so I vowed never to sit in the LRT ever again. Ladies, you've been warned.