I recently moved to Taiwan and found a wonderful apartment.
Thing is, I am fairly sure it has bed bugs.
I had a brush with these nasty little critters a few years ago in America. One of the single most useful things I did was purchase a bed bug proof mattress encasement. You can get suitable ones in America for US$ 24-40.
Can these be found in Taipei? This website seems to be selling some [link deleted by Mod.] but my ability to read Chinese is pretty sure so I have not been able to confirm any of its details except price (ＮＴ 3150 元–way over the price in America!) But it is an international brand. Are there any local companies that make essentially the same product, but for more reasonable prices? Where would I go to see?
Unfortunately, this is a poor way to deal with bed bugs. Bed bugs live most comfortably in mattresses, but they don’t just live there. They can live in any space large enough for your credit card to fit between that is within 10-15 feet of your bed. Books, picture frames, bed frames, between those boxes under your bed, in the dirty clothes, wall sockets, curtains, drawers… they can show up nearly anywhere. The odds are quite high that if you are getting bitten they are not all living in your mattress. If you throw out the mattress and get a new one, it will only be a few weeks before they pop up in the new mattress and infect it too. The benefit of a mattress encasement is that it permanently ends their ability to use their mattress as home that you have to worry about. (It also cuts down on their numbers and is a good preventative step to reduce the problem before the exterminator comes. The other step is to keep washing all of your clothes and bedding in hot water or in a dryer once a week or so… another challenge I’m havin’, as my washer doesn’t have a hot setting…).
Inn the long run getting a new mattress every few weeks would cost me more money than the inflated price of this encasement.