Itching to travel

Chris Dowding picked up a backpack and left the creature comforts of a farming hamlet on Australia's east coast to see the world.

"For me, the reality of travel came as a bit of a shock," the 36-year-old recounts. "I was bitten by bed bugs in hostels, terrified by 'extreme sports' bus drivers and shoved out of the way by little old ladies in grocery stores."

Bed bugs, a Third World problem just 20 years ago, are now a global scourge - partly because young adventurers like Dowding take advantage of cheap air fares and, as they trek around the world, ferry bed bugs from poor countries to rich ones.