Please help me calm down!

Dear xN, We're so sorry about your phobia- we all know they can be hard to overcome and completely irrational but hard to control. If you're looking to live in a villa you can get good pest control services to come and spray for bugs on a regular basis and they can also do outside as well so you can have a pest control barrier around your villa too. The cleaner you keep your villa the better too... you can have more control than in an apartment where you are reliant on your neighbours being clean too. Sometimes when you first move in to somewhere there can be bugs if it has been left unoccupied for some time- these would normally be in the kitchen or maybe bathrooms. A good dose of pest control from a company and yourself and they will be gone never to return. You could get them to do your villa before you even move in for your peace of mind and get a cleaning service to do a deep clean of the villa too. You don't normally see bugs when out and about in the newer areas of Dubai, so it's not something you need to be on look out for all day every day you'll be pleased to hear. Bugs that are in Dubai so you can prepare yourself mentally... not saying you are going to come across these but just so you know... 1. cockroaches- in dirty/ unoccupied areas but still quite rare to see out and about 2. flies- annoying ones! Keep your fly screens across open doors and windows 3. mosquitoes- in areas with water- there never used to be any but more now 4. Ants- they come in to houses for food crumbs- so keep a clean house and you'll be fine Here's our section about pest control to maybe help you learn how the pests can be got ridden of http://www.expatwoman.com/dubai/monthly_Pest_Control.aspx Maybe do get some counselling, or do some research on the net on overcoming phobias and maybe trying to take control of the situation in advance may help you relax a bit as well. HTH EW Admin

Oh Crrrreeeeeepppppppppy crawlies, oh yes once a year you may see an ant or even a roach! Suggest you come armed with a baseball bat and practice your self defense techniques just in case you come across a poor little defenseless resident. Thing is, human brain is really strange and can came up with behaviours that someone can't give a meaning, while the other may understand. Fear is a natural emotion regardless of what you're afraid of. What I'm looking for is to get some help from people who has already experienced what I'm about to experience, but without judging. sorry but judging is what some EW members do best :(

The first thing you need to do before you move into a villa is make sure the landlord/agent has got a pest control company in to do a thorough sweep of the empty place, inside and out. They stick brown gummy stuff in places, particularly in the kitchen, and this gets rid of cockroaches, which are the main "bugs" you are likely to get. They say you should get pest control in every three months, but ours has lasted for two years. The pests don't go immediately, it can take a couple of weeks before they all disappear, if there is an infestation. Oddly, the worst place in our house was the hinge part of the dishwasher door, where they laid eggs because of the wet and warm environment, I think! Now we take special care to make sure that hinge is always cleaned out, we haven't seen any for a couple of years, as I said! Good luck, our little geckos are lovely and eat other bugs! [b'>we've never used pest control, not even before we moved in[/b'>... Have never seen a rat yet - and there is a lake nearby... edited by Doubting Thomas on 22/07/2014 Neither have we, OP buy a container of boric acid and some Pifpaf, you'll be fine.

The birds are aggressive here and not pleasant like in my home country. Once I was sitting on my back step and one landed on my head! Another time, I found one flying around my bedroom. It was not easy to catch it.

like somebody else said- live in a high rise apartment. Our villa is full of ants and we have seen lots of cockroached in the bathrooms. If you drop a grain of rice even- ants will cover it within no time even if no ant was to be seen in the area before...............I don't remember having a problem to this extent in the UK. My religious beliefs have prevented me from getting pest control in so far, but they are so getting to me that I may just do it

OP.................I don't know where your home country is, but I can promise you that there are no more nasties in Dubai than wherever you come from. No more and no less, little critturs of many types are all around us, and I wonder why this has suddenly become a deal breaker for Dubai. It sounds to me as though you are unable to express your lack of confidence about moving to an unfamiliar territory and are dressing it up in something you feel more comfortable about voicing. Rather than stressing about the potential for encountering rats or cockroaches you need to ask yourself why you don't feel as threatened at home, and then identify why you are so anxious about leaving.

I get my drains sprayed for roaches every 6 months - they are huge and there are so many of them. literally crawling up the legs of those doing the spraying. After they have finished i have to sweep them up - usually a dustpan worht of them.. Rats are everywhere - saw a dead one squashed on the road, reason enough to speed :) My friend killled one the other day the size of a small cat :D :O …where do you live??? edited by Londiamond on 22/07/2014 Must be an unkempt place...burk <em>edited by caps on 22/07/2014</em>

Oh Crrrreeeeeepppppppppy crawlies, oh yes once a year you may see an ant or even a roach! Suggest you come armed with a baseball bat and practice your self defense techniques just in case you come across a poor little defenseless resident.

I get my drains sprayed for roaches every 6 months - they are huge and there are so many of them. literally crawling up the legs of those doing the spraying. After they have finished i have to sweep them up - usually a dustpan worht of them.. Rats are everywhere - saw a dead one squashed on the road, reason enough to speed :) My friend killled one the other day the size of a small cat :D I saw a dead one too on our road. Took 3 days before it had gone, freaked me out. Also DH pointed out to me the small black rat boxes which I had never noticed and now I see them everywhere, outside malls, spinneys, big buildings, marina walk i notice them everywhere now! Thankfully have never seen rats/mice or their droppings inside our house which i saw a lot of in houses in London. (all this talk about bugs and rodents is making my skin itch! bleauurgh!)

I get my drains sprayed for roaches every 6 months - they are huge and there are so many of them. literally crawling up the legs of those doing the spraying. After they have finished i have to sweep them up - usually a dustpan worht of them.. Rats are everywhere - saw a dead one squashed on the road, reason enough to speed :) My friend killled one the other day the size of a small cat :D :O …where do you live??? <em>edited by Londiamond on 22/07/2014</em>

The first thing you need to do before you move into a villa is make sure the landlord/agent has got a pest control company in to do a thorough sweep of the empty place, inside and out. They stick brown gummy stuff in places, particularly in the kitchen, and this gets rid of cockroaches, which are the main "bugs" you are likely to get. They say you should get pest control in every three months, but ours has lasted for two years. The pests don't go immediately, it can take a couple of weeks before they all disappear, if there is an infestation. Oddly, the worst place in our house was the hinge part of the dishwasher door, where they laid eggs because of the wet and warm environment, I think! Now we take special care to make sure that hinge is always cleaned out, we haven't seen any for a couple of years, as I said! Good luck, our little geckos are lovely and eat other bugs! we've never used pest control, not even before we moved in... Have never seen a rat yet - and there is a lake nearby... <em>edited by Doubting Thomas on 22/07/2014</em>

I get my drains sprayed for roaches every 6 months - they are huge and there are so many of them. literally crawling up the legs of those doing the spraying. After they have finished i have to sweep them up - usually a dustpan worht of them.. Rats are everywhere - saw a dead one squashed on the road, reason enough to speed :) My friend killled one the other day the size of a small cat :D

ideally you should live in a high rise apartment block in a well developed (but new building)... have a look at some of the apartments in Dubai Marina or JBR... they are likely to be bug free and have relatively good maintenance contracts by no means should you move into a villa... coz then creepy crawlies are guaranteed! I was planning to move into a villa. I would accept at some point that it is in nature and can see some litre spiders but "creepy crawlies"? This is what I'm mostly scared of. What do you do i. e. when you see one? Ant I leave it alone Gecko I pick them up and put them out Roach only ever saw one and it wasn't in my house I live on the ground floor and the only thing I see are birds Ant I'm fine Gecko I can manage Roach can also be seen here in where I live, but if you leave food around. And I'm so careful about cleanness. If you say that you've seen just one, I hope I'll be fine with my living habitudes. What about rats? Please don't mention? Are there? --blood pressure is going down-- I have never seen one and I live near a lake

Never seen a bug here. Odd now I think of it. But never seen one. You will be fine. <em>edited by Londiamond on 22/07/2014</em>

ideally you should live in a high rise apartment block in a well developed (but new building)... have a look at some of the apartments in Dubai Marina or JBR... they are likely to be bug free and have relatively good maintenance contracts by no means should you move into a villa... coz then creepy crawlies are guaranteed! I was planning to move into a villa. I would accept at some point that it is in nature and can see some litre spiders but "creepy crawlies"? This is what I'm mostly scared of. What do you do i. e. when you see one? Ant I leave it alone Gecko I pick them up and put them out Roach only ever saw one and it wasn't in my house I live on the ground floor and the only thing I see are birds Ant I'm fine Gecko I can manage Roach can also be seen here in where I live, but if you leave food around. And I'm so careful about cleanness. If you say that you've seen just one, I hope I'll be fine with my living habitudes. What about rats?

I have lived in Europe, Asia, North America, and the Gulf region and here is by far the place where you see the least amount of insects. There is really no need to worry here more than you'd worry anywhere else. Like you, I am generally afraid of all insects and I have some in my house but I just deal with them. I generally put a cup over them and let someone else deal with it later...

The first thing you need to do before you move into a villa is make sure the landlord/agent has got a pest control company in to do a thorough sweep of the empty place, inside and out. They stick brown gummy stuff in places, particularly in the kitchen, and this gets rid of cockroaches, which are the main "bugs" you are likely to get. They say you should get pest control in every three months, but ours has lasted for two years. The pests don't go immediately, it can take a couple of weeks before they all disappear, if there is an infestation. Oddly, the worst place in our house was the hinge part of the dishwasher door, where they laid eggs because of the wet and warm environment, I think! Now we take special care to make sure that hinge is always cleaned out, we haven't seen any for a couple of years, as I said! Good luck, our little geckos are lovely and eat other bugs!