It All Started With Asia the Strange When the Chinese stop making you laugh, it's time to go home." I made it home after an exhausting 6 months then lived in Mexico for 2 years, before making England my temporary home. But don't be fooled by this seemingly one-place-kind-gal attitude...

Another restless night. But last night was even worse than the night before it. The night before we had been plagued by mosquitoes. So my current status is: loving Mexico City’s Spring heat, but hating the mosquitoes. This situation is much worse than I remember it being in Laos and that speaks volumes considering Jessica’s bite-ridden legs despite the nets and spray.

There was the usual routine: we turn off the lights. Saul pushes out a dramatic grunt of frustration, swears he can hear a mosquito, swats at it in the dark, then gets up and turns the lights back on. With the light to illuminate him in all his anger, I can see that he is a man with a mission. He is always standing with his feet shoulder-width apart, semi-crouched, and with his hands in a claw-type position like he’s about to engage in a sumo-wrestling match. He checks all obscure spots in the room and is particular about checking the narrow space between the mattress and the wall. He never finds them, but vows, “I’m gonna kill him…” Yes, mosquitoes are male. Of course they are. He grunts again, “Uuuuugh!” and turns the lights off. Since the mosquitoes returned two weeks ago, this has been happening some 4 or 5 times at the beginning of every night.

So last night started as they usually do. There was one mosquito, and I must admit, it was a vicious one. Saul faffed about with it but didn’t make a kill. After plenty of interrupted nights full of Saul jumping out of bed at regular intervals, lots of lights on, lights off (remember “clap on…clap off…”?)  - everything but sleep, I entered a state that was probably close to comatose on this night.

I woke up at 1:01am and heard voices. We’d been keeping our window open lately because it was so hot that even a sheet was making us sweat. For this reason, the voices were much louder than usual but I gave it no thought. When I turned over to kind of slap Saul out of his sleep “by accident” so that he would join me in being awake my open-palm drifted into an empty space. I lay there for a while enjoying the soft light that came from behind the ridged sheet metal wall of next door and wondered where Saul was. After 10 minutes, I concluded that he wasn’t in the bathroom, he couldn’t be, so that was the first mystery.

The noise was really loud so I thought he must be watching TV downstairs. I also thought this was pretty disrespectful since we had a guest staying downstairs (the guest factor is a whole other entry, the house was once a hostel and some guest from that time still float in and out) so I made my way into the night in search of Saul and the source of the noise. I wandered down the cold marble staircase and as I neared the entryway, I stretched my head and strained my ears to the left towards the TV room. No light, no noise. I turned right instead and entered the carport equivalent part of the house where the car was. The voices were definitely coming from the car, the radio was on. I thought this was strange of Saul to be listening to the radio in the car but I wouldn’t put it past him so I peeked through the window. He wasn’t there - this was the second mystery.

The whole thing was weird. I went back upstairs kind of creeped out and turned on our bedroom light. Saul’s phone was missing and so was he, so I called it. He answered sleepily and told me he was sleeping in the front room (the haunted one, might I add) because our room was too hot. Mystery number one solved. I told him the radio was on in the car, had he turned it on? No. And mystery number two still remains unsolved.

I have my own theory…this hundred-year-old house has its haunts but like I said, that’s another story.