Chinese couple caught with 200 LIVE cockroaches in luggage at airport

Customs officials at a Chinese airport had a nasty surprise when they opened a couple’s luggage and discovered it contained hundreds of live cockroaches.

The security at southern Guangdong’s Baiyun International Airport noticed movement in an elderly couple’s luggage when they placed their bags through an x-ray machine on 25 November.

“There was a white plastic bag with lots of black items moving inside,” security guard Xu Yuyu told Kankan News.

“One of the staff opened their luggage and a roach crawled out of it. She almost cried,” Ms Xu added.

When asked why they were transporting the cockroaches, the husband told officials that they were an ointment for his wife’s skin.

He did not specify what her condition was, but Ms Yu says officials were told: “They were part of an old folk remedy. You mix the roaches in some medicinal cream and put it on your skin.”

The officials enquired about the reason for carrying across the creepy crawlies, the husband said that the roaches were part of a skin treatment for his wife. “He said they were part of an old folk remedy. You’d mix the roaches into some medicinal cream and put it on your skiin.

Once told that living organisms such as insects are not permitted onboard a flight, the couple abandoned the hundreds of cockroaches right there and left them with the officials. It’s not known what happened to them thereafter.

This wasn’t the first time someone has tried to carry something weird on-board. Back in 2011, a passenger was caught trying to carry around 240 fish of different varieties at the Los Angeles airport. The next year, in 2012, reports emerged of an Egyptian couple that tried to smuggle their young boy at the Sharjah airport in a carry-on bag because he was denied a visa.