Saturday, December 16, 2006

AN EGYPT PICTURE!!!!


Walk like an Egyptian.......
Luxor Temple Sphinx's which used to lead right across Luxor and meet up with Karnak Temple.

posted by Lucyspeak @ 3:35 am 0 comments

The advantage of falling ill in every country I've been to

So some people might think that travelling is all about experience. The experience of different cultures, different people and different lifestyles is usually what sends people on insane journeys thousands of kilometres away from anywhere any normal person would actually want to be. I am one of those insane people. I like to travel. God only knows why when I can expect to get sick pretty much anywhere I land… but I do.

I can honestly say that I have been sick in every country I have ever been to bar one.
When I was 17 I travelled to Japan on a school language exchange and just around Christmas time when I should have been climbing some snow capped mountain with my peers I ate some kind of yellow rice bug and had to be admitted to hospital on a drip because my body decided that it didn’t like rice bugs and therefore thought everything else was a little yellow rice bug, thus rejecting anything I tried to give it. So for days on end all I brought up was mounds of rice. I can still remember the first pile of it on the landing to the stairs. I had gone to bed with Mai (the family Golden Retriever) sitting on my legs, she just wouldn’t let me be, I found it a little off putting that I couldn’t role over but I thought hey, if they dog likes me this much, just let her stay, what do you need legs for when you’re sleeping anyway, right? Within a few hours it was Mai who was waking up my host Mum to alert her to the fact that I was dying in her house. It lasted for days and my stomach felt like it was being ripped out. I think they eventually sedated me… who really knows. To this day I don’t even know what I had, they only spoke Japanese and I spoke mostly English so I put it down to the little yellow rice bugs.

Anyhoo… so that was Japan. My next time around was when I went to the states, and boy did I get sick there. I don’t think I realised I was jetlagged, in fact I’d taken all measures to make sure I didn’t GET jetlag, and I can’t really remember if it WAS jetlag or some nasty bug I caught but I was with the lovely Kait and we had gone to the mall to get something to eat on my second day in. I had ordered a salad because I was hungry but not THAT hungry if you know what I mean and thought to myself how effing big the damn thing was. We sat down at the table and I put it all together nicely with the dressing and that’s when the overwhelming nausea hit. Kait said I took one look at the salad and turned green. I don’t think I ate anything for the next three days and Kait had to force feed me nerds candy to get some energy back into my body so I could stand without feeling nauseated or light headed. I actually fell sick two or three more time whilst in the states and seeing I was there for over two months I suppose it was bound to happen.

My next experience was in Thailand. I can’t count how many times I felt I almost died in that country, especially climbing that freaking mountain and having my heart almost beat itself out of my chest… never… again… (side note: when my tour of Egypt was being planned I saw that he had included a trek up Mount Sinai and immediately said “no way” or something not so prime time friendly… actually, I believe it was close to “I am not doing another fucking trek up another bloody mountain…EVER.” and ordered him to change it to a nice trip to the desert instead… heat I can handle… treks up mountains I cannot.) So where was I… oh yes… Thailand… well it was that far back that I can’t actually remember a great deal, my feeling is that it was food related though… it normally is. I have a weak stomach. B on the other hand, has the stomach of Superman. He ate everything I did in all the same places I did and not once did he ever have any side effects. So when we got to Cambodia and the night terror ghosties made me ill I couldn’t eat for days. The very thought of food turned my stomach and once again I sought the solace of my bed. I think I slept for a day or two (it’s what I do when I’m sick) and then it was time to head south into Battambang which is where the whole Eye incident happened… and we all know about how I went half blind for a week.

Vietnam and Laos were pretty simple, just a few trips to the toilet from some dodgy food.
Dubai doesn’t really count seeing as I was only there for a few days and mostly stayed away from the food.

Egypt was another story. I honestly expected to be sicker than I was in Egypt. The night before I had to get on a Felucca and go floating down the Nile for three days I had a terrible bout of Delhi belly, so much so that I thought I might need a doctor. It was literally one of those times when a bathroom NEEDS to be close. Amazingly though I was okay the next morning and managed to make it on time to the Felucca. Now, if I had have actually known what was in store for us all on that three day journey I would have eaten a little more of what almost kept me from the trip and stayed well away!

Then there was the whole Camel meat incident. Yes, I think I actually ate camel meat. They pass it off a lot as beef in Cairo so if you ever order “beef” in Egypt and it doesn’t quiet taste right but still kinda tastes like beef enough for you to shrug your shoulders after a seconds thought and go “Ma” and eat it anyway…. Think a little longer. Come on, think about it… how many cows do to ACTUALLY see in Egypt…… eeeeeh?

Greece was a little boring. Just a cold. But that’s how all of Greece is. Bland and a little disappointing. I didn’t see Socrates, I didn’t feel like I was in The Odyssey, I didn’t feel like Helen falling in love with some Greek Adonis…. Greece was just…. Well…… Greece.
ITALY however was GREAT! Even my illness was great! How’s this to cap them all. Not only did I get food poisoning from a….wait for it…. MCDONALDS **GASPS OF SHOCK HORROR**….it HAPPENED at the VATICAN!!!! Yep. I, Lucy, am going to hell. I’m quit sure the Pope looked at the security video of me desecrating one of the toilets near the Sistine Chapel and had me barred for life, and I think he’s got an agreement with the Big G to keep me from those pearly gates if I should happen to visit any time soon.

Now let’s see what’s next… of RIGHT… London… the first time. Due to London’s FABULOUS underground train system closing of a night time if you should happen to be one of those unlucky bastards who gets a late flight from lets say.. ROME… that arrives a couple of hours after 11pm in London and don’t want to spend through your entire life savings getting a black cab to where the hell knows (because let’s face it, you don’t if it’s your first time) then you are going to be settling in for a nice and comfortable night at what is most likely Stansted Airport. The coldest, wettest, windiest, boringest (I just made that up for continuity), most far out of London airport in the freaking world. It was a hell of a night. I came from countries where it was warm to a country that was not and I had to try and sleep on the cold hard floor and it was NOT nice. So by the time the tube opened and I was able to go to the hostel I had booked in at I had developed a nasty cold which pretty much stayed with me when I went to Spain a few days later.

Spain was pretty mild as far as illnesses go as I just had the tail end of the cold I arrived to in Blighty, but I think getting robbed of my baby actually made me sicker and when I got back to London after Bastardlona I only got more sick.

Once that was over I started to get better and I was all set to go and see a friend in Paris!
The day I was supposed to leave for France however my body decides to keep me in the bathroom for most of the morning. I was so annoyed. So I left work 3 hours early to get better (side note: people with the runs shouldn’t be working with food… EVER) and went to the chemist to get a whole heap of meds including some gastro stop. After a while I started to feel well enough to get on the bus so off I headed. I thought I was okay until the first morning I woke up to the worst flu ever and ended up spending half the time I was in Paris sick in bed. So that was nice. There’s nothing like standing on top of the Eiffel Tower in the world’s most romantic city, looking out over it all and thinking of nothing but what would happen if you threw up over the edge.

I don’t think that whatever infection I had in Paris ever truly left me because there as a thing with my throat that just didn’t go away and last week it reared its ugly head. There’s still a debate about whether it is tonsillitis or strep throat but I don’t care what it was. It put me in bed for 5 days and even now that I’m up and around every single thing I attempt is so exhausting AND it seems I’m having a reaction to the Penicillin the hospital prescribed me. YAY!

SO… what has all this taught me?
Well, I’ve learnt that wherever you go you can pretty much rely on the fact that if you DO get sick you don’t always need medical insurance to help you out. (although it IS recommended, you can buy your way out of most anything like I did to skip the queue in Cambodia with my eye)
I’ve learnt that if the country you are in is relatively boring… ie… Greece…. Then whatever illness you have will be boring too.
I’ve learnt never to mess with the Vatican…. They know eeeeeeverything…… **looks over her shoulder in paranoia**
I pretty much know the state of all the health systems in most countries I’ve been to, as well as having in dept knowledge on the state of the public toilet cleanliness.
I’ve learnt that if you hate the place you are in then you will… repeat…. WILL…. Get the worst illness available to you at the time.
Always, always, ALWAYS carry some gastro stop. Always!
Re-hydration satches are GOLD!

Illness always weeds out those you can trust and those you should think twice about.
For example, Janna, whom I met with her partner Justin in Greece, was a godsend. She pretty much stayed with me and made sure I was okay and even took me to the hospital to get some help despite how much I hated her for it at the time. Thanks Janna.
So that’s what illness and travel has taught me. It’s a bitch of a way to go about things but I have a record of getting ill in 12 countries and seeing as I’m heading to Sweden for Christmas it might get bumped up to 13…….I wonder if I could make it into the Guinness World Records…

posted by Lucyspeak @ 3:19 am 0 comments