Eating Abroad: It's a Crapshoot

I traveled, I ate, I got home, I got sick.

Let's back up... There are more than a few "been there" dots on my travel map.  My first big trip abroad was to Egypt.  I thought I knew The Rules of eating abroad, but I wasn't experienced enough to really think them through.  The rules are: Cook, Boil, Peel, Seal.  Don't eat any meat that isn't COOKED, don't drink water unless it's BOILED, don't eat any fruits or veggies that you can't PEEL, and don't drink any beverages that aren't in a SEALED bottle.  Easy enough, but when you live in the US and you're used to eating almost anything in sight, you take that ease for granted.  I was staying at the Four Seasons so I figured I was going to be fine.  One evening I ordered up some hummus.  In hindsight: mistake.  Hummus isn't cooked, it's made with rinsed chickpeas.  I'm sure I may have eaten something else in the meantime, but a couple days later I was cursed with Mummy Tummy.  I felt so sick that day that I didn't want to eat anything heavy, so I ordered a salad.  D'oh!  Salad is raw, and the contents are rinsed in water.  And I had soda with ice.  Made with local water.  Let's say I learned my lesson after that trip.  I was well enough to work through my itinerary, but I was so bloated for 2 weeks I looked like I could birth a baboon.

A year later I was in England.  I drank bottled water, and I think I followed the 4 rules, but I didn't worry too much more about the food because we were staying in someone's home, and eating across the street at the pub.  Yummy, delicious, savory British pub food.  Nom nom nom... I digress.  Unfortunately my visit was timed with the worst outbreak of Norovirus that country had ever seen, and the entire village was sick before I even got there.  Needless today, I got it, too.  Not from food, but just from the air and a houseful of people.  It happens.  You see it every day in the winter, riding mass transit, sending the kids to school, or being in public.  Unless you're quarantined, you're likely going to get sick, too.  It was bad.  Not send-me-to-the-hospital bad, but bad.  Quick, though, just 36 hours turnaround and I was back to steak and ale pie in no time.

Insert Southeast Asia 2010.  How can you go to Thailand and NOT eat street food?  I went nuts.  Pad thai, street meat, grilled this, stir fry that... I ate nearly 3 meals a day on a sidewalk.  Literally popping a squat on a curb with a bent fork and a beat-up plastic plate that was washed in a bucket of suds.  Two weeks of street food in Thailand and Cambodia and I was in heaven.  Still, I followed the rules.  I could see the meat being grilled, the noodles were cooked, the water I purchased in bottles and checked the caps, the mangoes were peeled, the tea was piping hot.  And you know what?  Not a hint of any problems.  The rules worked.  I'm not sure I could have gotten away with much more, but I wasn't about to test it.  Success!

Next up: South American Adventure 2011, Peru and Easter Island.  The plan was the same: follow the rules, wash hands, but have fun.  And so we did.  We had alpaca, guinea pig, mystery street meat in Easter Island cooked out of a makeshift grill, ate at small family establishments, and the #42 best restaurant in the world.  Eating "different" food doesn't mean you'll get sick, it just means it's different.  As long as it's cooked, boiled, peeled, or sealed, I don't much care what it is.

When I returned to home, the very next day my stomach was a hot mess.  It went on for a couple weeks until I visited my doctor, she wrote out a Rx, and I thought I was all cured a couple weeks later.  Until last Monday when all hell broke loose and the illness made a mean resurgence.  I'll spare the gory details, but I was in the ER for 8 hours on an IV, pain meds, and anti-nausea meds until they deemed it safe to release me into the wild.  Turns out that the Peruvian stowaway in my stomach could have been from water (but see explanation below), or some jerk in a restaurant didn't wash their hands before handling my food (sez my doc).  Turns out that's the most likely explanation.

Carrie and I recounted where we ate and when.  That mystery street meat in Easter Island?  We both ate it, and she's fine.  Heck, she's BEEN fine this whole time.  We both brushed our teeth with the same tap water.  We shared entrees.  Ordered a lot of the same food.  The only occasions I can think of is a couple times when I ordered some pasta from a couple different restaurants.  After all, who handles spaghetti bolognese with their bare hands?  It was cooked, Rule #1.  I should be covered. 

The point is, you can follow all the rules, but sometimes there are other factors involved.  Hell, I'd be MORE prone to eat street meat next time because at least I can see it being prepared, cooked, handled, and straight into my mouth.  Get in my belly!  It turns out that what I had/have is pretty common and can be picked up easily in the US as well, although I was one of the special ones to be rewarded with doting at the hands of some handsome doctors. We know not what lurks on the hands of humanity and if it was smeared all over your delicious sandwich.  Or spaghetti. 

Was it worth it?  Hell yes.  I'd do it all again.  Pass the salt.

To Miss or Not to Miss

Things I'll miss about Thailand & Cambodia:

• Flipflops every day
• Mango sticky rice
• Street food - any food, any time
• Breakfast: egg omelet w/ scallions on rice w/ chili sauce, sitting on a plastic stool on a sidewalk, for $0.75
• 3 meals a day for $5 total
  
• Bargaining
• Friendly people, greetings
• Taking shoes off before entering a home (maybe I'll start this)
• Chicken soup in coconut lime broth
• Fast, clean, cheap Bangkok public rail transit
• Bangkok - clean, green, friendly, alive
• Heat - a nice change from Chicago
  

Things I won't miss:

• Smelling like mosquito repellent
  
• Taxis that don't use meters - negotiating rates
• Scheisters - "One more stop first in tuk tuk ride" or "temple closed today, but I'll show you other temple" or taxi drivers that the longest way around
• Being hassled by pushy vendors
  
• Living out of a suitcase
• Doing laundry by hand
• Calculating monetary conversion rate in my head
• Heat - and changing clothes 3x/day because of it
  

Cambodia's Tragedy

Since we spent Thursday discovering Cambodia's ancient past, we spent Friday morning in recent history with a visit to the War Museum in Siem Reap. "Museum" is a liberal term. It looked like someone's overgrown backyard full of rusty tanks, helicopters, an airplane, Howitzers, ammunition, and land mines.

Cambodia's civil war was approximately from 1970-1975, then the Khmer Rouge wrested power from the democracy and established an egalitarian state of the cruelest kind: emptying cities and forcing the population into the fields to toil for little food. Many died of malnourishment and from the labor, and the others were executed: mostly intellectuals, journalists, artists, anyone who could threaten power to the KR. Since bullets were expensive, the KR chose to execute people without the "luxury" of a quick death by bullet. In 5 years, 3 million people were murdered, the rice paddies filled with their bodies, hence "The Killing Fields." This was one fifth of Cambodia's population. Traditional arts, crafts, music, knowledge, and other trades were nearly eliminated.

How did the KR obtain their weapons to overthrow the government? They purchased second-hand weaponry from WWI, WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, along with the assistance of the Chinese government, who supported the KR's extreme communist vision. Much of the heavy equipment was Russian- and Chinese-manufactured, and at least half of the firearms and bomb casings were American. What was that feeling when I held an AR-17 rifle in my hands and saw "Colt. Manufactured in Hartford, Conn" in my hands? Shame. Shame that this very weapon that was made in our country, that our government purchased, then sold, and ended up in the hands of the Khmer Rouge, used in the largest genocide since the Holocaust. I was pained to see the 500 pound bomb casing lying nearby with American markings, wondering perhaps if it was dropped during Nixon's secret bombing campaign in the country. Who did this bomb kill? Or those rifles? The family of our guide, who lost 3 fingers while attempting to defuse a landmine, and is still harboring shrapnel beneath his skin? Our guide's family who were all killed during the war and the KR regime, and saw his friends at age 10 and 15 blown to pieces by land mines? Despite the efforts to defuse 10 million mines in the country, it is believed that another 3 million still lie in wait for another innocent victim.

And it made me think, what are we contributing to the world? Sure, we export vaccines, technology, food, and humanitarian assistance. But we're also exporting weaponry, what countries are we selling these to, that after they outlive their usefulness, they're resold on the secondary market? Then used to what purpose, and in whose hands?

The last Khmer Rouge stronghold finally collapsed in 1998 along with the death of Pol Pot, but unfortunately, corruption still permeates this alleged "democracy." Former KR officials now hold office in the government and the courts. Despite local and international efforts to both defuse the mines, as well as nurture and preserve the near-dead Cambodia arts of apsara dance, silk weaving, ceramics, and shadow puppetry, this country has a very, very long way to go.

Our feelings were mixed as we left Cambodia. How did we help? We pumped plenty of cash into the local economy on handicrafts, paid directly to the merchants, but what about that $25 departure tax? A government-imposed fee that puts my money directly into their pockets. Am I helping or hindering? Is this fishbowl tourism, visiting a place to see how differently they live, then I hop on a comfortable plane and relax in my air-conditioned hotel room and call for room service. What kind of footprint did we leave behind?

If anything, travel has shown us our good fortune as Americans, and opened our eyes to what is so blantantly in our faces: poverty, child exploitation, corruption, scams, and lack of historical preservation. Travel creates awareness, but one must be prepared for how that awareness can be more of a downer than an uplifting vacation. On the other hand, it has opened our hearts to causes we had otherwise never considered. Cambodia may be experiencing a rebirth of sorts, but their tragic recent history is still within our generation, too soon perhaps for significant change.

Angkor Temples

Angkor Wat

Today we awoke at 4am to grab some bikes to trek up to Angkor Wat to catch the sunrise. Despite our will to sleep in, we knew we'd miss an opportunity. The ride up was pitch black. In town there were lights, but as soon as we left town, no lights, few cars, and just a couple tuktuks (reameau in Cambodia), and a few other bikers. For a while we were operating blindly through the jungle hoping a dog, monkey, or whatnot wouldn't jump out at us. Couldn't see a thing. Arrived safely, locked up the bikes and camped to watch the sun come up over Angkor Wat. Google-image it. Amazing, breathtaking. A few thousand other people had the same idea, but it was manageable.

Following that, we explored the stunning temple complex a bit more, then biked up to Angkor Thom to explore The Bayon and the Terrace of Elephants, then to Ta Prohm (see also: Tomb Raider). The jungle has really swallowed and destroyed that complex.

We completed the small loop around the temple park, now we're back in Siem Reap planning the evening. The hotel is showing a movie on the rooftop (a Khmer Rouge documentary) so we might catch that, then head to the night market to finish shopping and catch an apsara dance show. Tomorrow we might head down to the floating villages on Tonle Sap lake, but I hear the waters are low this time of year. Shall see.

The Orient Express

Rather, the Far Eastern Orient Express, and that's where we're headed. In 5 very short days, I'll be off on a Southeast Asian adventure with 10 other lovely friends. I'll be live blogging from the road every few days (where an internet connection permits), but this is our basic itinerary:

• Chicago to Bangkok via Seoul
• Bangkok, Thailand - temples, palaces, and lots of good food
• Koh Samui, Thailand - lazy beach days, kayaking, and a wedding!
• Chiang Mai, Thailand - more great food, and the Elephant Nature Park
• Siem Reap, Cambodia - Angkor Wat temple complex