How To Avoid Stomach Bugs Whilst Traveling

Editor’s note: Josh Aggars’ past stomach pains are now your gain. In this guest post, Josh of flipflopscity.com shares his travel tips for keeping stomach bugs at bay.

Some people call me the space cowboy, yeah some call me the gangster of love, some people call me Maurice and some people think I’ve got a stomach bug.

Life with a fever is a lot like the above garbled lyric. One minute you have the classic hit ‘The Joker’ by Steve Miller going round your head then your own internal monologue changes it to fit your situation. Thoughts lull and roll around your head like a loose drum barrel on a storm stricken ship. Your thoughts are not your own, memories come and go and all the while you sense something is wrong without being able to focus your thoughts for long enough to clarify truth from reality.

It’s the kind of position I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies… especially when that position happens to be on all fours in a filthy sweat box of a bathroom thousands of miles from home.

And yet it is a position I have found myself in on numerous occasions on my travels around the World. You see my friends, for I can call you that having denigrated myself with such an honest opening salvo, I suffer from what is known as ‘useless belly.’

Show me a clam from 300 yards and I’m liable to drop to my knees at the hint of food poisoning. Seat me at a banquet in a pristine dining room at a top third world hotel and I will happen upon the only unwashed fork in the whole 1,500 room establishment. In short I am hopeless at getting by on my travels without a stomach upset.

Or so I thought until I happened upon a most ingenious (modesty goes out the window at this point) plan to avoid the Delhi Belly which has plagued many a travel during my short lifetime. I hereby share my indefatigable plan to help others beat those pesky germs in the hope you too will avoid much of my previous pain.

1. Never have ice in your drinks. It comes from an unknown source and nine times out of ten the unknown source will happen to be contaminated… with mercury… and lead… and E. coli, to name but the lighter hearted poisons.

The only exception to this rule comes if you’ve personally bought a sealed bottle of water from a market, broken the seal yourself, washed the ice tray with soap and your own bottled water before pouring the remaining contents of said bottled water into said ice cube tray. You’ll then need to wait a couple of hours staring incessantly at the fridge/freezer whilst the better part of your day in your far off tropical land is wasted. In short just don’t have ice with anything.

2. Take alcoholic wipes with you everywhere you go. Yes people will laugh at you, yes people will pick on you and yes some people in your hostel may not invite you out for a drink/game of cards/night of passion (delete as appropriate) but having spent the best part of three weeks coiled around a toilet bowl in a nunnery in Northern India (true story) you won’t give a monkeys what anybody else thinks. The alcoholic wipes should be used to wash your hands before eating along with your cutlery and, in extreme un-PC cases, your dinner companions. You’ll be labeled eccentric, an odd ball and even a crazy man, but at least you’ll be out in the daylight, and you might even gain a loyal following of would be believers in some of the more religiously impressionable places (“follow the gourd, no follow the shoe, yes everybody collect shoes” Monty Python).

3. Peel all the fruit you are going to eat. Oranges and bananas are fine as you have to remove the natural skins anyway but if going for an apple peel it first. Oh and never eat watermelon as you don’t know the water source they were grown in.

4. Never eat salad. It’s raw and may have been rinsed with more of that bacteria infested water I am clearly so paranoid about (and no I’m not related to Howard Hughes). Just not worth taking the chance.

5. Don’t eat fish or meat if you are away from the coast. O.K. this one is probably me being a little over paranoid but if I see people catching fish in the sea and then 10 minutes later its cooked and on my plate I’ll eat it. If I’m in land and have spent the best part of three days traveling by rickety bus or train to get there and then see lorries that left the same port as me unloading cargo in destination town, guess what, I’m not going to eat it. In short, bad roads and rail equal long sweaty transport times for some meats and fish. So if in doubt go without.

6. Always check the seal on bottled water when you buy it. If you have to break out some Hercule Poirot finger print dust and a magnifying glass then so be it. I’ve seen people reselling river water in plastic bottles enough times to not fall for this one.

7. Take probiotic tablets a couple of weeks before your trip and again throughout. Should those pesky bugs get into your gut at least you’ll have some soldiers in there trained like special force commandos to fight your corner.

And that’s it. You may think I’m paranoid, you may think these precautions are over the top and you may think I need a padded cell. Whatever the case all I can say is that since learning and sticking to this regimen a few years back I’ve avoided a return to the most uncomfortable nights of my life. So adopt as you see fit and enjoy the World in peace. Best of luck to you.

About The Author: Josh Aggars writes about surf travel and his passion takes him to amazing places around the world as he explores all aspects of the sport through his regular articles. He sells havaianas and mens flip flops to help fund his travels for the flip flops city blog. Connect with him on twitter and facebook any time. *All photos courtesy of Josh Aggars.

*Please remember all photos on this website, unless otherwise noted, are copyrighted and property of BeersandBeans.com, NarikosNest.com & Bethany Salvon. Please do not use them without my permission. If you want to use one of them please contact me first because I do love to share and I would be flattered. Thanks!

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