Delhi belly, bombay bottom, calcutta colon... Vietnamise volcano etc etc. We've all had it no doubt.

Before I head to South East Asia, who's got some good tips for avoiding it ??

I've got a few but please add more. I'm pretty immune to a lot of it now but that's because I've had it bad more than a few times and follow these rules.

Don't eat the meat in India.... An Indian man from London told me that he visits all over India 10 times a year and the only time he gets ill when he returns is if he eats the meat. Go Veggie. Most the country is anyway. For good reason... If I think back, it was always meat dishes that made me ill.

Brush your teeth with local water but don't drink it. Evidence shows minor exposure is the best way to acclimatise to a new variety of bacteria. Biting your nails helps also. Apparently.

Buy bottled or boil your water... Or only drink from where locals do. Giardia lives in even the cleanest of rivers.

Always carry a good strong antibiotic if you get hit. Ciprofloxicine is good. There is a specialised one for Giardia.


Bring em on..

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I had read a couple suspected the ice as a cause to their attack, water was bottled.
In thailand feces is used as a fertilizer so as good as the salad may look-know this from personal experience avoid it.

Having lived in Malaysia for 2 years now, I've actually rarely had any problems with food. Asians love their meat on the bone which is something westerners probably aren't used to but I would't avoid it for that reason. The usual common sense rules apply, if the place looks dirty, the food probably is too. If you're coming through Malaysia though, the food is one of the highlights (and SE Asia generally) so hit me up if you need any info.

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I adopt the theory that heat will kill pretty much anything a bit dodgy. So I try to eat only hot food which has been possible mostly. If it's not REALLY hot I send it back to be cooked some more. When cooking myself I add plenty of colour, usually black!

My biggest issue has been water ( so I reckon anyway) even buying bottled water. I have been suspicious a couple of times when opening a new bottle of water....."did that seal crack open or not, did you hear it go? " After that copious amounts of loo roll follows the next day.........

So far never had it bad on a trip .......should have kept quiet

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Regards Tim

Learning my craft for the big stuff, it won't be long now and it's not that far anyway

I've been traveling/living in Nepal, India and some other SE countries over the last 10 years or so. Only had the acute diarrhea the first time I was in India (body temp. 40C and over, loosing consciousness, totally incapacitated for 4 days.) and since learnt the lesson.

Here are my rules:

* Only drink bottled/boiled water.
* Always have a bottle of hand sanitizer in your pocket and USE it often.
* Eat cooked food. I've eaten freshly cooked food just off a stove in some very dirty places and it was fine.
* If you're going to have a salad in a restaurant, make sure it's a decent restaurant (presence of many tourists is a good rule of thumb). At home wash your veggies in cool boiled/bottled water.
* Smell your food before eating. If it's iffy, don't risk it.

The one time I got the poisoning, it was from a Lassi (a fruit yogurt drink) in a fancy restaurant. It had a very slight smell of rotten eggs. You could just about feel it. It tasted fine, but the consequence hit me so hard, I couldn't get up to crawl to the pharmacy

Speaking of pharmacies, they are very good in India and Nepal. It is prudent to carry some sort of antibiotics, but if you do get the diarrhea, you should still go to the local pharmacy and get all the other medicines that will help you with rehydrating, etc. Local drugs IMHO fit the local bugs better.

On a brighter note, juices in SE Asia are a godsend and it would be a shame to miss the pleasure of riding up to, say a sugarcane juice stall, and not drink the wonderful nectar . Just go by your intuition If it looks fresh out of the machine, it's probably good. If it's been sitting there for who knows how long, it's not worth it. You can use your own glass too, but I never do.

Good luck ))

I got ill 5 days into my morocco tour. Was down for about 2 days, but still had to ride one of them.

There is little you can you do really.

You can take alcohol handwash for when you visit bathroom, but the chef has just cooked your food, gone to the toilet, washed his ass with is hand and water only then served your hot food.

Salad is washed in the local (contaminated) water, and left out in the open (for millions of flies to contaminate). Eggs are left on window sills with 40c of desert sun burning down on them.

Cheese, milk, ice cream are all made from unpasteurised milk.

Fruit is often contaminated by flies and insects.

You could eat pre-packed foods and drink bottled water, but really do you want to miss out on all those tastes and flavours from around the world?

Another thing that makes it more difficult is that you can't buy strong antibiotics in the UK, so you just have to ride it out.

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I too avoid major antibiotics, on my first visit to Thailand in March last I had a bad case of the squirts and I took Imodium and electrolyte drinks to keep myself hydrated. On my trip I drank those bacterial yoghurt drinks every couple of days and up till now (as I am still over here) I have not had a problem since

Wayne


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