Traveling sick: From typhoid to toothache, I’ve had my share and here are tips to prevent road to Hell

For the first time in 47 years of international travel, I cancelled a trip. I guess my immune system wanted a vacation instead.

Today I was scheduled to blog about Armenia. I planned on waxing poetic about its beautiful monasteries, underrated wine scene and its post-war aftermath with Azerbaijan.

Instead, I’m blogging about body malfunctions.

On Oct. 26, three days before I was to fly to Armenia, I got hit with a killer cough for the ages. It’s one of those coughs in which you hack so much, you can’t talk. You cough so much, your back hurts. You cough so much, you can’t eat.

It continued for the next two days and I pulled the plug. That’s the traveler’s equivalent of pulling off a fingernail. It hurts. I had to cancel all my hotel and tour reservations. I had to go to the airport to see if I could reschedule my WizzAir flight as these European budget airlines never have any humanoid answering phones.

(Note to airlines: Having an AI model continually giving me the same information I don’t need only makes me scream into the phone more, regardless of how sexy they computerize her voice.) 

Yes, I could reschedule the flight but the fees involved would make it more expensive than just buying a new ticket.

As problematic as that was, particularly when I could only talk between hacking up my lungs, it was better than the alternative.

Traveling sick changes a holiday from a dream vacation to a Bataan Death March. I don’t want to eat, drink or explore. The exotic environment around me feels like a movie set on a big screen far, far away. All I want to do is lay in bed.

Write? Ha! I wrote last week’s blog on Northern Turkmenistan over three days with my illness amped up to where my whole body ached. It was like an advanced flu with no fever. I coughed faster than I typed. It was the hardest blog I’ve ever written.

But as the old mantra goes for me and my fellow sportswriters whose lives were to eat, drink, sleep, write, “Ya’ gotta play hurt.”

I’m pretty healthy. I haven’t had many maladies. But anyone who frequently travels overseas will eventually get that awful feeling in the stomach, the foreshadowing of some awful explosion from an orifice to be determined, 

They will get the fog brain that comes with head colds and flu. Mix in cross-oceanic flights where germs swirl through an enclosed space like bats flying out of a cave, and their body becomes an incubator for every enemy of your bodily functions.

I’ve had my share. As I’ve gotten older and now pushing 70, they are alarmingly becoming more frequent. Here’s a list, starting with the worst:

Northern Thailand (1978-79) typhoid

No, I wasn’t sick for two years. It just seemed like it. To you older readers, where were you on New Year’s Eve 1978? I was in Chiang Mai, Thailand, throwing up my guts in a bamboo-thatched outhouse.

I picked a lousy place to contract typhoid: the jungles of Northern Thailand. I was approaching the Golden Triangle, at the time the world’s leading producer of heroin. I was a two-days hike from the nearest road.

I woke up one morning with a fever of over 100, a massive migraine, nausea, diarrhea and a thirst that made me want to drink snake blood if it was available. I lost 20 pounds in eight days. I stood 6-foot-3 and weighed 138 pounds. That’s Dachau proportions.

I had no medicine. I couldn’t keep down food or water. I had to march or die. After clinics in Chiang Mai and Bangkok, I finally woke up one morning without vomiting. I slowly made my way around the rest of Asia.

The only good thing about typhoid is an American doctor told me upon my return home that I’d built up an immunity that should fight off future illness. Look at the further list below and it appears that immunity is wearing off.

For more details about my adventures in typhoid, read my blog about it here. Be sure you  haven’t eaten first.

Taipei (1979), Seoul (1979), China (2008), food poisoning

It’s almost a rite of passage for world travelers to get food poisoning in Asia. For me, all three incidents came from the same source: eggs.

Many places in Asia do not refrigerate their eggs and that is a death sentence on any Western stomach. In Taipei, Taiwan, I had a street omelet and never even made it to the hotel. I threw up in an alley. Being young and dumb, I didn’t learn my lesson and tried another street omelet on my next stop in Seoul. I threw up in an alley.

Before covering the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, I visited Yangshuo, the Chinese city near those famous pointy karsts peaks you see on Oriental tapestries. My hotel lost my reservation and put me up in a hotel on the city outskirts. The manager felt so bad she woke me up with a homemade breakfast in bed.

With eggs. At least I made it to a bathroom.

The good thing about food poisoning is it’s fairly easy – albeit disgusting – to get it out of your system. I was fine shortly thereafter.

Berlin (2017), toothache

Don’t laugh. A toothache while traveling is a major calamity. Imagine traveling through interesting cuisines, you’re starving and you can’t eat. 

I took Marina to Berlin for her birthday and the beautiful June days were ruined after landing. My lower right jaw suddenly felt like I was being drilled by jackhammers. I couldn’t close my teeth together without a new adventure in pain.

Unable to even bite a bratwurst, I had my trump card: I was in Europe. Socialized medicine would save me, and it did. The next day I found a dentist who saw me as a walk-in, examined me, x-rayed me, did some drilling and sent me on my way with some medicine.

Total cost: €38.74. In the U.S., similar service usually costs between $150-$300.

The visit worked and I was indeed able to enjoy my bratwurst.

Frankfurt, Germany (flu) 2018

I came to Frankfurt on a magazine assignment and was fine on Day 1. But January in Germany is freezing and that night I felt a fever start at my toes and work its way up until my head felt ready to burst.

I spent the rest of my stay laid out for dead in my AirBnB – except when I had to drag myself to the stadium and cover a night soccer match in weather in the high 30s (Fahrenheit). What better way to get well than freeze outside for two hours and interview journalists about German soccer culture? I was shaking so much I couldn’t even take notes.

How sick was I?  I spent five days in Germany and didn’t have a single beer. That’s sick in more ways than one.

Tokyo (2024) cough

I got on the plane with a mild cough. By the time I landed in Tokyo 17 hours later, via Shanghai, my back was spasming from coughing so much. You know those annoying children who cry through an entire flight?

I was just as annoying.

We spent our first full day in Tokyo trying to find a cure. Greeting us was pouring rain, a vicious wind and temperatures in the high 40s. Unable to speak, I began communicating with Marina via hand gestures.

Our hotel gave us a list of doctors and pharmacies. The first doctor could not see me because I didn’t speak Japanese (“safety regulations” they said). The second one couldn’t see me because I didn’t have an appointment. Her next appointment?

In two months.

But she gave me a list of medicines I should find in a pharmacy. A pharmacy gave me a box of pills with every word in Japanese characters. I had no idea what I took, nor did I care.

I cared that it worked. I was fine in 24 hours – about the time we had to leave Tokyo.

Skopelos, Greece (2024), flu

Every late August or early September we go to our favorite little island about 150 miles north of Athens. We’ve gone the last five years but last year Greece turned into Dante’s Inferno. It was Hell.

The symptoms came slowly. Weakness. Body pain. Fever. Then I could barely walk from my lounge chair to the sea. We took a bus from our little village of Panormos to Skopelos Town. A pharmacy gave me an antiinflammatory called Brufen and it worked. 

The fever was gone in a few hours. Which brings up my next point …

What to bring

I don’t travel with a lot of meds but Brufen is now among them. It’s great for flu-like symptoms and general body pain. It especially works for headaches.

The others I always bring:

Pepto Bismol. This is the best preventative for stomach problems. I always take it after meals in a third world country where my stomach isn’t used to the cuisine. After about a week, I’ve built up enough tolerance where I can get off it. The lone side effect is you can get constipated. My reaction: So? Don’t go to the bathroom.

Imodium. In case it does happen and you get diarrhea, Imodium stops you right up. I have a pretty strong stomach. It’s a must. I write a lot about food. And Imodium is the perfect safety net.

Excedrin. Why do I find it ironic that the U.S. makes the best headache medicine? Living in Italy where the wine is so good, I don’t get many headaches. But when I do, whether it’s from drinking too much ouzo in Greece, rum in the Caribbean or beer in Germany, Excedrin knocks it right out.

Other safety precautions I take, besides the obvious of drinking bottled water:

• See where your food is coming from. Many “experts” say avoid street stalls in developing countries. But those street stalls usually have the freshest ingredients and serve the same clients every day. They must be safe. You can even see how the food is cooked.
• Stick to peeled fruit. That’s safe all over the world.
• Drink lots of water. Besides keeping you hydrated as you would at home, it helps flush out your system. It keeps any bacteria from lingering.
• Wash your hands. During the course of walking around a city, village or jungle, your hands will touch so many foreign substances. You have no idea on what you’ve laid your hands. Do you want to put that in your mouth? Wash before you ever eat anything. I learned this trekking in Nepal and hiked to 17,000 feet.
• Immunize. When you see a country you’re visiting requires a yellow shot, get the yellow fever shot. I told the clinic in Bangkok that I had a typhoid shot and I still got typhoid. The doctor told me, “A typhoid shot doesn’t keep you from getting typhoid. It keeps you alive.”

I’m writing this with just a trace of a cough and nary a pain in my body. I let the illness beat me for the first time but I’m going to get even.

I’ve rescheduled Armenia for Nov. 19-28.