Once Upon a Toilet – Part Deuce

*WARNING* As the title suggests, this post is entirely inappropriate and contains way too much information.

It's a brutal and only slightly cencored view of life on the road.

  It starts with a grumble deep in the pit of your abdomen, sweat breaks out on your brow and BAM!!, out of the blue your life will change for days or possibly weeks, or in the case of India- months!  You have Montezuma's revenge or what we have experienced first hand more than once, the infamous "Delhi Belly".  When you’ve got it, it is like nothing you have experienced back home and hopefully you will only have the pleasure of enduring once.  On our trip we have had our fair share of incidences and in my case, I think it was my only saving grace because in hindsight I believe it was Delhi Belly and Delhi Belly alone that prevented me from gaining 15 pounds while travelling through India.
Imagine this… you’re on a bus that takes 20 hours and your expecting only one or two rest stops on the journey.  Is there anything more scary than the possibility of you- a grown person, shitting your pants… then sitting in it for hours?  Is there? Because if there is, I want to hear it.  It isn’t the most glamorous thing, having to squat on the side of a busy freeway, in the pitch black of night in some random bush or at a local squat toilet that lacks the luxury of electricity, but if you have - in Dan’s words - “explosive diarrhoea” it makes the task all that more interesting.  Ha Ha
The two of us have gotten quite skilled at anticipating western or squat toilets and avoiding the latter for weeks if we are feeling under the weather.  This is a difficult skill to master.  One might think that the Western eatery that sells pizza and pasta has a Western toilet but this isn’t always the case.  Life is bizarre when you enter an establishment or tourist sight and the first thing you do is map out the location of the toilets, the route you need the take and the estimated time it would take to travel from any surrounding location.  I am reminded about a specific instance, while Dan and I were in Bangkok and visiting the Forensic Medicine Museum.  When we entered the exhibit on parasites and amoebae, we both got the chills.  There I found myself trying to self diagnose our stomach ails, paying special attention to the deadly buggies, their cause and symptoms.  Scary.  If you have stomach problems, looking at extremely large models of amoebae or pictures of parasites crawling out of nether regions won’t help.  It will only make you think you are being eaten from the inside out.  Living with the runs and not letting them slow you down makes each day a bit tragic and almost primal.  If you can’t wrap your head around the idea- don’t travel.
Luckily, the one saving grace are the chemists and pharmacists on every corner.  They don’t have to speak English because I can guarantee they know the words diarrhoea and vomiting, or can recognize a sour look on your face while clutching your stomach- so no problems there.  Then, they will most likely dispense a lovely little drug concoction that is pre-packaged and deadly potent and to your surprise, will only cost you a dollar or two.  Miracles come cheap in this part of the world. Interestingly enough, while I was writing this post, Dan was reading a local magazine and came across a short article on how to cure the trots.  Since I am taking Malarial drugs that I swear are melting my insides, I try to avoid messing with additional medicinal cocktails, so this article was interesting indeed.  It suggested that my fool proof method of eating bland, starchy and salty food was bogus, instead they suggested this…..

Eat a whole Papaya then follow it by eating only fruit and yogurt.  Apparently you will be good to go in only one day.  I am sceptical but I will try it.  If the method fails while I am sitting on my scooter tomorrow, I’m not gonna be impressed.

A perfectly clean and spacious shared squat toilet at our guesthouse.

This is not always the case.  Some even have signs that ask you to take off your shoes when you enter- EWWW- seriously?

Dan's latest drug cocktail- one packet, three times a day- simple and effective.