Trouble In Paradise Cover - Evening Herald

EVENING HERALD WEDNESDAY 11 AUGUST 2004 27

FEATURE METRO

OR YOU’LL REMEMBER YOUR DREAM TRIP FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS

nightmare holiday Burnt and bitten in exotic places, real holiday hell BY TANYA SWEENEY THREE weeks in the Thai sun sounds like pure heaven to most people, yet a trip to the Asian gem last Christmas was fraught with health setbacks. Not enough forethought with regards to holiday health? Alas, I’m guilty as charged. Having spent day three in the blazing sun without any protection, I was slightly alarmed to find that I had heatstroke a few days into the holiday. The next few days had to be spent inside, as I was swollen of limb and delirious of mind. The real downer of the trip, however, hit me right between the eyes. Literally. A friend had contracted conjunctivitis (the same poor friend, incidentally, who was plagued with diarrhoea for the trip), and passed the highly contagious condition on to me.

SOUVENIR It was a holiday souvenir I was able to bring home to Ireland without even having to declare it to customs (actually, I didn’t need to . . . they could see it all over my face). Somehow, I had managed to remember the DEET mosquito spray, and was applying it religiously, so I was perturbed to find a nasty rash of bites on my legs. As it happens, I had picked up Hookworm on the Koh Phah Ngang beaches (during the full-moon party revellers urinate into the sea, making the sand a major health hazard). Although the Tropical Medical Bureau could treat it on return, I decided to let the little critter die of natural causes — it only lives for a month, after all.

THAI UP: Tanya Sweeny (centre) and friend Catherine go elephant trekking on the island of Phuket during their health-plagued holiday

bowl, take the following advice: eat only freshly cooked food, and make sure it’s hot (as opposed to warm). Avoid rare meat and shellfish (which are often harvested from infected waters), as in certain areas it’s a real case of “Russian Roulette”. Drink only sealed bottled water, avoid ice in drinks and don’t use untreated water to brush your teeth. If a bout of “Delhi belly” occurs, keep some Motilium (¤5) handy, as it alleviates stomach upsets.

^ VACCINES LIKE an insurance policy for your body, vaccines are an essential part of the pre-holiday ritual. In Asia, dengue fever has become big news (there have been over 2,500 cases in Singapore alone this year), while tetanus affects one million people every year. Dublin’s Tropical Medical Bureau (www.tmb.ie) recommends all travellers get tetanus and hepatitis A (yellow jaundice) vaccines, though travellers going to certain parts of Asia or central America should request typhoid, hepatitis b, tuberculosis, rabies and yellow fever shots. For advice on the vaccines needed for your holiday, call the TMB on 1850 487 674 (local rate applies).

‘FOUR DAYS IN HOSPITAL IN A STUPOR’ THERE is never a good moment to get dysentery, but being on your own when it strikes has to be the best example of life’s perverse sense of bad timing — especially in my case. After a month travelling in Thailand together, my friends and I were parting ways; they were returning home to Australia and I was staying for another month. Having travelled on my own before, I wasn’t concerned and happily waved them off the next morning. I was also dying for some of my own space and so decided to pay for the luxury of a room to myself. But if I had known what nightfall would bring, I would have clung to my friends’ ankles and wailed: “Don’t leave meeeeee!” Unfortunately where friends can’t be counted on, there is one thing that you can always rely on when in Asia: the runs. So when I first felt that ubiquitous tummy rumble I dosed myself with some herbal medicine that had never failed to work, and went back to bed. But by the third dose of medicine and the umpteenth trip to the bathroom on my hands and knees, I knew with the sick sweat of

Alone and utterly miserable, JANE LYONS checks into a Thai hospital with dysentery foreboding that something was wrong — very, very wrong. And with only a little water left in my water bottle, things got much worse. By dawn, every trip to the bathroom was an exercise in trying not to faint and layer upon layer of skin was peeling off my parched lips.

My mother is a nurse and it has always been said that I am my mother’s daughter, so the next day I presented myself at the local hospital, specimen already in hand (note: whiskey bottles have multiple uses), and with the declaration that I had dysentery. Kind, moon-faced nurses then gently put me in a wheelchair and proceeded to move me around, depositing me at various points around the hospital for the next hour or two. They wheeled me here, they wheeled me there and by the time the doctor announced that I did in fact have dysentery and needed to be admitted to hospital, the psychology of the chair had taken its effect and I burst into tears, feeling miserable and very alone. I spent four days in a dizzy, nauseous stupor, being pumped full of unknown drugs (the doctors refused to tell me what they were giving me and seemed affronted by the question), and seven litres of electrolytes. But looking back I can now talk glibly about the proverbial silver lining: compared to my previous Thai abodes, my private room was like the Hilton (God love travel insurance) and I emerged from hospital looking svelte and ready again for adventure.