Dysentery and airport bombing
Luckily not at the same time...

The dysentery occurred while in Tanzania, and was far more unpleasant than most people realise when they laugh at me for it. Shivering cold in the equatorial sun during the day, and hot sweats preventing sleep at night (plus vomiting and the shits of course).
Luckily (but somewhat regrettably) I got swift attention in the hospital because I'm white.
In any case it rather spoiled part of my visit to Zanzibar, which despite this incident remains the best place I have ever been to.

The other thing happened on a holiday to Sri Lanka; a few days before we were due to fly home, we heard that the Tamil Tigers had cleverly managed to piss off the government by blowing up a dozen or so planes at the country's only international airport. I think they were mainly military planes rather than civilian, but it was still rather disconcerting to see the burnt out shells scattered around the airport as our plane taxied to the runway.
It was quite exciting really; and there was the possibility of us having to stay in the country a few more days for security reasons, which never happened in the end so I was kinda disappointed that we didn't blag an extended holiday from the event.

Go to East Africa and Sri Lanka, they're both wonderful areas.
But sometimes... shit happens.

Apologies for length of time before I squeezed that pun in.
(moik, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 11:40, Reply)