Days of Thunder....
The worst few nights (and days) of turd-filled tummy rumbling ever, was encountered while backpacking round South East asia on my own. It went a little like this...

I had made my way down the east coast of Vietnam and found myself in Hoi An, a small village with not much to do but get clothes made and drink beer.
My first night in the place, I splashed out and got a lovely 5 course meal followed by several cold pints of lovely Tiger beer (which they serve on tap over there with specially chilled glasses *sigh*).
Unfortunately their food hygiene standards weren't quite up to the same standard as the UK, so later on in the middle of the night I was awoken my what felt like someone poking me in the guts with a sharp stick. I got up to the toilet, and it there it was again. a sharp stabbing pain in my guts.
I squished the cockroach that was scurrying round the bathroom floor, and jumped onto the toilet where my guts suddenly collapsed and I let out a humungous fart/shit combo followed by several more in succession.
The toilet bowl unfortunately acted like a megaphone, and as there was no Air-con, all of my windows and doors to the balcony were open - which meant that everyone in a half mile radius must have had, literally, almighty rude awakening. The worst part followed; the smell. Oh my god. It was like raw sewage. Not just any old turd now either, the air was thick with it.
This was accompaied with some real ill effects and sweats/aches/pains but I thought I was hard so I just assumed it would get better.

The next day I thought the best thing wouuld be rehydrate and get myself sorted out with fruit for brekkie, followed by local soup. I was later to find that this was the wirst thing I should do.
2 days passed, with no sign of recovery, so I thought I'd grin and bear it and go somewhere with a bit more nightlife to it. I popped a load of immodium to bung myself up, bought my ticket and went on what I can only describe as the worst bus trip of my entire life.

I thought an overnight 12 hour bus trip wouldn't be bad, you know, catch 40 winks and get there in the morning - but unknown to me, the main roads on the north east are more like ploughed fields, so it was absolute living hell, with me clenching my ass cheeks together as the bus bumped around and rocked violently from side to side all fucking night!
I kept letting out little farts, which smelt exactly the same as my megaphone turds the night before, so it was lucky that most of the people surrounding my were somehow asleep.
We stopped at a fuel pump with some toilets (it wasn't really a petrol station, but literally, a fuel pump with some toilets) and had to evacuate my bowels. The problem was, they were traditional Vietnamese "squat" toilets, which were back to back with big gaps just above head height - more or less open air.
I knew that if I went, it was gonna be loud and rancid, so I waited till everyone had been, then ran over for a shit.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I screamed in my head as I saw one tiny shredded sheet of toilet paper left in the "cubilcle". I was a a ticking timebomb, I had to run to the bus open the side panels, rummage through my backpack and sacrifice a pair of socks to wipe my sorry ass with before exploding everywhere. It was expecedly load and honkin.

All I could wish for was that the 12 hours was up, but the torrential overnight rain had collapsed a bridge half an hour from our final destination, meaning we arrived 4 hours later than expexted. By this point my ass cheeks were so sore from clenching, I could barely sit on the rock hard leather seat.

After necking sevreal immodium again, I felt a bit better in the morning, and I thought that to celebrate my assumed recovery I would treat myself to a nice big Curry and a few pints! Wahay!
I've no idea what brought about this moment of insanity, as I'm sure you can guess what's coming next...

Yep, I hadn't recovered AT ALL and about an hour later, I had to leave the people I'd met and seek sanctuary in my new hotel toilet. This time the cold sweats and load stinking shitty-farts were accompanied by the aroma of shitty curry. Dear god, it was absolutely rank. At least a third of the night was spend hung over the bog, with turds that were akin to filling a shotgun with mud - the entire bowl was pebble dashed! Worse still, the extractor fan blew my stench into the hotel corridor!

Well, it turns out that after a doctors appointment that it wasn't travellers diarrhea, I'd contracted Amoebic Dysentery, which is not only a mingin disease caused by exposure to infected water, it can also kill you. Which is nice.
I had to get a big bloody syringe in my ass 2 days running and a host of 6 types of pills, various and powders to get me well again.

There is no real moral to this story, only "go straight to the doctors if you get ill while travelling". You'll soon regret it if you don't!!
(FroIain, Sun 30 Mar 2008, 11:36, Reply)