The Stop and Go of International Travel: A Gastoenterological Essay

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I apologize right off the bat. It's 6 AM and I'm starving. We arrived in Bangkok last evening after being awake since 3:30 AM and then sleeping only about 2 hours of a 20-hour flight. This morning I've been awake since 3:22 - and that's plus a 13-hour time difference. I couldn't remember either the configuration of the hotel room so as not to trip over a chair or whether my netbook would beep when I turned it on, either of which would surely wake up my comotose husband. This will not be a revelation of wats, of stupas, or of klongs - those we have yet to see; we arrived last night and will not see the light of day for another hour or so. The hunger is driving me to write about the workings of the human body.

Air travel half-way around the globe means your metabolism has to turn its normal cycle totally upside down. To help this along, airlines feed you every time the people on the ground below you are eating - and then some. I remember one trip that we made many years ago on Thanksgiving. We managed to consume 3 Thanksgiving dinners before we got to our destination.

On this trip our second complete dinner was followed immediately by a doggie bag containing a bottle of water, a granola bar, and an apple, all of which I dutifully devoured withing the hour. I felt like the little robins that matured before our very eyes on the rhododendron bush just outside our living room window this spring. Every time there was the squeak of the food cart wheels my mouth would open. Every smell from the galley would cause me to salivate. I'm probably the only person alive who looks forward to airline food.... Upon landing it was all I could do to last until we could find a restaurant.

Planning this trip has involved an inordinate amount of attention to food and water and the subsequent effect of either/both upon our bodies. If you are squeamish about subjects bordering on the indelicate, you're welcome to stop reading and wait for the next blog, which I promise will be about th e aforementioned wats, stupas, and klongs.

You've heard of having a cast-iron stomach? I live with a man who has a tissue-paper stomach. The second that an item of food p asses the “use-by” date his system goes into full-court press. An attack of gastric irregularity is blamed on an errant onion, a suspicious herb, or a tainted ingredient. The thought of spending a month in Southeast Asia has turned me into a quivering gastrophobe on his behalf. As a result, a substantial amount of luggage space is devoted to “the art of stopping and going”. We have all kinds of powders to be mixed with water (bottled only, no tap) or juice (only from hygenically acceptable fruits) to accomplish one or the other. At the travel medicine clinic I eschewed the malaria prophlactics (I'll just use a lot of bug spray) in favor of a neat little kit containing all the things needed to combat Montezuma's Revenge (I suppose here more properly called Ho Chi Min's Revenge). Not satisfied yet, I borrowed a “Make love, not war” t-shirt and haunted the health food store where I was schooled in the ins and outs of intestinal health by a 20-something using words and concepts that I had never encountered before to confuse me before plying me with a fistful of probiotics (they look suspiciously like alfalfa capsules), guaranteed to encourage neat little colonies of good guys to fight off the bad guys in my intestinal tract. I determined to start taking them the minute I hit the ground on the other side of the world. I've seen all the Discovery Channel shows - the ones where crazy Aussies go into the street markets of Cambodia and eat tarantulas, grubs the size of small hampsters, and sea cucumbers (my kids used to call them sea poops when we lived on Okinawa).

Although I was, in my youth, known to have eaten a few fried grasshoppers and chocolate covered ants, I think that my gastronomic interests have aged as I have. We have tried a fair number of cuisines, but are still in the “training wheels” stage of southeast Asian dishes. Last evening upon arrival we had to request the mild setting on the culinary pyrometer and was happy that we survived it. I still remember having been introduced to the Lao and Thai staple “green papaya salad” by our Nakon Phanom friends. Never before did the name “salad” belie the true nature of a dish to such an extent. In putting together the salad our friend placed a small amount of the ingredients into a separate dish. When asked why, she said that she would make a separate quantity for us “farangs” before completing the salad for the locals. Always curious I asked if I might sample “their” salad. Disregarding her raised eyebrows I took a tentative bite - “Not too spicy” I said and reached for another larger bite. A blowtorch immediately seared my mouth. My eyes bulged out of my head. My nose ran like a faucet. My taste buds were immediately and probably irreparably traumatized - as was I. There was not enough water in the greater Mekong River to quench the fire. The 45-year-old memories of that day have made me forever suspicious of Asian foods with strange-sounding names.! As a resultl, part of the research of taste treats for us to enjoy while here has resulted in the compilation of a list, for every place we will be, of places serving French and Italian cuisine. I'm planning to take a Lao cooking class, but I'm also keep an eye on the local pizza parlor.

So how has the preparation profited me so far? Everything we've eaten since we got to the airport has gone just fine. Unfortunately the only thing we had left in the house, which I saved to eat for breakfast on the train, was some cottage cheese and prunes that I had stewed a week before. You don't want to know what happened........

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Comments

[Linda November]

you are too Funny
I'm glad you arrived safely...

[Loren]

Eating in Asia
The closest I've come is eating a few times in the restaurants new Adana, Turkey while I was in Incirlik Air Base. I would order any dish that required cooking to temperatures normally associated with thermonuclear explosions. I had one salad, one time. I spent one weekend in my hotel room. From now on, if I cross the Intl Date Line, or go east of Nuremburg, I am eating Cliff Bars only.