So to celebrate my two months on the road I went out and got myself a really thoughtful gift……food poisoning. 😐
I started out my day by going to a cooking class that I booked through the guest house where I was staying. The teacher was there bright and early to scoop me and about 6 other people who just so happened to be staying there as well. She walked us to the local market to give us an overview of the common vegetables and spices used in Thai cuisine. We had about a 5 minute break before we’d be whisked off to the train station to travel another city where the cooking school was located. Since I hadn’t yet had any breakfast I stopped by a fruit stand and grabbed some freshly cut Papaya.
Fast forward one hour and a half when I had just finished cutting up all my veg and tofu to put in to my first two courses of Pad Thai and soup and I started to feel hot and dizzy. The weather was rather mild (by Thai standards) so random sweating seemed kind of odd and we hadn’t even turned on the burners yet. Oh but it didn’t stop there. As I drank my water I got a pain in my stomach so bad that I thought for sure I was in labor with a baby giraffe. The next thirty minutes were kinda blurry but they included me kneeling on the floor of the bathroom at the cooking school throwing up everything I had eaten in the last two months or maybe even the last year. I was sweating bullets and the poor staff were so attentive bringing me hot water to drink and instructing me to put my finger down my throat to get all of the toxins out of my stomach. One of the guys was even standing over me rubbing my back as I puked my brains out in the toilet. He even took my pulse as I lay in the fetal position on the dirty bathroom floor in pain. (I can hear some of you laughing…knock it off!) Once they saw that I was truly in trouble they called someone to take me back to Chiang Mai. Good thing I wasn’t on the verge of dying because the taxi took an eternity to arrive. By this time I looked like death and my clothes were drenched in sweat. The driver took me back to my guest house where I preferred to wait it out until I got worse/better. I know that sounds ridiculous but I HATE hospitals. The last time I was in a foreign hospital was in Bosnia right after September 11th and I was near death. No one spoke English and I was in so much pain that I kept going in and out of consciousness. It was one of the only times I can remember being scared for my life. Crazy!! So umm.. me rushing off to the hospital was obviously not my first option.
I pumped myself with water and the bathroom was my best friend for the next 3 hrs until I finally fell asleep. Thank God I decided to forgo the dorm situation and spend the four extra dollars for a guesthouse with a private room and bath. Can you imagine having to wait in line while “toxins” spewed from every hole they could…to include my nose. Ok that was TMI but I have to paint an accurate picture so you can feel like you were there 
Anywho, one of the owners at the guest house was so concerned that I had not come out of my room for hours that she summoned me by banging knocking on my door and insisting that I get some soup in my stomach so I can feel better. She offered to send someone to get me something to eat but when I told her I was vegetarian she didn’t want to take any chances and called around to find a nice vegetarian restaurant. She had her friend (who also works there) take me on the back of a scooter across town to the spot. Can I just remind you that I looked, felt, and probably smelled like death and had been sick since around 10am; and it was now about 8pm.
This madness continued for two and a half days and I refused to be in a hospital sitting next to someone with SARS or swine flu so I reached in to my handy first aid kit (which is a huge ziplock freezer bag full of get well goodies) and nursed myself back to health. Well, along with the help of the two ladies at the guest house.
I have yet to eat another papaya which is a shame because I LOVE ME SOME PAPAYA!!!
I’m not sure what I’ll give myself for my 3 month anniversary but it will be hard to top this extravagant gift 😐 This traumatic event has me second guessing my plan to spend a month in India. I’ve heart multiple horror stories about Delhi belly and I would not want 28 of those days to be spent recovering from severe bubble guts. Ewww!