Food Poisoning: I’d Rather Be Dead

Nobody likes to throw up, but I take that to a new level.  I’d rather die than to throw up!

I’ve traveled around the world and I have only gotten really sick in Mexico, Vietnam, and India. 

Even when I know not to drink their water or eat food from street vendors, I still seemed to fall prey to something.  In Mexico, it was the water used to wash vegetables, and in Vietnam, it was carbon monoxide poisoning from a rickshaw ride in traffic.  In India, it was from the filth and polluted puddles that I had to navigate in 100+ degree weather.

My student and friend Sean Linkletter told me not to drink the water or buy any food from street vendors in Beijing.  He told me that the street vendors get their cooking oil from the sewers! 

Say what?

They try to save money any way they can and oil from the sewer must be less expensive than oil from the store. After hearing that, I just imagined the sewer oil as I passed by the vendors and quickly lost my appetite.

So I’m still not really sure what got me in Beijing but I got violently sick for 5 hours and was bedridden for 30.

We missed the Great Wall and a second dinner with Sean no thanks to food poisoning.  And worse, I was miserable.

The only thing that could make me that sick had to be something I ate and I only ate at our Swiss hotel and in 5-star restaurants in Beijing.  Rob and I ate the same things each day but he didn’t get sick. 

In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have eaten the eggs sunny-side up.  After all, it’s like eating a half-cooked egg.  I don’t think I’ll ever eat eggs sunny-side up again.

While I survived the trip, I now have 4 countries that I’m scared to return to…