h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What exactly is the point of going to far flung lands if you aren't going to try the food from roadside vendors or travel on whatever passes for public transport in that area?
I agree that being sensible about risks makes for a good holiday but I would not like to see the world from a sanitized air conditioned Ford explorer while eating vacuum packed McMeals....some of the greatest adventures in my life have come about through ignoring the "Don'ts".

My friend Kelly spent the last half dozen years travelling round south east Asia with dodgy airlines and even dodgier hotels. Practically unscathed. She returned to the States in June and last month was hospitalised with food poisoning

Absolutely - in my experience you're as likely to get the Erthas from a pint of real ale as anything else.

Perhaps a more weathered traveller version might say things like:
> Do drink lots of gin and tonic
> If youy pay in FEC the food will taste the same etc.

My mate and I have been all over the bloody place. We ate off the streets in China, Tibet, India, Nepal, Africa, you name it.

Craig got amoebic dysentry from a restaurant hamburger in Tibet (and had to spend two days wired to a penicillin drip) and I got the bacterial kind from a lasagne in Kathmandu.

When we got to India we ate nothing but veggie curries, three meals a day, and never had a problem (and loved it!). The best advice is to go for the local food - they know how to cook it!

I've just been told I have to go to Korea in 3 weeks. Originally it was 5, which would have given me time for my typhoid and hepatitis jabs. Now the second (typhoid?) jab will be too early to do any good.

So, I'm going to Seoul: do I need to worry that I haven't had the jabs, or should I stay home? (I have 2 small kids, will it be bad for them if I schlepp something back, or will it stay in me?)

The best person to answer this would be a doctor and I would urge you to speak to one especially with regard to the children.

That said, Seoul is the modern capital of one of the worlds richer economies. If you don't go "up country" you will be very unlikley to get anything but Flu (as mentioned in the China syndrome post).

Thanks. And you know,I had my flu jabs.......
I always worry about asking German doctors because I think they err way to far on the side of caution.

Well, this thread having come back OK, I'm just checking to see that you dod likewise,Sho. Dunx has just departed for a month incommunicado trekking in the Drakensbergs - with a good medical kit including the sterilised needles. A full medical in Feb disclosed hepatitis antibodies in my blood. As I've never had the jabs, I must've had undetected hepatitis somewhere en route. Wonder where.