Hacker News Reader

Comment by lionhearted | Hacker News Reader

Careful, this is one is true until it's not, and then you're fucked:

> 7) The rest of the world isn't full of germs. Many people travel with their own supply of water and an industrial vat of hand sanitizer.

As a rule, yes, you'll be fine in other countries. But especially in third world countries, only eat food that is served in a sealed package from a trusted company or served hot - food that is served hot will be generally cleaner and safer to eat. The big danger is food that sits around all day half-warm: that's where you get sick from. Also, don't drink the tap water in places the locals don't drink the tap water. Don't worry about ice/teeth brushing/etc, it's incidental, but don't drink tap if the locals won't drink it.

/did research on this after getting violently ill in Cambodia, luckily the expired medicine I bought from the untrained pharmacist did the trick.

View on HN

More specifically you should avoid the following:

- Street meat. Unrefrigerated meat spoils very rapidly. Bacteria build up toxins in the meat that don't go away even if you cook it. This can make you very sick and even kill.

- Cut fruit. You don't know if clean water was used to wash the knife or that the knife was not used to cut raw chicken or the like.

- Raw vegetables. Many places use human feces to fertilize the fields. You don't know if it was washed properly.

I lived recently in China for several years and got sick a lot and learned to become very particular about food. There seems to be a common perception among travellers that we're weak soft westerners and just need to toughen up and be like the locals who don't get sick. This isn't true, the locals get sick and die with alarming rates. Hepatitis, diarrea and various food born illnesses kill huge numbers of people globally due to poor sanitation.

Yeah, I'm really glad I brought antibiotics to Peru with me, and Peru isn't even particularly bad. I wouldn't say I got violently ill there, but I did get a case of Gringo's Bane (aka Machu Poopoo) and was moving my bowel 10-15 times a day. Other than that I felt fine, but not being able to leave the proximity of the bathroom cost me two days.

From my experience, you can not avoid getting ill. Sooner or later (probably sooner) it is going to hit you.

Therefore my advice is, to jump right into it. Eat what the locals eat. Do what the locals do. By this you have at least a bit fun until you have to spend your time sitting and sh*ing.

The human body is great in adapting to those situation. On my first visit to an development country I took more pictures from the window of my toilet than anything else. But since my body got somehow got used to the new environment, I have not been ill on my last few trips.

Final advice for third world travel: Have toilet paper ready. Always!

This is not a good strategy. Besides the other good comments, consider the following:

If you're traveling from place to place, you'll be exposed to a parade of regional bugs that locals, who have more stable habits, will not be. And your schedule (reservations, plans, etc.) may not be able to afford the downtime. Finally, you don't know the health care setup, so you won't always be able to sense if something is substandard.

I spent a day in a hospital in India with a very high fever (delirious) and dehydration due to a bit of uncooked chutney that none of the locals (whom I knew) had problems with. They had to give me an IV to rehydrate me. My main goal was to try to keep it together enough to ensure that the clinic was using a sterile needle for the IV.

This was not a high point of the trip.

Bad advice. The body doesn't adapt to hepatitis, salmonella, spoiled meat and the like.

Don't think the locals are not getting sick and dying either. They are. Diarrhea is one of the leading causes of death in the developing world.

Thought this would be obvious: I was not talking about stuff that makes everybody ill. The body does not adapt well to many other things, but still you can get used to many things that make people ill on first contact.

Why do so many travellers get sick first time they enter a country with different hygienic standard, where the local population has no problem?

btw: I lived 2 years in central Africa, just returned from a 'local meal' in Luanda/Angola.

The point is that you don't want to try to be like the locals. The locals in developing countries are not healthy and do suffer from poor sanitation (diarrhea alone is responsible for 8% of all deaths in Asia -- WHO stats). You need to be sensible and avoid certain things.

I just got back from a month in China and didn't get sick despite eating many things that'd make a typical westerner puke. I lived in China for several years previously and had learned the hard way about food safety.

why don't you get a hepatitis vaccine?

I do, but many people travelling do not. Still doesn't protect you from all the other nasty bugs and issues.

What do you mean by 'third world' countries?

In general, the best piece of advice I've received is simply "do as the locals do".

Often true, but not always.

For example: Buying meat in India may make you violently ill. Drinking tap water in Mexico is guaranteed to do the trick. While for a colleague of mine (who is used to it): no problem at all.

That said, I generally agree with the fact that health hysteria is totally over the top.

I just returned from Peru where I ate at places, which would be shut down in a heartbeat here (no ginnypigs running through the kitchen allowed, let alone cooking on open fire) with not even a stomach upset whatsoever.

I think the key is just plain old common sense.

Heh, when I went to Peru (Macchu Picchu, one of the most beautiful places I've ever visited), they ate Guinea Pigs (called "cuy" locally).

Odd they left them around the kitchen.

Agree with your recommendations. Also, watch out for ice cubes... often people make the mistake of buying bottled water... and then putting ice cubes made of tap water.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com