Sick - Indonesian Style!

Well, unfortunately I'm sick again.  I've been rather slack with this blog and don't update it on a regular basis so here is a quick recap of the first time.

I went out for my first nice dinner in Jakarta, and a nice dinner it was.  I had the fish (type unknown) and a glass of redwine.  The food was amazing and the atmosphere was just as good.  A few hours later, after I had returned home and was lying in my bed I had that familiar feeling (keep in mind I get sick a lot) of knowing I was going to throw up.  I don't know what is worse, immediately throwing up or having that hour of warning where you know it is going to happen and you just have to wait for it.  Actually, I'm pretty sure the waiting to throw up is a lot worse.  So the next few hours, which later turned into days I spent either throwing up, or transforming any liquid I might possibly have left in my body into a yellowish liquid to be expelled from by body the only other way.  It was horrible, and it took me 3 days to build up the strength to go to the hospital and see a doctor.   He didn't speak much english, and I don't speak much bahasa Indonesia so I'm not really sure what happened in there.  I do know that I left with 3 prescriptions, and a bill for $40 (and this was the expensive hospital).  He had given me Cipro to stop whatever it was that was invading and i'm convinced slowly taking over my body.

This experience had left me a little gun-shy when it came to eating the local food.  Since most of the stuff people buy comes off a cart with 3 wheels and a sold by someone that doesnt wear shoes, I dodn't feel the food is prepared in the most hygenic of ways.  Excluding anything sold on a street cart doesn't leave me with many food options. 

My first night on the rig I believe we were served goat, at least it looked like it might be goat.  I took a wrong turn on my way to the bathroom and ended up at the kitchen.  The meat was sitting out with more flies than I've seen in my entire life on it.  Needless to say I was vegetarian from that point on, at least on the rigs that is.  So, I went to the grocery store, bought milk, bread, peanut butter and soy joy bars and that's how I exist.  Every night at around 1am someone brings me a plate of nasi goreng (friend rice) to my unit and other than that I do not touch the local food.  Once burned twice shy kind of thing.  The picture attached shows a typical meal on the rig.

This morning I was so sick again.  And this time it was even worse.  Not so much the actual sickness that was worse, just the environment I was sick in.  There is nothing worse than throwing up in a hole in the ground.

My theory:  The lack of toilet paper or soap at the accomodation, and the guy cooking my nasi goreng.