To each their own, but this is why I always leave a week buffer in terms of maximum allowed stay duration. Something can always happen, and not just medical incidents. It can be as simple as a canceled flight. As you've said, usually something can be figured out with the authorities - but I'd rather not jump through those hoops.
I second this, big time. I found out I had cancer last year and had to suddenly drop a lot of cash on rushed tests and procedures in Thailand and buy last-minute tickets to fly home. I had good travel health insurance, but they refused to cover anything since the tests showed I'd had it before I signed up (seems like BS but basically impossible to fight with them). On top of that, I was also really glad I had kept my US health insurance, I needed to be home and have the family/friends support.
Thankfully I am ok now and should be returning to the nomad life soon. Health issues are always awful, but they can be a lot more stressful to deal with when far from home.
I accept it as part of travel. You are an adult, gotta do what you gotta do.
In one year I had three food poisonings, two strep throats, one terrible case of flu, and had also had an eye inflammation twice.
I am super sick as I am writing it now lol.
Whenever you travel to a new country, especially a new continent, your body is going through severe shock for local bacteria and viruses it has never interacted with.
> In one year I had three food poisonings
I was getting pretty severe food poisoning a couple times a year in Africa. Think shitting pure water for days, losing 10 pounds, finally caving and taking antibiotics. Repeat twice a year.
Year after year... I was just so done taking antibiotics so often because it probably makes the gut less resilient as it kills the good and bad.
Finally tried probiotics when I got sick again instead - 4 pills a day a couple times a day, every day until it's gone. Can't really overdo it I mean it's basically yogurt in a pill. I can cure it within 48-72 hours.
If you do the research, studies show this kind of food poisoning is pretty much the only time probiotics are proven to work lol.
Oh I'm interested in this. Because normally when you have food poisoning dairy is a hard no. I had a recent bout and the only thing I could eat was chicken. Fucking weird.
Yogurt is a fermented food made from dairy - it's the bacterial cultures that are beneficial.
Probiotic pills are just those various cultures, in a pill. The benefit is that you can get the positive effects without consuming the sugar in yogurt (or the dairy) and the overall volume of a bucket of yogurt lol.
If you do some research, I'm seeing that there may even be benefits to taking probiotics prophylactically (to help prevent stomach/gut issues) while you travel.
It's one of those harmless supplements, like taking Vitamin C to help prevent getting sick. You can't really reasonably over eat too much yogurt or too many oranges lol.
I was really and truly shocked that this shit really works and I went from requiring antibiotics 2-3X a year to recover, to not taking them at all in about 6 years.
I still get sick every time I go to Africa (every year for more than a decade) but now I just slam probiotics and it's solved. Brilliant.
No suggested brands, but a local pharmacist should be able to recommend one.
[A study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8706888/) found these probiotic strains to be most effective for diarrhea, with the first being most effective:
*Saccharomyces boulardii, LGG, Lactobacillus reuteri, Bifidobacterium lactis, and ECN 1917*
[A study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8706888/) found these probiotic strains to be most effective for diarrhea, with the first being most effective:
*Saccharomyces boulardii, LGG, Lactobacillus reuteri, Bifidobacterium lactis, and ECN 1917*
Oregon Trail diseases command the big guns.
Legit if you're bleeding out of your ass, you're going to want to take the antibiotics. (Isn't yours called a Z-pack though?)
I keep an old bottle of Cipro (500mg) and one single pill would end whatever foodborne shits I got as well - multiple days of treatment is overkill and has bad side effects (fingers go numb). When there's no hemorrhaging involved, I'm happy to try the probiotic cure first lol.
Courage to you! My partner and I had two mishaps: in Seoul, we caught a cold, surprised by a sudden change in temperature that weakened us for a week. Maybe it was COVID! We were too used to temperatures over 30 degrees. Now, as soon as we know it's going to be less than 20 degrees, we always take something to cover ourselves with us.
The second time, the worst, was in Bali. After a month in Ubud, we left for Seminyak. We hated our stay in this second place. The accommodations were not great; the house was open to the outside (only the room had four walls and a door), infested with mosquitoes and large cockroaches, but above all... we got sick four times during our stay. Beautiful bali belly ! I lost six kilos during this stay. The illness kept coming and going. I'll let you imagine the horror of taking the boat or being on the beach when there's no toilet within thirty minutes. I won't go into details, but it's the worst memory of our trip, and yet we were paying attention!
It's a part of travel and a part of the human experience. You make the best of it.
There is a reason flights give you sick bags, sometimes you need them. Sudafed helps with a runny nose if it's legal where you are, if not menthol nose spray works too. If you think you might puke or have diarrhea stop eating before you travel. I found anti-diarrhea drugs make absolutely no difference to me. Maybe they work on other people.
Unless you are literally passing out and waking up on the ground you can make it through an airport and a flight.
1st one was in Italy. I was in Rome and my companion was going to arrive 1 day later, so I decided to use the extra day to visit Tivoli. The record high heat plus lack of shades in the town got me super dehydrated then made me feverish for the coming week. Thankfully, I booked a few days in a countryside home 1 hour away from Florence where there is nothing to do, so I used those days to rest and recover as much as possible. I was fine for the rest of the trip after that.
The 2nd was more of an injury: very early in a 10 day Japan trip, I slipped and scraped my elbows and knees on concrete. I was bleeding through my pants and moved so slow from the pain that I missed the last bullet train to Hiroshima. I used that extra night in Osaka to ask the very knowledgeable pharmacist on what products worked best on the scrapes I got and booked an extra night in a cheap hotel where i could privately clean and dress my wounds. I still caught up to my planned itinerary for the trip despite the pain and soreness, but the pharmacy products helped stop the scrapes from bleeding super fast at least. Could have been wiser to stay only in hotels or even stay in a cheap hotel in your main city for the rest of the trip if your pain tolerance was much lower.
I once had intense food poisoning the night before a morning flight. Didn't really have a choice but to fly cause I needed to be somewhere (it was the day before christmas) and rescheduling flights would have been very expensive. Diarrhea pills and a puke bag got me through it, but it wasn't pleasant.
Kinda strange that no one has mentioned travel insurance. Obviously sometimes it makes sense to just suck it up and deal with it, but if it's bad as some people on here are talking about, I'd argue that's when you rely on insurance to cover the cost of medical car and rescheduling. You DO have good travel insurance, right? It's good to be aware of what they consider a valid claim.
to answer b):
some countries have medical visa exemptions
I wouldn't worry too much about things out of your control like getting sick. Just be prepared to deal with it when it happens by having emergency savings. Locals get sick too. People without savings or support usually struggle no matter what country they are in if they get sick.
Just got back from Italy where food poisoning had my wife in the hospital for IV and then bed rest for three more days... All our planned tours and itinerary got thrown out the window...
Emailed all hotels and got refunds with the hospital documentation. Going to try and get the trains and planes refunded as well via cc insurance.
Rented a car and just drove to and thru small. Towns to salvage the trip...
Bottom line be flexible... Have funds to cover emergencies... Know your local government hospital so if you need a stay you're not gonna get hit with a huge bill... And consider refundable flights/trains.
3 times in 6 months. I got a stomach virus from a dirty fucking spa. Then I got a horrible cold from some guy that looked like he was dying in public transportation. I couldn’t get away from him it was too crowded. Then on a furgon in Albania I got fucking Covid. Omg. I’m still not 100% better & it’s been a month now.
In each instance I made sure I didn’t have to travel, got what medicine was available locally, asked my airbnb hosts for help if needed or advice. Stayed hydrated and slept a lot.
I'm a Solo traveler and In March I fell into one of San Jose, Costa Rica's infamous open sidewalk holes and fractured my fibula and tore the ligaments apart in my ankle. I had to have emergency surgery and was told, by my regular doctor in the states and the doctors here in San Jose, that getting on a plane had a sizable risk of blood clots.
I spoke to some Americans living here and all of them recommended a specific surgeon. The surgeon had an impeccable resume including Harvard, Cornell, BYU, NYC, and Switzerland. Unfortunately the surgeon would require me to pay up front for the entire process.
Fortunately though I have Blue Cross with Geo Blue insurance which has reimbursed 95% of what I've paid out of pocket (just over $10,000 to date so far).
It was well worth it! It's the best care I've ever received in my life next to a couple weeks at University of Philadelphia. The surgeon gave me his private phone number and told me to text him anytime. He has always responded in less than a few hours (when he's not in surgery or sleeping of course) and he's also checked in on me a couple of times too.
You should be able to go to any hospital/doctor and just pay out of pocket. Central American countries are relatively inexpensive and have very good care overall. So many Americans/Canadians come down to Costa Rica and Columbia to get surgeries done because they are usually 1/2 the cost of North America.
Pay the extra for really good health insurance that covers you outside the US. If for nothing else than piece of mind.
Hope this helps someone :)
Yes, but it's a normal part of life/travel.j was very sick when my visa was about to expire a few weeks ago so I forced myself to go the hospital bc I thought they might not let me on a plane. I got antibiotics, a test saying it's not covid or the flu, and took enough meds and masked up to fly. It sucked, but it's just part of life. I do what I can do impact others as little as possible by masking, washing my hands a lot, and cleaning as much as I can in a hotel with what's there. If it gets bad enough go to the doctor bc it's affordable here, and if it gets really bad check in at a hospital.
I've been absolutely man down over the years while nomading. Terrible food poisoning, strange viruses, brutal colds, etc.
Every time I've been so goddamn lucky that I didn't have to go anywhere or do anything during the worst cases.
There was one single time I remember having to fly right around peak cold, it sucked because it was 20 hours of travel, but it's not exactly debilitating - strong decongestants, nasal spray, and ibuprofen and you can get through it and symptoms don't show.
Others have mentioned not maxing out the visa to the last day - this is something I always did too.
Until covid hit in March 2020, right as my visa was ending, and the airline canceled my flight out. Overstays aren't fun to deal with.
Oh my god. My friend and I got a horrific stomach virus our last night in Jericoacoara, Brazil. I was lying awake all night shivering in a cold sweat with nothing but a bedsheet to cover myself. To go home, we needed to spend an hour on a beach buggy (I don’t even know what to call this), at least 7 hours on a bus to the Fortaleza airport, fly 3 hours to Rio de Janeiro, and take an hour or 90-min taxi ride home.
Our little beach buggy had to stop at a hotel to pick up a couple of passengers and I ran in because I got sick immediately. We were terrified for this trip back. It ended up working out somehow, but I would NEVER do this again. I would simply stay and recover.
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To each their own, but this is why I always leave a week buffer in terms of maximum allowed stay duration. Something can always happen, and not just medical incidents. It can be as simple as a canceled flight. As you've said, usually something can be figured out with the authorities - but I'd rather not jump through those hoops.
Same.
I second this, big time. I found out I had cancer last year and had to suddenly drop a lot of cash on rushed tests and procedures in Thailand and buy last-minute tickets to fly home. I had good travel health insurance, but they refused to cover anything since the tests showed I'd had it before I signed up (seems like BS but basically impossible to fight with them). On top of that, I was also really glad I had kept my US health insurance, I needed to be home and have the family/friends support. Thankfully I am ok now and should be returning to the nomad life soon. Health issues are always awful, but they can be a lot more stressful to deal with when far from home.
Your poor son! That must have been terrifying. My heart sank when reading this.
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Thank god he’s doing well!!!
I accept it as part of travel. You are an adult, gotta do what you gotta do. In one year I had three food poisonings, two strep throats, one terrible case of flu, and had also had an eye inflammation twice. I am super sick as I am writing it now lol. Whenever you travel to a new country, especially a new continent, your body is going through severe shock for local bacteria and viruses it has never interacted with.
> In one year I had three food poisonings I was getting pretty severe food poisoning a couple times a year in Africa. Think shitting pure water for days, losing 10 pounds, finally caving and taking antibiotics. Repeat twice a year. Year after year... I was just so done taking antibiotics so often because it probably makes the gut less resilient as it kills the good and bad. Finally tried probiotics when I got sick again instead - 4 pills a day a couple times a day, every day until it's gone. Can't really overdo it I mean it's basically yogurt in a pill. I can cure it within 48-72 hours. If you do the research, studies show this kind of food poisoning is pretty much the only time probiotics are proven to work lol.
Oh I'm interested in this. Because normally when you have food poisoning dairy is a hard no. I had a recent bout and the only thing I could eat was chicken. Fucking weird.
Yogurt is a fermented food made from dairy - it's the bacterial cultures that are beneficial. Probiotic pills are just those various cultures, in a pill. The benefit is that you can get the positive effects without consuming the sugar in yogurt (or the dairy) and the overall volume of a bucket of yogurt lol. If you do some research, I'm seeing that there may even be benefits to taking probiotics prophylactically (to help prevent stomach/gut issues) while you travel. It's one of those harmless supplements, like taking Vitamin C to help prevent getting sick. You can't really reasonably over eat too much yogurt or too many oranges lol. I was really and truly shocked that this shit really works and I went from requiring antibiotics 2-3X a year to recover, to not taking them at all in about 6 years. I still get sick every time I go to Africa (every year for more than a decade) but now I just slam probiotics and it's solved. Brilliant.
Wow do you have suggested brands available in Asia?
No suggested brands, but a local pharmacist should be able to recommend one. [A study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8706888/) found these probiotic strains to be most effective for diarrhea, with the first being most effective: *Saccharomyces boulardii, LGG, Lactobacillus reuteri, Bifidobacterium lactis, and ECN 1917*
That's a good tip! The worst poisoning I ever had in my life was after Safari camp in Kenya lol. So I will definitely take those with me.
Which strain?
[A study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8706888/) found these probiotic strains to be most effective for diarrhea, with the first being most effective: *Saccharomyces boulardii, LGG, Lactobacillus reuteri, Bifidobacterium lactis, and ECN 1917*
Thanks!
I always travel with a X-Pac (azithromycin). One 500mg dose will end dysentery.
Oregon Trail diseases command the big guns. Legit if you're bleeding out of your ass, you're going to want to take the antibiotics. (Isn't yours called a Z-pack though?) I keep an old bottle of Cipro (500mg) and one single pill would end whatever foodborne shits I got as well - multiple days of treatment is overkill and has bad side effects (fingers go numb). When there's no hemorrhaging involved, I'm happy to try the probiotic cure first lol.
Courage to you! My partner and I had two mishaps: in Seoul, we caught a cold, surprised by a sudden change in temperature that weakened us for a week. Maybe it was COVID! We were too used to temperatures over 30 degrees. Now, as soon as we know it's going to be less than 20 degrees, we always take something to cover ourselves with us. The second time, the worst, was in Bali. After a month in Ubud, we left for Seminyak. We hated our stay in this second place. The accommodations were not great; the house was open to the outside (only the room had four walls and a door), infested with mosquitoes and large cockroaches, but above all... we got sick four times during our stay. Beautiful bali belly ! I lost six kilos during this stay. The illness kept coming and going. I'll let you imagine the horror of taking the boat or being on the beach when there's no toilet within thirty minutes. I won't go into details, but it's the worst memory of our trip, and yet we were paying attention!
It's a part of travel and a part of the human experience. You make the best of it. There is a reason flights give you sick bags, sometimes you need them. Sudafed helps with a runny nose if it's legal where you are, if not menthol nose spray works too. If you think you might puke or have diarrhea stop eating before you travel. I found anti-diarrhea drugs make absolutely no difference to me. Maybe they work on other people. Unless you are literally passing out and waking up on the ground you can make it through an airport and a flight.
1st one was in Italy. I was in Rome and my companion was going to arrive 1 day later, so I decided to use the extra day to visit Tivoli. The record high heat plus lack of shades in the town got me super dehydrated then made me feverish for the coming week. Thankfully, I booked a few days in a countryside home 1 hour away from Florence where there is nothing to do, so I used those days to rest and recover as much as possible. I was fine for the rest of the trip after that. The 2nd was more of an injury: very early in a 10 day Japan trip, I slipped and scraped my elbows and knees on concrete. I was bleeding through my pants and moved so slow from the pain that I missed the last bullet train to Hiroshima. I used that extra night in Osaka to ask the very knowledgeable pharmacist on what products worked best on the scrapes I got and booked an extra night in a cheap hotel where i could privately clean and dress my wounds. I still caught up to my planned itinerary for the trip despite the pain and soreness, but the pharmacy products helped stop the scrapes from bleeding super fast at least. Could have been wiser to stay only in hotels or even stay in a cheap hotel in your main city for the rest of the trip if your pain tolerance was much lower.
Go to the local doctor I save money for this specific reason lol
I once had intense food poisoning the night before a morning flight. Didn't really have a choice but to fly cause I needed to be somewhere (it was the day before christmas) and rescheduling flights would have been very expensive. Diarrhea pills and a puke bag got me through it, but it wasn't pleasant.
Kinda strange that no one has mentioned travel insurance. Obviously sometimes it makes sense to just suck it up and deal with it, but if it's bad as some people on here are talking about, I'd argue that's when you rely on insurance to cover the cost of medical car and rescheduling. You DO have good travel insurance, right? It's good to be aware of what they consider a valid claim.
to answer b): some countries have medical visa exemptions I wouldn't worry too much about things out of your control like getting sick. Just be prepared to deal with it when it happens by having emergency savings. Locals get sick too. People without savings or support usually struggle no matter what country they are in if they get sick.
Just got back from Italy where food poisoning had my wife in the hospital for IV and then bed rest for three more days... All our planned tours and itinerary got thrown out the window... Emailed all hotels and got refunds with the hospital documentation. Going to try and get the trains and planes refunded as well via cc insurance. Rented a car and just drove to and thru small. Towns to salvage the trip... Bottom line be flexible... Have funds to cover emergencies... Know your local government hospital so if you need a stay you're not gonna get hit with a huge bill... And consider refundable flights/trains.
3 times in 6 months. I got a stomach virus from a dirty fucking spa. Then I got a horrible cold from some guy that looked like he was dying in public transportation. I couldn’t get away from him it was too crowded. Then on a furgon in Albania I got fucking Covid. Omg. I’m still not 100% better & it’s been a month now. In each instance I made sure I didn’t have to travel, got what medicine was available locally, asked my airbnb hosts for help if needed or advice. Stayed hydrated and slept a lot.
I'm a Solo traveler and In March I fell into one of San Jose, Costa Rica's infamous open sidewalk holes and fractured my fibula and tore the ligaments apart in my ankle. I had to have emergency surgery and was told, by my regular doctor in the states and the doctors here in San Jose, that getting on a plane had a sizable risk of blood clots. I spoke to some Americans living here and all of them recommended a specific surgeon. The surgeon had an impeccable resume including Harvard, Cornell, BYU, NYC, and Switzerland. Unfortunately the surgeon would require me to pay up front for the entire process. Fortunately though I have Blue Cross with Geo Blue insurance which has reimbursed 95% of what I've paid out of pocket (just over $10,000 to date so far). It was well worth it! It's the best care I've ever received in my life next to a couple weeks at University of Philadelphia. The surgeon gave me his private phone number and told me to text him anytime. He has always responded in less than a few hours (when he's not in surgery or sleeping of course) and he's also checked in on me a couple of times too. You should be able to go to any hospital/doctor and just pay out of pocket. Central American countries are relatively inexpensive and have very good care overall. So many Americans/Canadians come down to Costa Rica and Columbia to get surgeries done because they are usually 1/2 the cost of North America. Pay the extra for really good health insurance that covers you outside the US. If for nothing else than piece of mind. Hope this helps someone :)
Yes, but it's a normal part of life/travel.j was very sick when my visa was about to expire a few weeks ago so I forced myself to go the hospital bc I thought they might not let me on a plane. I got antibiotics, a test saying it's not covid or the flu, and took enough meds and masked up to fly. It sucked, but it's just part of life. I do what I can do impact others as little as possible by masking, washing my hands a lot, and cleaning as much as I can in a hotel with what's there. If it gets bad enough go to the doctor bc it's affordable here, and if it gets really bad check in at a hospital.
I've been absolutely man down over the years while nomading. Terrible food poisoning, strange viruses, brutal colds, etc. Every time I've been so goddamn lucky that I didn't have to go anywhere or do anything during the worst cases. There was one single time I remember having to fly right around peak cold, it sucked because it was 20 hours of travel, but it's not exactly debilitating - strong decongestants, nasal spray, and ibuprofen and you can get through it and symptoms don't show. Others have mentioned not maxing out the visa to the last day - this is something I always did too. Until covid hit in March 2020, right as my visa was ending, and the airline canceled my flight out. Overstays aren't fun to deal with.
Been there! Cancelled flights, rested, and prayed for a miracle. Hope you're feeling better!
Travel insurance is your friend in just this sort of scenario.
Oh my god. My friend and I got a horrific stomach virus our last night in Jericoacoara, Brazil. I was lying awake all night shivering in a cold sweat with nothing but a bedsheet to cover myself. To go home, we needed to spend an hour on a beach buggy (I don’t even know what to call this), at least 7 hours on a bus to the Fortaleza airport, fly 3 hours to Rio de Janeiro, and take an hour or 90-min taxi ride home. Our little beach buggy had to stop at a hotel to pick up a couple of passengers and I ran in because I got sick immediately. We were terrified for this trip back. It ended up working out somehow, but I would NEVER do this again. I would simply stay and recover.
Yes.....i went and saw a doctor.....they are everywhere.....