We actually eat salads, raw seafood, unpeeled fruit, all the other stuff you’re not supposed to do. But we didn’t start by doing that. Build up with street food, brushing your teeth in tap water, etc, and you’ll cultivate immunity to the bacteria that hang around, and be able to eat almost anything without getting sick. And, if you do hit something your immune system objects to, it will, erm, dispose of it painlessly in under an hour, leaving you right as rain.

I’m with Ayngelina and the vitamins…:>)

Yep. South American fruit can be amazing, but sometimes it’s bloody hard to find.

Thank you. It’s amazing how many people don’t do the fruit & veg stuff.

Thanks, Lainie! That’s a great tip, and we’ll give it a go. We picked fresh clove buds in the Spice Islands, where they use both leaves and buds for all sorts of things, including stomach trouble, and they’re also a key element in the 19th century bitters medical formulations (and the oil was used against toothache until recently in the UK). With a taste and a scent like that, they’ve got to have some fairly potent alkaloids in them. (As does cinnamon. Z is barred from eating too much as it sends him hyper.)

Cheapest way to do shots is to get them done in Asia: do them in BKK when you arrive, if that’s where you’re flying into. Wes recommends somewhere on http://www.johnnyvagabond.com. Don’t know if you saw Maryanne’s comment on my evil monkeys piece, but she got bitten by one and had to have the non-vaccinated person treatment for rabies. A month of shots. $1500. Insurance wouldn’t pay cos she hadn’t updated the jabs. Thing is, you never know whether you need them or not. Yellow Fever is, I think, mainly for the paperwork when crossing borders… And, yeah, the only foolproof way to avoid malaria is not to get bitten or to stay out of malarial regions. But anti-malarials do massively reduce your risk of contracting it if you are…

Yep. Do not forget to get the rabies one done…