After being in Thailand for two months, I'm sick again for the second time.

The first time was exactly one month ago. It was on a Thursday, October 12th to be exact. I had made plans to go out to dinner with the other 9 Americans, but suddenly and awfully I was feeling sick, a lingering irritation that let me know something was in my body and doing things that my system did not like. It went on for days in fact, including an eight-hour Saturday bus ride to Chiang Mai. Yeah, I had motion sickness and nausea, but not enough to throw up. My greatess symptoms which were emphasized by the bug were irritation and a BAD MOOD. It lasted until Tuesday, but by then I had decided I was going to pass this bug on. I said "I'm not leaving the house today. I'm going to go ahead and be sick and get it over with." And that's what happened. I went to the bathroom, didn't stick anything in my mouth, I just started coughing and there it came. For hours, I alternated sleep and vomiting sessions, and when I didn't have anything in my stomack, then came the diarehea. It was not pretty, but I was happy just to get it out. By the night time, I couldn't hold anything down, not even juice, so the doctor gave me some meds for that and to stop the diarrea. I slept the next day and was fine.

So where did it come from? Obviously the food. It's weird, people tell you not to buy food from street vendors because it's unsanitary, but street food is like 65% of the experience here in Thailand. Tourists eat it, Thais eat it, I figure there's no way I'm not going to eat it since I'm here for six months. But somethings like an exposed mound of noodles sitting under a lamp in on a crowded street with everything from bugs, people and unsmoged cars coughing passed it... I will not be eating. And the gorgeous looking papaya and pineapple sliced with knives that you shouldn't expected have even been rinsed in the last hour, and sitting in ice that has traveled on the back of open pick up trucks and swung in who knows how many directions on the way to that glass case which has been sitting in the sun for hours holding those gorgeous papaya and pineapple slices...I've learned to buy only fruit that is sliced before my eyes. But after one month of trying to figure out when to ignore the Center for Disease Control (CDC) warnings to find the best Pad Thai in Bangkok, and when and where to look for signs of healthy rats and daddy roaches, I inevitably got sick. It happened to most of us within that first month.

No, this time, after adjusting to the move up north to Chiang Mai, the locations of food I like and am willing to try, I'm sick again. But this time, I think it's more related to the lack of nutrients I'm getting in my food. My diet here hasn't varied much partly because once I decide I like something, I eat that dish for days at a time. I also haven't been eating much because it's been hard to get used to seeing bugs in my food. Here, people don't mind too much if there's an ant, or gnat, mosquito, or other insect in your food but I'm looking through everything, and at almost every meal, there's a bug. Now, I've given in enough to just take it out, or not eat that part of my plate, but it has defintely limited my intake. I've also been warned against eating fruits that don't have a protective shell which could prevent any bugs or pests from getting inside. And living in a house with no kitchen and no cookware has made it impossible to cook my own food. Which means I haven't been eating much.

The bright side is that I will buy a blender this weekend, I just bought a knife and cutting board last night, my school just hooked me and my roommate up with a sink, and some ladies from my school have given up a hot water machine and a hot plate. I'm all over the web looking for "protein" resources for vegetarians, and I've got my vitamin supplements on hand. It's on. I'll keep you posted.