On food poisoning

Content warning: poo.

It happened so suddenly.

It always does.

No one ever tells you that they knew the food poisoning was coming. That they knew exactly what it was that they ate while they were eating it. If they did, they wouldn’t have gotten food poisoning in the first place.

When people talk about what gave them food poisoning, it’s always a guess. It’s an approximation. It’s almost always unsubstantiated. But it is never their fault.

For me, it was hubris.

I have eaten offal in the middle of a thirty-degree day sprinkled on a tortilla and accompanied by open-air, exposed, communal salsas basking in the sun on the streets of Mexico City.

Nothing.

I have swallowed steamed tapioca balls stuffed with ground pork, accompanied by whole chillies and lettuce on the streets of Bangkok.

Nothing.

I have eaten a flood of spicy AF chickpeas with fried bread in India.

Nothing.

I have skewered pieces of blood sausage with toothpicks and thrown them in my mouth from vendors on the streets of Korea.

Nothing.

I have eaten shucked oysters that have been mingling in a vat at room temperature and lightly poached before being thrown on gloopy wheat noodles in Taiwan.

Nothing.

I have eaten radioactively coloured intestine suspended in a suspect broth as a midnight snack on the streets of Hong Kong.

Nothing.

Perhaps most terrifyingly, I’ve eaten 1am hot dogs topped with things I don’t remember but were definitely creamy on the streets of Guadalajara.

Absolutely nothing.

So, you have to understand, I felt completely humbled, defeated and cheated when I started pissing out of my arsehole on the third day I was in Vietnam.