Sick away from home

In April I had a chosen an unusually wet morning to call a taxi and head for the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. For a while I was wondering if I would make it in time for my flight. The rain was pouring relentlessly along the KL-Seremban Highway and you can only just make out the rear ends of the vehicles in front. Credit to the taxi driver though, a veteran of more than 20 years on roads and routes in the Klang Valley, who drove at a reasonable speed considering the circumstances and got me to the airport ahead of time.

My clothes were slightly damp and it was cold all the way during the flight from KL to Bangkok. But out of the cool confines of Suwarnabhumi International Airport, Thailand’s latest state-of-the-art airport, reputed to be the most modern in Asia, it had to be the hottest day recorded in Bangkok so far this year at 40 degrees Celsius. April may be known as the hottest month in Thailand and it was after the Songkran or water festival and all that. But even by Bangkok standards it was stinging hot and I mean that in the most literal way. My skin was feeling a bit prickly during the taxi ride to the hotel. Such extreme change in the weather and temperatures, coupled with a lack of sleep on the previous night ensured that by evening I was down with a fever and I had to spend most of the day in my hotel room sleeping.

The room overlooked the swimming pool and from four floors up I was entertained by a bevy of several nationalities showing off their prowess in a variety of swimming styles. Of particular interest were two girls who were demonstrating more than just the usual camaraderie among travelling companions. This was a bit more than your usual female bonding to trade gossips about the latest fashion. Even to the casual observer, and I consider myself to be that, they were showing just a little too much interest in each other’s anatomy for my comfort. Their swimming style was of course the breast stroke and one of them was a good swimmer at that while the other rode piggy back.

Tsk! Tsk! Forgive me for being a prude. But I come from the state of Kelantan, where men and women do not share the same trishaws or pay for goods in the supermarket at the same check out counters. Come to think of it the two ladies would have had no problems at all if they were in Kelantan. They would have had fit in nicely so long as they shed their bikinis for shorts and t-shirts before entering the hotel swimming pool. After all in Kelantan these days same sex dancing is now not just the in thing but is widely encouraged. I am not all that familiar with the subject of psychology, but I can bet Freud would have said this is encouraging a split personality among the girls. Anyway I suppose what the two ladies were doing was as close as it can ever get to synchronised swimming in a hotel pool.

If these were not problems enough I had to be up early the next morning to catch another flight, this time to Hanoi. By that time my fever was threatening to get out of control. But nothing some self medication could not take care of, so I just stepped into the first pharmacy I saw at the airport. It was another two hours flight or so from Bangkok to Vietnam’s capital city. If Bangkok was scorching hot then Hanoi was about 18 degrees Celsius, which again was cold by my standards and absolutely dreadful when you are down with a fever.

Even the pretty nice looking immigration officer waiting to assist people at the airport failed to interest me. I was told things had improved tremendously of late and you no longer have to stand for hours waiting for your passport to be stamped. Vietnam after all had come of age and is marching furiously into the future embracing all kinds of technology – from the latest mobile phones from China to the most up-to-date computers. Technology can only do so much of course. The way their civil servants do things say a lot about their attitude. For example I am still trying to make sense of the fact that after my boarding card had been issued at the airport why would an immigration officer want to see my return ticket. Or the fact that you had to fill up the arrival and departure cards. The arrival card was taken when you arrive but the departure was just for me to take as a souvenir back to Kuala Lumpur.

Immigration aside, one thing you do not ever want to do is fall sick while on a trip to a place you have never been to before. Kind of put a damper on your sight seeing plans. After lunch and a shot of antibiotics and cough syrup I just decided to sleep it off and declined the offer to go for a tour of the city. Thereby I lost my chance to visit a local market and see skinned dog meat on display. The shock could have either cured me instantly or make me sicker.

The sleep refreshed me somewhat and I woke up at about 2am feeling a whole lot better. I may have opted out of the tour earlier in the day but had no intention of missing dinner. But miss it I already did. I looked out the window of the hotel room and the streets were practically empty. The city also seemed to have grown darker as houses and buildings have switched off their lights. Shops had closed for the night and there was nothing much I can do about the gnawing hunger. I had a dislike for room service because it reminded me of hospital rooms. How I suddenly miss having a 24-hour mamak stall around the corner and popping over for some coffee and roti canai.

Luckily there was an electric kettle in the hotel room to boil water and make coffee. Complimentary from the hotel. In the fridge were also some chocolates. Chargeable of course. There was this small bar of chocolate which is quite popular in Malaysian shops which you can pick up for about RM1.50 or so. Much as I also dislike consuming food from hotel mini-bars I was left with very little choice. I had a little snack hoping to avoid dying of starvation before the breakfast buffet opens in the morning. Three days later when I was checking out of the hotel I was slapped with a bill of some US$5 for the bar of chocolate. That was the most expensive packet of Kit Kat I ever paid for and is likely ever to pay for.