Throwing up in Cambodia

Two years ago I had the good fortune to travel to South East Asia with my wife. (She wasn’t my wife then). I’ve had never been and I’ve been sort of a Europe snob when it came to travel. Italy is still awesome. But Michelle had been there and done that — she’s even gone to Africa. So she suggested we go to Vietnam and Cambodia for a trip. I reluctantly agreed. And really, it was a great trip — different from any trip I’ve been on prior to that.

But rather than post extensively on my trip to Cambodia and Vietnam (others have done it far better than I could), I thought I would share a photo from the trip.

I love to travel and I think I’m a pretty good traveller rather than a tourist. But here, I failed miserably. We were in the semi-jungles of Cambodia, in Siem Reap to be exact. I had come down with a fever of some sort. Michelle and I were at a food stall outside the world famous temples of Angkor Wat.

Then I knew I was going to throw up. I motioned to the proprietor, a very nice lady, that I needed to throw up. We didn’t speak Khmer, so I think my hand motions from mouth to the floor didn’t help. I frantically looked around and there was nothing in the food stall except for three tables, a large cauldron in the back where our food was prepared, open air, the thatch roof, no walls, and a dirt floor.

At a certain point, I stepped away from the table and up-chucked (do people still use this word? or do they use throw-up or barf or the east-coastian, “boot”?) all over the dirt floor.

I am a loud barfer.

The lady gave me some tea and rubbed my back while I was trying to wipe the vomit-spittle off of the sides of my mouth. Post-barfing always feels great. But I was done. I was dehydrated. I killed the poor lady’s business for the rest of the day, because what rational tourist would want to eat there after I barfed everywhere? I left a pretty generous tip which I hoped would cover the lost business.

The great thing about dirt floors is that you don’t have to clean up vomit off of it — you just let it dry and kick dirt over it.