Tales of woe from world travels. Photo / Getty
We asked for your best — or should that be "worst" — tales of travel illness. Be warned: some of these make for difficult reading ...
Genoa nurse? Bring them here quickly!
Around this time last year, we began a three-week escorted bus tour around the UK to celebrate our retirement after a life of hard slog. The trip also included back-to-back cruises around the Mediterranean. This was our first holiday in more than 20 years so we were very excited.
On day one of the bus trip, a Canadian lady boarded the bus with a nasty cough, which she seemed quite happy to share with us all. She hacked, sniffed and sneezed all day every day, and she made no attempt to stifle her expulsion of germs into the bus atmosphere, and there was no intervention by the tour guide or bus driver. If only they had asked her to wear a Tecmask!
Each day more of the 46 fellow passengers would go down with a cold or chest infection, resulting in many visits to local pharmacies for medications, including the tour guide, plus one poor chap who ended up in a Glasgow hospital emergency department as he couldn't breathe.
By the time the trip was completed, 43 out of 46 passengers were unwell to varying degrees and feeling miserable. I lasted until day 16 and then it hit me hard, as by this time I was surrounded by coughs and colds on all sides. My husband suggested we should start up a coughing choir as we trundled along in the British countryside.
But it became quite serious for me after making it to Genoa to embark on the first of our cruises. We were staying overnight in a hotel and by the following morning, I was rushed off to hospital by ambulance where it was discovered I had viral bronchitis and my blood oxygen levels were seriously low and my temperature seriously high. I was pumped full of antibiotics so that it didn't turn to pneumonia and had to receive oxygen. This went on for three days, and if anyone complains to me about our public health system here in New Zealand I will gladly compare the questionable patient care received in the Italian hospital I was in. It would make your hair curl!
But wait, it gets worse! I was told by the hospital doctor that I must not go on the cruises and should go home as soon as I got clearance to do so. The travel insurance company grounded me and insisted I stay in a Genoa hotel for two weeks until I was finally cleared to fly home. I wasn't up to going far so I stared at Italian TV, not understanding a word, trying not to develop cabin fever while my poor husband walked the streets alone and reported back to me what he had seen. Genoa is not very flash from all accounts.
After endless visits to the hospital for more tests, some of which had us leaving the hospital very late at night, and even gone midnight on one occasion, the travel insurance company arranged our flight home. New Zealand never looked so good! But to add to our "experience" the insurance company then tried to get out of paying for the enforced stay in the hotel. We had to take our claim to dispute where sense prevailed and we were eventually paid out.
It was a trip from hell, something which could probably have been avoided if the Canadian lady had worn a mask, or better still not been allowed on the trip in the first place. It was the first time I had been ill in 30 years and something I never want to repeat. So the next time on my travels I encounter a cougher, sniffer, or sneezer I will slap on my own mask — hopefully, a Tecmask!
-Carol Johnson, Orewa
Peeling unwell
In 1979, I was travelling overland to the UK with my boyfriend. In Nepal, we arranged to catch a bus from Kathmandu to Pokhara. It was a local service and the old bus was quite charming with its open windows and overcrowding. The roof was piled high with luggage and chicken cages.
We took our seats and I tried not to doubt the driver's skill or the quality of his vehicle, as we drove around sharp bends on winding mountain roads. We were seated behind a local woman travelling with a boy of about 13. Like me, he had taken the window seat, and on his lap, he had a basket of oranges. A short time into the journey he started peeling and eating his oranges, flinging the skins out the window.
The bus climbed higher into the mountains. The smell of diesel wafted back to us. More people got on, with babies, with baskets, with chickens. We were jam-packed in a tiny Meccano bus chugging up a mountainside road in remote, rural Nepal.
As the bus got slower we were all feeling the effects of motion sickness. The boy kept eating his oranges. And then he was violently ill, through the open window, over and over.
Each time he threw up, through our shared window space, bits of partially digested orange landed on my face, and in my hair. And all the way to Pokhara, he ate and threw up — ignoring my mimed, and anguished, pleas to stop eating those bloody oranges.
-Frances Sinton, Ponsonby
For christening's sake
My horror sickness story occurred following a Mediterranean cruise, which we had done prior to travelling to London to attend the christening of my infant grandson.
Near the end of the cruise, a lot of passengers had fallen sick; my husband and I thought we had avoided it. But my daughter picked us up at Heathrow, and on the journey into London, she had to stop the car for me to vomit in the gutter. By the time we reached her home, I felt ghastly. The christening was held the following day but, of course, I had to miss it, and the party following it, living in fear of passing on the bug to other family members and guests.
-Iris Jillett, Whakatane
Atlas shrugs
Eighteen and full of hope, I boarded an overnight bus heading towards the Atlas Mountains in deepest Morocco. My travel companions and I thought we were being sensible by eating a nice big meal before the long journey. It transpired that the nice big meal was full of nice juicy bacteria and this quickly became apparent not long into the bumpy bus ride.
Long story short: we were stranded in the Atlas Mountains for a week, with some very intense group bonding over makeshift bucket toilets while being wonderfully cared for by some very compassionate hostel managers. They taught us all valuable life lessons: never eat poultry if it's been left out on a counter, and cola mixed with milk will ease pretty much any stomach, eventually ... It's still a standout holiday memory to this day.
-Tracy Wallace Mt Roskill
• We'll be sending out Tecmasks to all of these readers. We've got 15 face masks to share. The masks come with some sort of fancy filtration system that wards off 99 per cent of BFE and PFE particles smaller than 2.5 microns. Plus, they're comfortable to wear and look pretty cool. We'll share more readers sickness stories next week - drop us a line if you have a tale to tell.
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