When the holiday designed to revive, depletes you instead
There’s a place that exists where eating fried and processed food for every meal and practising poor hygiene is good for your health.
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It’s not a parallel universe; it’s right here on Earth.
It’s called Bali.
That might not be entirely true, but it’s my youngest child’s theory that those two practices are what kept him safe from the dreaded Bali belly when his older brother and myself were struck down with it on holiday to the Indonesian island last week.
As daring as he was as a toddler, sticking anything and everything in his mouth, he’s far less adventurous as a 15-year-old.
He turned his nose up at the banana leaf-wrapped spicy rice, a crispy duck dish and runny egg atop a mi goreng, and opted simply for French fries at restaurants.
Or, when he did feel a little bold but changed his mind as soon as the foreign delicacy arrived before him and he did little more than push it around his plate, he’d ask to visit an M Mart on the way back to our villa for a bag of potato chips to satiate any appetite that crept back through the night.
As sweaty as the humidity of a tropical wet season made us, he thought swimming in the plunge pool was enough of a wash.
I don’t have the energy to argue with him while we’re on holidays, to be fair, nor to continuously remind him to make sure he keeps his mouth closed in the shower, so no parasitic water can enter his body through his mouth.
So, I allowed him to just do what he was comfortable with.
Halfway through our holiday when we’d settled in and acclimatised, I booked a day trip.
All was well the night before when I hit ‘pay now’. What could disrupt our plans?
In the morning, I was enjoying the fresh morning air and the birds chirping around me as I showered in our beautiful tropical outdoor bathroom when I heard someone in the villa next door retching.
Oh, you poor bugger, I thought.
I returned to the bedroom and told the kids that the man in the next villa must have Bali belly because he just hurled over and over again.
My middle child said: “That was me. You were in the bathroom so I had to go down the side.”
You know, this was my third time in Bali and my 20-somethingth time in South-East Asia, and not once had I had Bali belly.
I’d naively thought my kids would have inherited my cast-iron gut.
Immediately, my mum guilt set in.
I felt like I’d just made him walk a plank, straight into an illness that seemingly most people get when they visit this ‘idyllic’ paradise.
The worst thing I could have done at that point was Google it and read that it could last up to five days or more.
Was the rest of his holiday going to be ruined?
By 8pm, my own cast iron gut’s fortitude had shattered and we were getting our value out of our villa’s bathroom as we took turns using it through the night.
All of a sudden an outdoor bathroom made more sense than just aesthetics and ambience.
Thankfully, by morning, we were both okay again, just a little depleted.
But what it does to the affected ones is put them off eating much for the ensuing days.
What it does for the unaffected ones is make them nervous that their time is also coming.
One of my worst fears is it striking during the flight home.
And because my youngest had been spared the whole trip, I was anxiously awaiting Murphy’s Law to kick his ass.
It didn’t, phew, but the heightened worry wasn’t conducive to the relaxing holiday I’d hoped for.
I’d been feeling burnt out before we left and was looking forward to just unwinding.
It was a trip booked spontaneously at the last minute after I looked at my November and December calendars and saw just one window free to get a break before Christmas.
I struck while the iron was hot, but I think the lesson I learnt this time was that maybe the iron wouldn’t have burned me if I’d waited for it to cool down.
There’s something to be said for thinking things through a little more than my restless head allows me to at times.
My eldest, who has an intense fear of vomiting, declined my invitation to this destination for the reasons we ended up proving his intuition works for him.
I wasn’t comfortable with leaving him, but he’s an adult now and I have to learn to let go.
But then, my discomfort was validated when he was involved in a car accident here while we were away.
Thankfully no-one was hurt, he wasn’t driving and it wasn’t his car, but it was a stark reminder of how the universe holds all control, not us.
And how somewhere so close, can seem so far away.
While we did have a good time in Bali overall — I will share more about our experiences there soon — I will be working on teaching myself how to ‘holiday’ at home.
I’m getting too old for chaos.