Intestinal problems during holiday in Thailand
Those who come to Thailand for the first time will notice it: hygiene and food safety are clearly different than in the Netherlands or Belgium. You can therefore be affected by traveler's diarrhea or considerable food poisoning.
Most expats are not bothered by it because they have already become quite immune to the conditions in Thailand.
Thailand risk country
If you look around Thailand, you will see that food hygiene is not very good. Meat and fish lie in the burning sun for hours on markets. Wash hands? You won't see many Thais doing that. Usually the hands are only rinsed with water. Soap? Never heard of it.
Thailand is therefore in the top 5 of countries where you are most at risk of traveler's diarrhoea. The 'Land of Smiles' is according to one British research even at number 3. Only in Egypt and India are you more likely to get traveller's diarrhoea.
Traveler's diarrhea affects more than 40 percent of travelers. In most cases, nothing serious is going on and the illness lasts one to five days. Nevertheless, digestive problems cause a change in time use in 40 percent of cases, and a few days of rest are required in 20 to 30 percent of cases.
Prevention
Your stomach can be quite upset by contaminated food or polluted water. Therefore, do not drink tap water, only buy mineral water or other drinks from well-sealed bottles or cans and be careful with ice cubes in your drink.
When it comes to food, it's smart to buy packaged food or eat at well-run restaurants. Food from street stalls can be delicious, but presents more danger than eating in a reputable restaurant. You can take a chance if contagious goods such as chicken, fish or meat are well chilled and the food is prepared on the spot and served really hot. Peeled fruit, salads or unpackaged ice cream are always risky. In addition, be careful when buying food in the early morning. Sometimes it's about food left over from the previous day.
Diarrhea
Traveller's diarrhea is a very annoying condition that can spoil the holiday fun. The remedy is: drink a lot, stay near the toilet and get sick. The intestinal complaints should then be over in three to five days. If not, go to the doctor. This certainly applies to blood and mucus in the stool and/or high fever. The main danger of diarrhea is dehydration. This can occur if the diarrhea is severe, if you also have to vomit or get a fever, if you can't drink much and if you stay in a warm environment. You not only lose a lot of moisture, but also minerals.
How do you recognize dehydration?
You become a bit drowsy, have a dry mouth, suffer from dizziness or headache, you hardly urinate anymore and the urine is very dark in color. In that case, it is important to see a doctor as soon as possible. And when in doubt, too, because dehydration can have very serious consequences, such as unconsciousness, kidney disease and shock.
You can prevent a lot of trouble by taking ORS (Oral Rehydration Salts) with you in your luggage. This is a mixture of salts and sugars. Dissolved in water, it ensures that water is absorbed extra quickly into the body. The intestines need sugars and salts to absorb sufficient fluids in the body. You can make your own travel ORS by dissolving eight level teaspoons of sugar and one level teaspoon of salt in one liter of clean water.
You really have to drink a lot with diarrhoea, at least a large glass every time you have to go to the toilet. Traveler's diarrhea is very contagious. If a travel companion gets diarrhoea, be extra careful yourself. For example, use a separate toilet and do not drink from the same bottle.
I think it has everything to do with how the food is made here with spices, vegetables and sauces that most people never eat at home, not to mention the chilli that is in a lot of food. If you have diarrhea you should buy a few bottles of Coca Cola, take off the cap and put it next to the refrigerator. When the cola is 'dead' you have to drink it. Got this tip from a doctor who also prescribes it to his patients.
I myself have very good experiences with the drug Imodium.
Easily available in the Tesco Lotus.
Also check out “www.imodium.nl” for the complete information
Works very quickly, usually only need a day of medication.
Soon afterwards delicious Thai dishes again.
Always Imodium – active ingredient is Loperamide – with me on long journeys. Do realize that this remedy does absolutely nothing against the actual food poisoning, but only stops the intestinal movement.
True what you say and therein lies the danger. Diarrhea and vomiting is a natural reaction of the body to remove the pathogen (tainted food) from the body as quickly as possible. Disrupting that process can also be dangerous. I wait a while before taking loperamide to make sure the junk is out of my body.
Indeed, the pathogen must first leave the body. Sometimes you don't have the time for that, for example if you have to board the plane within a few hours and that loperamide comes in handy. As long as you don't consider it a 'medicine'!
Floxa 400 (capsules) is the miracle pill for me. For sale at every pharmacy (in appropriate brown packaging).
Quote: “Food from street stalls can be delicious, but it presents more danger than eating in a reputable restaurant”.
I totally disagree with this.
The stalls buy their food fresh every day. It is used quickly and stir-fried super hot. I've only gotten really sick once from bad food and that was in a good restaurant. You don't want to know what goes on in a kitchen. How was something in or outside the fridge? My motto is: Just eat at well-run stalls. The least risk of food poisoning.
Yes, ice cream and fruit will always be careful. But also vegetables that have not been washed properly. It is sometimes full of poison / pesticide that is widely used in Thailand.
I completely agree. Last March on Koh Samui-Lamai had food prepared every day in the evening on the square at market stalls. Delicious.
The day before departure, we ate in a "good" restaurant to say goodbye. My wife was terribly sick the next morning and so was I soon after. On a plane to the Netherlands was no fun.
In November we will go to Koh Samui again. Where possible, we have our food prepared at a well-running street stall!
This is not correct. There are several stalls in my street. There they simply use the vegetables again the next day. They store them in a blue box with ice cubes. Hygiene is nowhere to be found.
The noodle soup is made with pig entrails. A lot of fat etc. And sometimes you see people just pick some greens from a certain tree and that goes into soup and meals unwashed.
They use way too much sugar in their meals and especially too many peppers like cili etc.
And they handle everything with their bare hands.
And the washing-up water comes from jugs because they don't have a tap outside, so that washing-up water sometimes looks very dirty.
And those people buy their meat on the market, where everyone handles it without gloves and looks at it, etc.
If you buy a rice meal somewhere, it is often cold, just like chicken.
Once you have had real food poisoning, you will never eat Thai food again, I can assure you.
I speak from experience.
Indeed. I was once sick for 5 days. Had dinner in a Chinese restaurant in the “Sofitel” in Kon Kaen. Not exactly the cheapest tent, though. By the way, that's the only time I've been sick in Thailand in over 10 years. In Bali, however, we were constantly sick, even in the more luxurious hotels.
You just have to watch where you eat and be sensible with fruit and vegetables yourself.
Well friends here is our experience.
Five years ago we started in Singapore and then traveled through Asia by bus and plane. In addition, we have eaten everywhere and never had a problem, neither from the street nor in restaurants. In fact, we believe that Asian food is a lot healthier than Western, provided that it is eaten without too many powerful spices, because our delicate intestinal bacteria cannot handle that very well! Water and all its derivatives is another matter. Only drink bottled water is our advice.
He does not see the danger in the food stalls. Here the food is well prepared and the turnover rate is often high. My experience is that everything is fresh and freshly prepared.
The danger lies in our thirst. We buy a bottle of ice-cold water and drink it (too) quickly. This upsets our stomachs, with all its consequences.
I have also noticed that when I drink milk every day (I am also used to this in the Netherlands) it bothers me even less. In recent years I have no longer suffered from diarrhea.
I have lived in Thailand for 5 years now and only eat Thai food and have never had any issues.
But what Frans de Beer writes is where we drink too cold water with our hot food.
I never drink cold water and never eat food that has just been prepared, it is lukewarm with me and I like it for 5 years and I have never been to a doctor or hospital in that time..
I have been coming to Thailand for 15 years now, have Crohn's disease and extremely sensitive intestines. I can't get diarrhea at all. Thailand in particular, but also Malaysia, are safe countries for me if you use the basic safety rules, which are: no ice cubes and only drink water from closed bottles. Don't eat homemade ice cream either. For the rest, my wife and I are always impressed by the hygienic handling. I never have any physical complaints. We also just eat on the street side. We like spicy food, maybe the spicy kills the germs?! Anyway, I don't recognize anything from this article.
Fortunately in Asia not or hardly bothered and then usually still of the traveler variant because I jumped into a cold swimming pool / sea. I don't go to Egypt anymore, every time I hit and with a fever of 40 degrees flat in a boat is no fun. In other countries rarely seriously bothered.
Go to a Thai pharmacy and buy tablets for both variants there, better than from here. After 15 years I still have a few, I'm going to refresh them in September.
Eat like a local, but be aware if you're not used to spicy food.
Be aware that papaya, mango, pineapple are laxative! Sticky rice, small bananas, tea, soup with rice and vegetables is a great start in the morning.
Not the first time that I had someone in the group who was bothered, they cut down on that fruit, eat like an Asian, 24 hours later the problem is usually gone.
Incidentally, I do not entirely agree with the large restaurants, for example, the Venezuelan McD suffered a serious infection (I was not the only one, but fortunately I was quickly under control), At a Chinese tourist backpackers pizza place last year, the same. Never in Thailand, not even from the street. But I eat where it is busy, even a large restaurant that is too quiet is asking for trouble.
Washing hands, those Thais are not that crazy after all, hand washing is fine, a little bit of soap hmm, but never ever use disinfectant soap (unless you are injured or treat someone's wound!). Sanitizing soap also removes the comensal bacteria that protect you!
We cheese heads like to hand out candy, stop that. I saw in a bus in Sri Lanka the front right starting to come back to skip me (I don't like sweets) and from the left to the front the brown track went back, skipping me. This was the year of the Detol hand disinfection… And the first to pick it up was a fanatical user.
You can safely take ice cubes. As well as smoothies made with ice. These are made in a factory from good water and not from tap water in people's homes.
Never been sick and ate and drank everything. Intestines always react to the herbs and peppers, but that's normal.
It's not so much that the ice isn't pure. What Frans says is confirmed by the doctors: Because we drink too cold, you also get diarrhea.
A traveler's diarrhea, the causes of which are well described in the above article, can certainly not be ruled out in Thailand. That is why you also see in many restaurants that the meat is very well cooked, which many tourists from Western countries are used to, because they often want to eat it medium. You will also see food stalls everywhere in Thailand, where rinsing the cutlery often gives you something to think about. For many tourists who often and often stay in Thailand, a vaccination against "hepatitis A" is certainly not an exaggeration and a good investment. Hepatitis A is very common there, where hygiene is not so good, and unfortunately Thailand is also included here. Usually a traveler's diarrhea is a thing of the past after a maximum of 5 days, and cannot be compared to the much smarter Diagnosis Hypatitus A, which many never think about.
I've never had traveler's diarrhea here.
Once within two hours of consuming street food, the whole thing vomited again. That had been the entrails of a pig, a Thai friend told me later on the basis of the photos (which were taken before eating). Apparently I can't stand that.
If I have sinned seriously (Big Mac with fries and mayonnaise) then I get stools that float. A sign that you have eaten too much fat.
I have never seen here that they make their own ice cubes from tap water. The cubes are supplied in large bags and are made from water suitable for consumption.
After all, they want customers again tomorrow.
Just keep using your mind and if you don't trust the smell, color or taste of something, don't eat it.
Of course, it is not a country for people with a fear of contamination or for people who are obsessed with their irritable bowel syndrome 24 hours a day…
bye French,
I agree 100% with you, I have been living in a remote region in the Isaan (Bueng Kan province) for over 5 years and I have never had problems with “tourista”. My wife brings me daily plastic bags filled with street food for lunch, and she knows that I need a daily portion of “papaya pokpok” but with only 1 chili … delicious. (papaya pokpok is a salad of unripe papaya with various ingredients such as beans, tomatoes, nuts, (raw !! ) freshwater crabs, dried shrimps, etc ... ) ... for those with a fear of contamination, a nightmare because everything is uncooked.
Ice cubes ? daily fare but not exaggerated, except in my Chang of course, a shame to throw ice cream in there.
Our tap water is groundwater that we pump up ourselves from a depth of 40 m, no problem at all because I use it daily for brushing my teeth, etc.
2 years ago I suffered from a slight tourista…. when I was in Belgium for 5 days due to a death & after eating a portion of mussels… EU food can therefore also be “dangerous” .
Of course, the risk of intestinal infection is greater in TL than in NE or BE. Just as things are starting to get more dangerous in Spain, Portugal, N Africa and so on.
I've known all the tips given above since I was twelve.
The only thing that helps is healthy use. Be careful with raw vegetables, "cold" food, water.
For the rest, it is also not forbidden to use your sense of smell for what it serves.
Simple as pie.
And everyone has setbacks at some point in life, right? And if a brown smear in your underpants is the worst thing you experience, then yes…..
greetz
Traveler's diarrhea is just another word for food poisoning. If everything is cooked, then you will not be bothered by it. but the most dangerous is still chicken. So raw on the bbq and waiting for it to be done can have nasty consequences, I was in the hospital for 4 days with a bacteria.
Why do the Thai (or other locals) have no problem and we with our western tummies do? Simple, because we have already let our own natural defenses decrease due to our exaggerated hygiene requirements.
As a Dutch food safety specialist said to me on a tour of Thai companies: 'I am paid to keep the EU food laws up, NOT to prevent 3/4 of the population from dying if we have 3 months. have a power outage”.
In 1993 my first food contamination in TH: consequence: 1 day in Bangkok-Pattaya hospital. "will not be nice 24 h" was the warning I received for my choice of treatment. But did work.
After that I made sure to pick up my immunity on every trip by contracting an infection; 3-4 days of a drink belly and .. can eat anywhere again. I've never been sick in NL either. For 22 years.
The Thai suffer from it too! But they never say it comes from the food!
I lived in Thailand for 3 years and almost never got sick and ate a lot on the street. If I only go for a 2 months I am guaranteed to be sick for a few days! And usually that can be eaten from crab . This has got to be one of the most polluted beasts in the East. So it's a combination of different eating habits and the fact that you're not used to it.
I have been to South East Asia many times and only got sick once. That was the first time I was there.
My Thai girlfriend ate a raw shrimp dish. In the Netherlands I like to eat a herring and I thought: I can also try a shrimp like that.
For 99% sure that was the cause of my being quite ill for a few days afterwards.
The lesson I learned from that: don't eat raw fish, etc. anymore.
Other than that I eat everything. Also ants and stuff.
Almost always street food or the small eateries where mother and wife hold sway.
Also no exaggerated hygiene as always disinfecting your hands inappropriately. I always have a bottle with me, but have never actually used it. I sometimes see tourists a few times an hour with such a bottle in the back.
Regularly had problems, even with food prepared by the family.
I use Disento (4 tablets in a package), it is not expensive and it is guaranteed to work.
Everything is for sale at the pharmacist in Thailand. Important are the Disento pills and bags with a kind of powder. The bag says Dechamp, you can dissolve this in water so you get enough sodium and vitamin C. The pharmacist can ask you about Disento pills and they will know what else you need.
It's not just food poisoning.
The bacteria you find in Thailand are not the same as those you find in the Netherlands.
So your body does not know it and that temporarily causes a war in your intestines between the residents there and the immigrants.
The same goes for wounds.
Wounds on my hands due to an accident, which I give a lick to in the Netherlands, I have to disinfect here, because otherwise they heal badly.
Completely agree with you. Our immune system just works differently, I had an insect bite last year, where I still needed considerable after-treatment in Europe. Thai just swim in the klongs, nothing to worry about. My husband gave it a try and an hour later he was on the pot. It's exactly the same with food. Many herbs and spices are unknown to our body, and if a splash of ice-cold drink is added afterwards, you have the dolls dancing
Of course you cannot compare the hygiene principle that we know from Thailand with the Netherlands or Belgium, which is actually a pity given the much higher temperatures and the rapid spread of bacteria. If you often watch the preparation of the food, you can often see that they are completely unaware of any dangers of spreading bacteria. Occasionally you will see someone who has heard the bell ringing somewhere, and has put on a pair of plastic gloves for the Show. I call it extra Show, because with the same hands she also handles the money, which has previously passed through thousands of hands. We are used to say that money does not stink, but this seems to be the case for Thai money if you smell it, even if you visit a market in the country, where the meat is often full of flies in the burning sun, you don't have to have much imagination in terms of hygiene. Many people who don't see everything, or try to justify themselves, who in the Netherlands and Belgium, with the smallest offence, immediately threaten with the existing commodity laws.
I always take imodium with me for diarrhea
and to my surprise last year you can also buy this in every pharmacy in Thailand also in bigC
Imodium from Janssens made in Belgium
you can also always ask for thai pills in a pharmacy loosely packed in a plastic bag
In Thailand, as far as I can remember in nearly 35 years, I may have had an upset stomach once or twice. And I eat everywhere. But I don't eat everything. I hardly eat shrimp and although I like sushi, I will never buy the sushi that is sold in markets today.
I take ice in my drink, eat nice and sharp and last night I even ate a salad without thinking in a restaurant nearby.
I remember when I used to visit India more often. We were crew in a Sheraton or Hilton. New Delhi was our stopover on our way to Hong Kong at the time. I had diarrhea almost every time I arrived in Hong Kong. And I always ate at the hotel.
Once we had a layover in Jordan. I then went south to Eilat on the Red Sea with a colleague. We were warned about the food. When we came back the day before departure, it turned out that the entire crew who had stayed in the hotel had been ill…
Also on flights to Asia, especially Thailand, we were warned not to eat on the street. I never actually listened to it and just ate what I felt like. Never had any problems.
But maybe I have a strong defense…. I don't know. Maybe I was lucky???
Take diarine and buy it in Thailand with special bags to dissolve in water, against dehydration.