I tread lightly here because I greatly admire the author. Although I have always been a "fully vaccinated" traveler, I have re-assessed vaccines. Yet that is not why I comment.
On "Travelers' Diarrhea," even the CDC acknowledges that use of antibiotics shortens the course of sickness by 1-2 days. I'm pretty sure the CDC used to discourage antibiotic treatment for TD on the grounds that such use increases resistant strains. In any case, shortening TD by 1-2 days is quite a bit of time when one is traveling. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/yellowbook/2024/preparing/antibiotics-in-travelers-diarrhea
Here's what I have long questioned: The admonition that we should always take the full course of antibiotics to avoid encouraging antibiotic resistance. I am not an evolutionary biologist. I am just a lawyer. Yet the "full course" dogma has never made any sense to me. In fact, I would think the opposite is true. It is taking antibiotics for too long that may encourage resistance. The point is lightly discussed here:
But the "persisters" argument about lingering bugs still doesn't make sense to me.
In the end I remain highly skeptical that one must take the "full course" of antibiotics to avoid increasing resistant strains of antibiotics. How do the persisters magically gain resistance if they would have only been killed had they been exposed to the compound that didn't already kill them?
If the argument is that we would be better off with fewer bacteria in the world, and less antibiotics means more bacteria, that seems silly.
I eat street food, but I have cast iron digestion from a very unsanitary childhood. My husband is usually more careful and wound up with amoebic dyssentery in Peru. The medical system that treated him was exceptional. Knowing oneself is important in this.
As for Las Vegas, it can be an adventure, just stay away from The Strip and the casinos. Incredible food and neighborhoods. I live about an hour away and I love adventuring there. Same for Los Angeles, I lived there 5 years and never went to Disneyland, but I went to Little Saigon, Monterrey Park, Korea Town, etc... So much adventuring to do there.
Tomorrow we are going to Querétaro and Friday we head up to the Sierra Gorda where people leave doors unlocked and I did not meet anyone who spoke English. There is an archeological park were locals walk their dogs. It has yet to be discovered except by locals who head up to escape the heat in summer. I had locally prepared food that was not "organic", they simply never stopped raising food the old ways.
I had a session with a local herbalist who about a half hour in told me how happy she was that I was not asking about hallucinogens. She said most Americans she talks to only want to get high. She told me about how no one in their community wore masks or got vaccinated and no one got very sick. They ate traditional food and took traditional herbs. Wonderful adventure.
I always eat indigenous food everywhere I go as it prevents illness. This was extra true in Lithuania where our Lithuanian friends were eating junk and got sick. We ate old school and were strong.
Thanks for another thought-provoking post, Heather. As an "away schooling" family of three, our peripatetic little tribe (dear wifey, dear daughter and yours truly) revel in experiences outside the comfort zone.
Last year we ventured to Georgia, Armenia and several countries we decided to tell our own parents about only after our safe return. As with moderate exposure to adventurous foods, we find being outside one's cultural, political, spiritual, etc. comfort zones also offers certain "anti-fragilizing" benefits.
As Mark Twain wrote in his marvelous travelogue, The Innocents Abroad, "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness."
Moreover, it's hard for bad actors (governments in particular) to divide and conquer, to promote fear of "the other," when you've broken bread with your neighbors... harder still after you've been through an all-too-human bout of Montezuma's revenge together!
I subscribed just to comment. Yes! I fully agree on the food. It is not without risk. My stomach got accustomed to the bugs in Danang and Saigon over the course of four years. The ban may, the "howard johnson" pho stands, the exotic food restaurants (which we would read about again when Covid came around). So I boldly tried the street food in Phnom Penh. And was chained to the hotel toilet for a couple of days.
My best travel experiences were with Habitat for Humanity in Nicaragua, Portugal and Brazil. Building alongside the future homeowners. Which were upper middle, lower, and middle middle class in those locations. You need to practice that high school Spanish before you go, and recognize that Portuguese is a beast of a very different color. Back to food, you appreciate what it takes to survive, and also the fact that simple, healthy food makes for healthy people.
Read about the blue zones. The food in Okinawa and the Nicoya Peninsula makes total sense.
Most exotic experience was with the Kayapo Indians. I swam in the Rio Fresca - only after watching our hosts. It was from there that they caught the piranha that they cooked for our dinner, and where a caiman waited like a tame poodle for scraps as they cleaned the fish. A caiman is a fish-eater, and this guy was smaller than us. No problem.
I was young at the time, early 60s. Ah, the memories.
Additional note: From what I have read about vaccines over the past three years, I would agree with Jim Marlow. I have a full vaccination card - childhood, Vietnam, military, and tropical travel - and have had no problems. But I have learned to strongly distrust them. Among other things, my firstborn son is weird in ways that correlate with anecdotal accounts of vaccine injury.
I feel a bit out of the loop on this post. The only foreign country that I have ever been to is Canada which barely counts as a foreign country. And I have always been a finicky eater. Very conservative, I rarely appreciate surprises on my plate. And I actually worry about finding something I like a lot and not being able to get it anytime I crave it. That said, I am hardly a germophobe. It is not questions of sanitation that make me avoid food trucks. I encourage others to embrace the dirt like I do. Our immune systems are amazingly evolved and quite capable of dealing with pathogens if they are exercised but not overstimulated (looking at you, mRNA therapy and boosters). Like many today I will never look at vaccines as uncritically as before the plan-demic and may find even less justification in travel because of them.
What did you say then that you wouldn't today? That's an easy one: Get fully vaccinated. I'm certain there are some vaccines you would still highly recommend -- maybe typhoid and yellow fever? -- but in a day when "fully vaccinated" means COVID shots, no way.
I'm of two minds when it comes to defining travel. My absolute favorite way to visit another culture -- and we've done this on six continents -- is to stay with someone who lives or has lived there. But Viking Cruises also gets our business: they're a pleasant way to cover a lot of ground, and if I don't have a chance to get immersed in the culture, I'd say the chance to touch the Berlin Wall, to get accidentally caught in a Corpus Christi Day parade in Gdansk, and to see the shipyard where Solidarity was founded is still of inestimable value.
One of the absolute highlights of our visit to the Gambia was eating meals with Gambian families in their homes. It was a great honor, and the last thing we wanted to do was to insult our hosts. But we were only there for two weeks, and didn't want to spend any of that time sick, either. However, we did not find it difficult to limit ourselves to cooked foods and hot drinks, which strategy kept us in abundant good health.
And the food was delicious. It's sad that Gambian restaurants aren't more available in the U.S. A Senegalese restaurant will do in a pinch, though they can also be hard to find. One of my favorite memories of a visit to New York City was being the only white Christian customers in a Muslim Senegalese restaurant smack dab in the middle of an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood.
as I never have, and don't anticipate ever traveling outside the U.S., this is my only, second-hand experience:
my nephew had the opportunity to travel to Guatemala while in college, earning a degree in anthropology (and writing a paper about local medicinal botany). he was 100% sheltered by a host family, who were instructed to cook a certain way and only use the provided bottled water. my nephew was told quite firmly NOT to eat any street food. he blew off that advice, near the end of his stay and was violently ill within 24 hours, with an intestinal parasite and had to be treated with flagyl. he was fine within 4 or 5 days but of course my sister was loosing her mind over it as she didn't want him to go in the first place. he's her only child and she 'babied' him massively, well into his twenties. he'll be 29 this May, still lives at home and probably always will. I think the Guatemala trip was his one shot at rebellion. doubt he'll be doing THAT again, lol.
regarding travel vaccines - the best advice I have heard is for the individual to do a deep dive risk/benefit analysis in order to make an informed decision. the worst advice: get every jab available a few days before traveling. you will likely be sicker than shit your entire trip and gain zero benefit. (yes, stupid people actually do this.)
personally - I unequivocally reject ALL vaccines. never had a flu shot, never will. I'm 63, probably had 3 vaccines my entire life, back as a child. I quit jabbing my kids over 15 yrs ago, after both suffered injuries (one recovered, one did not.) covid jab? not in a million, billion years. no way. no how.
Just wanted to say thank you to say thank you for your sponsor Free Spoke. It came at the perfect time. I was doing research on what the vaccine booster effects might have on the immune system. (My husband and sister who got boosters can't seem to not have a cold, I thanks to you, only got the first shot-to keep my job). A couple of months before I'd at least get a few heterodox hits. Now it's all mainstream. Pages and pages.
It's the parameters set on the ai now that it's been integrated into google search. So google search is dead to me. This bringing me back to Free Spoke. Thanks again.
Reading can be like a form of travel because I always seem to get lost or diverted whenever I read. I think though, that this is one of the reasons I enjoy it so much especially since I have never really had the means to travel too much farther than the place I call home. I loved thinking about being somewhere else and eating from a street food cart. The last time I did that was in nearby college town where I indulged in falafel. I know this isn't exactly what Heather was talking about, but it was the popular food of the college set; they would eat it after the bars closed. At the time I learned firsthand that this food helps absorb, or at least I imagined it did, some of the alcohol previously consumed hours and hours before.
Anyway...back to the words I pulled from this Natural Selections that sent me in another direction and got me thinking about another thing, "You do need to demonstrate that you are making an effort, however—that goes a very long way." and, "You can’t predict what all will happen if you do so—in that lies some of the risk, and also opens the possibility for transcendent experience."
In these very strange and uncomfortable times, I believe we should all be guided by this advice...(noted: not medical). Opening ourselves up to engaging in conversation with another actual human being, in person, and in realtime, listening to and hearing what they have to say about what they think, feel, or believe even if it goes against our grain, or our thoughts, our feelings, or our beliefs could possibly be a "transcendent experience". And just like keeping in mind that we may need to steady our guts when we eat the foods from another country or culture, that we should steady our hearts and minds in order to engage in a human exchange in a human manner.
My wife and I accompanied our daughter and her husband to China as they adopted the second of their three Chinese children. Besides the usual tourism, we met bureaucrats and 'just folks'. Needless to say, a great experience.
And I like Chinese food, so, hey! But one time, while we were in Guangzhou, we decided to meet up with some of our cohorts who were staying on the other side of the city. We got in a taxi and watched the scenery go by. I saw the signs gradually change from Mandarin to Arabic. We were in the Muslim section of the city. Once there, we debated where to eat, and ended up at an Italian restaurant. Having eaten Italian in both Italy and the USA, I would say this was more of an American Italian restaurant than an Italian Italian restaurant. American Italian food in the Muslim section of a Chinese city!
If you’re ever in El Salvador, please try the national dish called “pupusas,” the national dish. They’re available as street food everywhere in the country.
Pupusas also tend to come with “curtido” as a garnish which is similar to sauerkraut but with tomato sauce and often a bit of spice.
I am all about eating local food. I do think it is ok to take precautions though. I happily ate some street tacos with raw lettuce on a remote island in Mexico and wound up with a nasty intestinal parasite. We went for a wedding and almost everyone who went ended up getting very ill from eating street food. It’s so hard to know what will or will not cause major illness. I was sick for months after that. In the future I will still be comfortable eating cooked food but I will take the safe route with the raw. Probably depends on where I go too. Thanks for the thought provoking essay!
I tread lightly here because I greatly admire the author. Although I have always been a "fully vaccinated" traveler, I have re-assessed vaccines. Yet that is not why I comment.
On "Travelers' Diarrhea," even the CDC acknowledges that use of antibiotics shortens the course of sickness by 1-2 days. I'm pretty sure the CDC used to discourage antibiotic treatment for TD on the grounds that such use increases resistant strains. In any case, shortening TD by 1-2 days is quite a bit of time when one is traveling. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/yellowbook/2024/preparing/antibiotics-in-travelers-diarrhea
Here's what I have long questioned: The admonition that we should always take the full course of antibiotics to avoid encouraging antibiotic resistance. I am not an evolutionary biologist. I am just a lawyer. Yet the "full course" dogma has never made any sense to me. In fact, I would think the opposite is true. It is taking antibiotics for too long that may encourage resistance. The point is lightly discussed here:
https://theconversation.com/doctors-may-be-prescribing-antibiotics-for-longer-than-needed-112609
Inspiration for the reassessment of "full course" dogma came from here: https://www.bmj.com/content/358/bmj.j3418
Then back to another piece supposedly refuting it here:
https://theconversation.com/why-you-really-should-take-your-full-course-of-antibiotics-81704
But the "persisters" argument about lingering bugs still doesn't make sense to me.
In the end I remain highly skeptical that one must take the "full course" of antibiotics to avoid increasing resistant strains of antibiotics. How do the persisters magically gain resistance if they would have only been killed had they been exposed to the compound that didn't already kill them?
If the argument is that we would be better off with fewer bacteria in the world, and less antibiotics means more bacteria, that seems silly.
I eat street food, but I have cast iron digestion from a very unsanitary childhood. My husband is usually more careful and wound up with amoebic dyssentery in Peru. The medical system that treated him was exceptional. Knowing oneself is important in this.
As for Las Vegas, it can be an adventure, just stay away from The Strip and the casinos. Incredible food and neighborhoods. I live about an hour away and I love adventuring there. Same for Los Angeles, I lived there 5 years and never went to Disneyland, but I went to Little Saigon, Monterrey Park, Korea Town, etc... So much adventuring to do there.
Tomorrow we are going to Querétaro and Friday we head up to the Sierra Gorda where people leave doors unlocked and I did not meet anyone who spoke English. There is an archeological park were locals walk their dogs. It has yet to be discovered except by locals who head up to escape the heat in summer. I had locally prepared food that was not "organic", they simply never stopped raising food the old ways.
I had a session with a local herbalist who about a half hour in told me how happy she was that I was not asking about hallucinogens. She said most Americans she talks to only want to get high. She told me about how no one in their community wore masks or got vaccinated and no one got very sick. They ate traditional food and took traditional herbs. Wonderful adventure.
I always eat indigenous food everywhere I go as it prevents illness. This was extra true in Lithuania where our Lithuanian friends were eating junk and got sick. We ate old school and were strong.
Thanks for another thought-provoking post, Heather. As an "away schooling" family of three, our peripatetic little tribe (dear wifey, dear daughter and yours truly) revel in experiences outside the comfort zone.
Last year we ventured to Georgia, Armenia and several countries we decided to tell our own parents about only after our safe return. As with moderate exposure to adventurous foods, we find being outside one's cultural, political, spiritual, etc. comfort zones also offers certain "anti-fragilizing" benefits.
As Mark Twain wrote in his marvelous travelogue, The Innocents Abroad, "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness."
Moreover, it's hard for bad actors (governments in particular) to divide and conquer, to promote fear of "the other," when you've broken bread with your neighbors... harder still after you've been through an all-too-human bout of Montezuma's revenge together!
I subscribed just to comment. Yes! I fully agree on the food. It is not without risk. My stomach got accustomed to the bugs in Danang and Saigon over the course of four years. The ban may, the "howard johnson" pho stands, the exotic food restaurants (which we would read about again when Covid came around). So I boldly tried the street food in Phnom Penh. And was chained to the hotel toilet for a couple of days.
My best travel experiences were with Habitat for Humanity in Nicaragua, Portugal and Brazil. Building alongside the future homeowners. Which were upper middle, lower, and middle middle class in those locations. You need to practice that high school Spanish before you go, and recognize that Portuguese is a beast of a very different color. Back to food, you appreciate what it takes to survive, and also the fact that simple, healthy food makes for healthy people.
Read about the blue zones. The food in Okinawa and the Nicoya Peninsula makes total sense.
Most exotic experience was with the Kayapo Indians. I swam in the Rio Fresca - only after watching our hosts. It was from there that they caught the piranha that they cooked for our dinner, and where a caiman waited like a tame poodle for scraps as they cleaned the fish. A caiman is a fish-eater, and this guy was smaller than us. No problem.
I was young at the time, early 60s. Ah, the memories.
Additional note: From what I have read about vaccines over the past three years, I would agree with Jim Marlow. I have a full vaccination card - childhood, Vietnam, military, and tropical travel - and have had no problems. But I have learned to strongly distrust them. Among other things, my firstborn son is weird in ways that correlate with anecdotal accounts of vaccine injury.
I feel a bit out of the loop on this post. The only foreign country that I have ever been to is Canada which barely counts as a foreign country. And I have always been a finicky eater. Very conservative, I rarely appreciate surprises on my plate. And I actually worry about finding something I like a lot and not being able to get it anytime I crave it. That said, I am hardly a germophobe. It is not questions of sanitation that make me avoid food trucks. I encourage others to embrace the dirt like I do. Our immune systems are amazingly evolved and quite capable of dealing with pathogens if they are exercised but not overstimulated (looking at you, mRNA therapy and boosters). Like many today I will never look at vaccines as uncritically as before the plan-demic and may find even less justification in travel because of them.
What did you say then that you wouldn't today? That's an easy one: Get fully vaccinated. I'm certain there are some vaccines you would still highly recommend -- maybe typhoid and yellow fever? -- but in a day when "fully vaccinated" means COVID shots, no way.
I'm of two minds when it comes to defining travel. My absolute favorite way to visit another culture -- and we've done this on six continents -- is to stay with someone who lives or has lived there. But Viking Cruises also gets our business: they're a pleasant way to cover a lot of ground, and if I don't have a chance to get immersed in the culture, I'd say the chance to touch the Berlin Wall, to get accidentally caught in a Corpus Christi Day parade in Gdansk, and to see the shipyard where Solidarity was founded is still of inestimable value.
One of the absolute highlights of our visit to the Gambia was eating meals with Gambian families in their homes. It was a great honor, and the last thing we wanted to do was to insult our hosts. But we were only there for two weeks, and didn't want to spend any of that time sick, either. However, we did not find it difficult to limit ourselves to cooked foods and hot drinks, which strategy kept us in abundant good health.
And the food was delicious. It's sad that Gambian restaurants aren't more available in the U.S. A Senegalese restaurant will do in a pinch, though they can also be hard to find. One of my favorite memories of a visit to New York City was being the only white Christian customers in a Muslim Senegalese restaurant smack dab in the middle of an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood.
as I never have, and don't anticipate ever traveling outside the U.S., this is my only, second-hand experience:
my nephew had the opportunity to travel to Guatemala while in college, earning a degree in anthropology (and writing a paper about local medicinal botany). he was 100% sheltered by a host family, who were instructed to cook a certain way and only use the provided bottled water. my nephew was told quite firmly NOT to eat any street food. he blew off that advice, near the end of his stay and was violently ill within 24 hours, with an intestinal parasite and had to be treated with flagyl. he was fine within 4 or 5 days but of course my sister was loosing her mind over it as she didn't want him to go in the first place. he's her only child and she 'babied' him massively, well into his twenties. he'll be 29 this May, still lives at home and probably always will. I think the Guatemala trip was his one shot at rebellion. doubt he'll be doing THAT again, lol.
regarding travel vaccines - the best advice I have heard is for the individual to do a deep dive risk/benefit analysis in order to make an informed decision. the worst advice: get every jab available a few days before traveling. you will likely be sicker than shit your entire trip and gain zero benefit. (yes, stupid people actually do this.)
personally - I unequivocally reject ALL vaccines. never had a flu shot, never will. I'm 63, probably had 3 vaccines my entire life, back as a child. I quit jabbing my kids over 15 yrs ago, after both suffered injuries (one recovered, one did not.) covid jab? not in a million, billion years. no way. no how.
Just wanted to say thank you to say thank you for your sponsor Free Spoke. It came at the perfect time. I was doing research on what the vaccine booster effects might have on the immune system. (My husband and sister who got boosters can't seem to not have a cold, I thanks to you, only got the first shot-to keep my job). A couple of months before I'd at least get a few heterodox hits. Now it's all mainstream. Pages and pages.
It's the parameters set on the ai now that it's been integrated into google search. So google search is dead to me. This bringing me back to Free Spoke. Thanks again.
I don’t know why the Dark Horse podcast isn’t on Substack, but I’m looking forward to Bret’s reaction to Jesse Singal’s moronic hot piece. https://open.substack.com/pub/jessesingal/p/bret-weinstein-sure-has-a-lot-of?r=fba0l&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Reading can be like a form of travel because I always seem to get lost or diverted whenever I read. I think though, that this is one of the reasons I enjoy it so much especially since I have never really had the means to travel too much farther than the place I call home. I loved thinking about being somewhere else and eating from a street food cart. The last time I did that was in nearby college town where I indulged in falafel. I know this isn't exactly what Heather was talking about, but it was the popular food of the college set; they would eat it after the bars closed. At the time I learned firsthand that this food helps absorb, or at least I imagined it did, some of the alcohol previously consumed hours and hours before.
Anyway...back to the words I pulled from this Natural Selections that sent me in another direction and got me thinking about another thing, "You do need to demonstrate that you are making an effort, however—that goes a very long way." and, "You can’t predict what all will happen if you do so—in that lies some of the risk, and also opens the possibility for transcendent experience."
In these very strange and uncomfortable times, I believe we should all be guided by this advice...(noted: not medical). Opening ourselves up to engaging in conversation with another actual human being, in person, and in realtime, listening to and hearing what they have to say about what they think, feel, or believe even if it goes against our grain, or our thoughts, our feelings, or our beliefs could possibly be a "transcendent experience". And just like keeping in mind that we may need to steady our guts when we eat the foods from another country or culture, that we should steady our hearts and minds in order to engage in a human exchange in a human manner.
Speaking of food the natives eat:
My wife and I accompanied our daughter and her husband to China as they adopted the second of their three Chinese children. Besides the usual tourism, we met bureaucrats and 'just folks'. Needless to say, a great experience.
And I like Chinese food, so, hey! But one time, while we were in Guangzhou, we decided to meet up with some of our cohorts who were staying on the other side of the city. We got in a taxi and watched the scenery go by. I saw the signs gradually change from Mandarin to Arabic. We were in the Muslim section of the city. Once there, we debated where to eat, and ended up at an Italian restaurant. Having eaten Italian in both Italy and the USA, I would say this was more of an American Italian restaurant than an Italian Italian restaurant. American Italian food in the Muslim section of a Chinese city!
If you’re ever in El Salvador, please try the national dish called “pupusas,” the national dish. They’re available as street food everywhere in the country.
Pupusas also tend to come with “curtido” as a garnish which is similar to sauerkraut but with tomato sauce and often a bit of spice.
I was going to write this anyway, but it's relevant to this wonderful article!
https://shannonthrace.substack.com/p/unplugged-near-san-ignacio
I am all about eating local food. I do think it is ok to take precautions though. I happily ate some street tacos with raw lettuce on a remote island in Mexico and wound up with a nasty intestinal parasite. We went for a wedding and almost everyone who went ended up getting very ill from eating street food. It’s so hard to know what will or will not cause major illness. I was sick for months after that. In the future I will still be comfortable eating cooked food but I will take the safe route with the raw. Probably depends on where I go too. Thanks for the thought provoking essay!