I sometimes joke about a important step in becoming a true traveler. A crucial and, really, inevitable step, food poisoning. It’s just a part of traveling in foreign lands and if you haven’t had it, two things. You’re lucky, and it’s only a matter of time. When it unavoidably does come, it will be at a very inopportune time and you’ll just have to wait it out. You’ll have to take some sick days. You’re friends will leave you laying there in the hostel, feeling like death, while they waltz around the exotic city or locale. The hostel workers will be outside your window taking shots of the local liquor, basically assuring that you won’t get a peaceful rest. After ten hours of lying there attempting to hold down water, your friend(s) will return full of stories and pictures and fresh plans they’ve made with with their new-found buds. Yes, its truly awful, but you are now classified as an experienced traveler. You got some street cred. Now wasn’t that all worth it?
