Colds in Southeast Asia are a bizarre irony. At home, I was so used to curling up in a ball in my duvet with lots of warm tea and movies to nurse a cold or flu. But here, being sick is just one hot sticky mess. Even cranking up the air-conditioning so you feel cold enough for tea and a blanket doesn’t work. The second you step out of your freezer room, your body goes into shock with the surge of hot humid air. I don’t think the constant change from one extreme temperature to the next does any good… it seemed to only magnify my fever.
Meds… another battle. At home, you just grab some Tylenol Cold and Flu pills (night and daytime, of course) and a box Neo Citron, and you’re set. Here you have to dodge a million offers of antibiotics – Southeast Asian doctors’ favorite answer to any ailment, even if it’s not bacterial. You also need to be an excellent and unabashed mime (if you are somewhere where there isn’t so much English spoken) and you need to know exactly what you need. I felt like I was in medical school. I had to research the actual drugs in my favorites back home and find generic versions here, which were in weird doses and different combinations, obviously producing very different effects. I took a sinus decongestant that was 3 times stronger than anything back home, but didn’t have anything else in it. It also has the side effect of reducing my ability to sleep… obviously making recovery that much slower.
My advice to anyone planning on living overseas: take a bunch of cold medicine and pain killers with you! Nothing here compares.
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