Crime Scene Tape

Sometimes when I mention that I have just returned from Thailand, or that I am about to go to Thailand; I get this:

"Oh, I just love to travel."

Do you? I sometimes want to see their passports (if they even have one) but I never ask. And traveling from New York to Bermuda, or Detroit to Montreal, or Spain to Portugal is not traveling. 'Traveling' is when your chances of loss of health, loss of dignity, or loss of life are existant-to-high: in some cases, guaranteed. This is traveling:

"On top of smallpox and yellow fever, I got shots against typhoid, plague, cholera, polio, and tetanus: pills for dysentery, diarrhea, and malaria;" -- from Travels with Myself and Another by Martha Gellhorn.

I once had an attack of food poisoning on a plane departing Bangkok. My rectum opened up like a valve on a three inch pipe and then my entire system evacuated. Since I had spent the previous twenty-four hours (my last day in Bangkok) eating a lot, there was a LOT to evacuate. No, I didn't make it to the bathroom in time. The stewardess got my carry on bag and escorted me to the bathroom. I had already destroyed the seat I was sitting in, and he placed blankets in the aisle for me to walk on. It was pouring out of my pants legs and over my belt. I left my shoes, socks, pants, underpants, undershirt, shirt and belt on the bathroom floor.

Everything was impregnated and destroyed with brown liquid fecal matter. By the time I had gotten out of those clothes and then into new clothes there was brown stuff on the ceiling, walls, floor, sink, mirror, and toilet. The bathroom was destroyed and not available to about three hundred people in coach class for the five and a half hour flight to Narita.

The crew did not attempt to clean the bathroom. They just sealed it up with yellow crime scene tape that zig zagged from side to side.

Now, that is traveling.

© Dana. All rights reserved by the author.