The unsexy side of traveling

Visiting Cambodia was amazing. I got to run a race with temples in the background, I got to eat some amazing food and I got to see a country that I’ve wanted to check out for a while.

I also got sick.

It started suddenly. I arrived in Thailand and my stomach was feeling a little off but not too bad. But then that night the fever, vomiting and diarrhea started – and wouldn’t stop. Sometimes both were happen ing at the same time. The next morning was even worse. The fever was still there and my stomach still wasn’t up to eating. In addition, my muscles felt like I ran a marathon. I was physically exhausted, and the back of my legs also felt like I had massive bruises on them, yet I couldn’t see anything.

Day three, I still wasn’t better, and the pain in the back of my legs was worse. However, now giant mystery red welts had shown up. Did I go to the doctor? No. I decided to try to sleep it off as I was still so tired and having hot and cold flashes.

mystery red welts that really, really hurt

Day five, the fever was finally gone and so was the pain in my legs. The welts? Well, they were still there, but they were changing. The skin on top of them was peeling off and underneath was a weird bruise. They looked like reverse sunburn.

It was now I decided to go to the doctor as this was beyond weird. The good news was that I was now back in Switzerland where I know everything is clean. The bad news was that I don’t speak the language very well and it turned out the doctor had never seen anything like it. I tried to explain that this started in Cambodia and that I thought it was food poisoning or the flu. The doctor brought in two other doctors. It was a mystery – but it definitely was not the flu and I didn’t get these bruises from the bad food.

The welts now peeling

After an hour of prodding and looking up things in books and online, they concluded some sort of spider or bug had bitten me and all the symptoms were my body’s way of killing off the poison. They said they looked like they were starting to heal and weren’t infected.

Basically, because I had no idea what had bitten me, they couldn’t do much except give me some lotion to make them less crusty.


Deadly bug bites. Stuff you don’t think about when traveling.