Nonetheless, after poring over Web sites on health risks in Southeast Asia before the trip, I became obsessed with a mysterious illness claiming the lives of scores of Cambodian children that made headlines right before we left — and with dengue fever.
I lived in fear of Jonah contracting some dreadful tropical disease (my mother would never forgive me) and insisted that everyone slather on insect repellent and cover up, despite the oppressive heat, to keep those dengue-bearing mosquitoes at bay. My pleas, though acquiesced to, were met with eye rolls from my kid.
Oddly, I never thought I'd be the one to get sick. But one night in Nong Kieu, a sleepy riverside town several hours' ride from anywhere, I woke up shivering. Cold to the bone, I huddled beneath every layer I could grab. Then the sweats began. It slowly dawned on me that I had a fever. I woke Daniel. "I think I'm sick," I said. He felt my forehead, hid his alarm and brought me two Advil — as it turns out, exactly the wrong thing to do.
The next morning, I rallied and made it to breakfast. But back in the bungalow, I had an overwhelming desire to get prone and didn't leave my bed for two hours. I soldiered on — mustering strength to take a bus back to Luang Prabang, the tourist mecca, where I sat beside a waterfall and watched the tourists splash around.
Over the next few days, I stayed in our hotel room as my fevers came and went, my appetite disappeared, I developed gastrointestinal symptoms and I felt increasingly weak and queasy. I marveled at my lethargy and lack of ambition. On day three, I managed a short flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia, and dragged myself around Angkor Wat at sunset, barely noting its wonders and exhausting myself in the process. I did, however, take note of a sign outside the Children's Hospital about a dengue epidemic and the need for blood.
By day four, I felt sufficiently sick and concerned to reluctantly seek medical attention. For serious illnesses, the guidebooks for both Cambodia and Laos steer you away from the nonexistent or substandard medical infrastructure and advise betaking yourself to Bangkok ASAP. I had my own visions of an ER in Cambodia: throngs of moaning, bleeding people, waiting amid gore and squalor and used syringes to be seen by untrained attendants completely unschooled in Western hygiene and lacking any modern medical equipment. But at least in Siem Reap, Lonely Planet's assessment and my image of health care couldn't have been farther from reality.
My husband found the Royal Angkor International Hospital, which Lonely Planet and the hotel staff had mentioned, endorsed on TripAdvisor. The lobby was spanking new, spotless and empty but for one expat. Within one hour, I was seen by a doctor, had blood drawn (by an English-speaking nurse skillfully using sterile equipment) and was going over test results with the doctor. To my shock, he explained to Daniel with great urgency and somewhat gruffly that my blood tests confirmed dengue fever and that I should check into the hospital immediately.
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