Whodunnit?

Everyone remembers their first experience of food poisoning- the nausea, the panicked race to the bathroom, the complete body fluid evacuation (preferably on someone else’s shoes). If it’s a really good one you can look forward to a lifetime of bad-culinary-experience dick-measuring.

If it’s not, you’ll be like me on Friday night, crying in the bathroom of an upscale yuppie fusion bar in the suburbs of an unnamed Asian city. It was uncomfortable, but I was back by the next course, drinking some woody tea, carefully picking at the fungi stew, and receiving formal congratulations from my colleagues in their best fractured English.

Which just leaves an important question: Whodunnit? I’ve been so good in the hand sanitizer department, and four Pepto Bismol are ritually swallowed before each meal. The floor of my hostel is littered with dozens of bottles, a testament to careful avoidance of tap water. So what evil bacteria could have infiltrated my carefully-guarded intestines? Here are the most likely suspects:

8:00 AM Honey Flavored Cereal Bar It was pre-wrapped, but automatically becomes suspect ‘cause I’ve never had one before. For all I know those kindly kernels could be baby brains.

12:10 PM A Row of Deep-Fried Dumplings The idea behind this typical street food is to cut up a hotdog or pork meatball, cover each section in a wanton style wrapper, thread them on pre-soaked skewers and deep-fry. Did the sweet chili sauce hide the taste of my future doom?

12:20 PM A Mayonnaise Sandwich The UK deserves to be kicked for many reasons- their ridiculous dress sense, their ridiculous metro, their ridiculous news outlets. But topping all of these are their ridiculous influence on sandwiches- flimsy white bread and mayo with wilted lettuce. I should have known that nothing good can be bought from a 7-11. Except Bugels chips.

12:45 PM Sticky Rice Topped With Semi-Raw Egg Pudding and Possibly Unpasteurized Cream, Oragamied Up in an Unwashed Banana Leaf by an Old Crone on the Sidewalk There’s no possible way that this could be the culprit.

3:30 PM My Pride A virulent thing to swallow, when I realized that the failure of my snazzy new heels meant I was gonna have to walk around the office barefoot.

8:00 PM A Giant Fried Fish Served with the required chilies and scallions, did this bit of crunchy love invade my immune system as well as my heart?

8:10 PM Squid, Peanuts, and Chili Stir-fry I have trouble with tentacles. Maybe my stomach agrees.

Anyway, I’m still unsure what caused my mid-meal unhappiness, but let me tell you, I’m never ever eating a sandwich from a 7-11 again. I celebrated my recovery by paying a tiny asian woman to climb all over me. I got parts of me prodded with her chin, elbows and feet that I didnt know I had.