TIFU by getting Bali belly (which could’ve been avoided if we weren’t so stupid)

Mandatory this didn’t happen today (ETA “today”, forgot to add it before lol) been a few weeks at this point. I visited Bali (first international trip ever yayyy) and was sooo excited. I scoured the r/bali subreddit here for all advice and heard Bali belly a lot but coming from a third world country myself and being a doctor, I wasn’t too worried. I took all the meds one might need and thought I am good to go.

Well, the first few days were amazing. We ate at local warungs taking care of our hand hygiene and noticing how hygienic the staff were etc and we were doing fine. The day before we had to shift base from Ubud to Sanur (2 hours away) for the last leg of our trip, we had an amazing batik class in rice paddies and were just roaming around when my travel buddy started feeling really tired. Then he started having cramps in his tummy. I was having a bit of loose motions since the morning but wasn’t too worried cuz I kinda sorta have IBS (not diagnosed properly but pretty sure I have it). Suddenly he goes I feel dizzy please let’s just go back to the hostel And then proceeded to have diarrhoea and by midnight a fever of 102.8F. He spent the whole night having chills and worried we may have to go the emergency room if he had vomitting. By then I also had looser motions that definitely weren’t good old IBS I know so well and a slight fever.

After a night of praying we don’t puke we went to a hospital on recommendation of the homestay owner we stayed at before the hostel and he was kind enough to take us there and it was expensive but thankfully we had insurance (hoping for the claim to come through or we are dead lol). I had antibiotics and all the meds needed for Bali belly but unfortunately fever just wouldn’t go down with paracetamol (tylenol) tablets so we had to get an IV infusion for my travel buddy. I puked twice on the way from the hospital in Ubud to Sanur. We couldn’t enjoy Tanah Lot or Sanur or do any water sports cuz of this. Barely made it to Uluwatu temple lol.

We were thinking that this is stupid why did we get sick more than a week into our trip and not before, what went wrong etc. Cuz we took all precautions including drinking bottled water only even at home stays and hotels. Then it hit us how we are the ones who fucked up and entirely responsible for our sickness. The day before we got sick, we had gone on a waterfall tour. We went to Pura Tirta Empul temple - this is a temple with a holy spring and a ‘purification ritual’. Being Hindu culturally (atheists religiously) we weren’t too passionate about temples but we love water and this was so interesting so we did it! You basically have to wash your head, face, hair and rinse your mouth thrice and then drink a gulp of water from holy spring water coming through a statue of stone. You have to repeat this procedure with around a dozen statues. So immersed were we buffoons in this fun ritual with cool water on a hot day and fish fluttering by our feet that we really did take the gulps of water. I mean we tried to take just a sip at each statue because it is unfiltered water after all but what our brains didn’t process is that twelve sips is enough to give you viral or bacterial or protozoal load enough to cause diarrhoea lol. So yeah, basically, we were stupid enough to drink spring water and everyone we told afterwards in Bali including locals there were like oh gosh you shouldn’t have, our tummies are used to the water but you guys!!! Yeah, we guys, being dumb tourists lol.

Tl;dr TIFU by drinking holy spring water in Bali and getting sick enough for my travel buddy to be hospitalised and ruining the latter part of our trip rotting in bed