I promptly forgot about it. I was going to spend fifteen days in glorious, exotic Egypt!
The tour group also provided customary travel and cultural warnings. "Don't go out alone if you're female." "Dress in light colors and more conservatively." "Stay hydrated because the temperature can get above 125°F." "Don't eat any dairy because they don't pasteurize milk."
In retrospect, that last casual phrase should have been written: "Don't eat dairy because your bowels will vomit their cargo at a speed close to warp factor nine."
When we landed after a ten-hour flight, everyone was tired, cranky, and hungry. We checked into our hotel, went to dinner, and went to bed. The next morning we had a wake-up call at five AM and breakfast at six; we hit the road by seven. We traveled early in the mornings or early evening because during the day the middle of the Sahara Desert gets Satan-scrotum, scorchingly-hellish-hot.
I was so exhausted and jet-lagged from the night before that I completely forgot the "refrain from dairy" caveat. That evening, I had two spoonfuls of pudding and then cursed myself mid-spoonful for forgetting.
The Sphinx(ter) and pyramids were spectacular. I was fine. Day after that? Fine. I felt I'd dodged the bullet. So with the Cairo portion of our trip over, we boarded a plane to Luxor to see The Valley of The Kings. I was traveling solo so the tour company matched me with a female roommate named Helene. And imagine our delight when Helene and I were assigned one of the few rooms that overlooked the great Nile River! We opened our hotel room door and began hugging and jumping up and down for joy. And then, all of a sudden, with no warning whatsoever, the contents of my fartpipe went from solid to liquid. It happened as suddenly as The Sopranos ended. Instantaneously. No warning whatsoever. No pre-gurgling, no pre-cramps.
I stopped mid-jump. I guess the expression on my face said something close to "heart attack" because Helene asked, "Are you okay?" I grabbed my guts and made for the bathroom with little, tiny Geisha steps because my butt cheeks were clenched tighter than the Virgin Mary's legs to prevent the dread crème de cacao accident. Once in there, I realized that I was wearing a jumpsuit that zips up the back. Shit.
I finally got the zipper down while dancing the poo jig and I think I was shitting before my ass touched the seat. I was crappin' at a speed close to light. Apparently there was a little, itty-shitty, pissed-off Charlton Heston in my colon commanding Yul Brenner to let his chocolate people go, and make haste! So let it be written, so let it be done! And the poo Jews were liberated from Egypt. Every last one.
This lasted for about twenty minutes. Helene kept knocking and asking if I was okay and all I could manage were groans. When I exited, I was too ill to even be embarrassed by the fact that Helene undoubtedly heard the 140-decibel Earth-shattering space shuttle blastoff shit I just took. I was shaking all over, bathed in sweat, and dangerously close to tears. I apologized and then lay across my bed. Apparently microbes have a gestational period.
The next day at breakfast, I compared stories with other erupting travelers. We were traveling with two busloads of tourists. Both buses were equipped with a bathroom, and both bathrooms smelled like a rotten camel carcass left in the sun. One bus driver actually locked the john and told us it was broken because he got sick of the smell. Eventually, though, he was forced to unlock it rather than risk having to clean shit off the seats.
The extreme heat and the vile diarrhea took its toll on us all. You'd take Imodium and be fine for a day, but then the medicinal butt plug would fail and you'd be back on the commode singing Kumbaya. "Someone's shitting, my Lord, Kumbaya." My ass was a Bosco-chocolate syrup factory and I turned every toilet into my own desert poo oasis. I have a horrible fear of crapping in public restrooms from my past poop post-traumatic stress disorder, but I had no other choice. Technically, I guess I could have crept behind the Sphinx or some other national monument, but who knew the punishment if caught? This was a Muslim country, after all. A rectal beating with a cane? Anal amputation? I wasn't going to risk it.
By the time we got to the Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan, I was sore and in need of some Rectal Chapstick, my anus was swollen to twice its normal size from overuse. I'm sure my butt lips looked like I had gone fifteen rounds with Mike Tyson punching me in the rectum. And the further down the Nile we traveled, the fewer creature comforts we had. When I rang housekeeping for some extra toilet paper, she showed up with three of these tiny one-ply quarter-inch-thick rolls. I'm used to the giant, bunny-fluffy two-ply four-and-a-half inch double rolls! What the fuck is this?
Nearly all the toilets had hoses attached to them, but who wants to go to the rectal car wash every visit? I didn't carry a hand towel to dry off anyway. I pictured Gomer and Goober Pyle asking with a Southern twang, "You want an anal wax with that?"
I began trading meds on the black market with our fellow travelers. Bartering. "I've got Advil for some Imodium!" "Do you have any Kaopectate for some Midol?" "Imodium for Benadryl?" "Anyone got any Preparation H?" Not just me -- others were coming down with moderate-to-severe bleeding hemorrhoids from the 1999 Lalapoo-pooza Crapfest.
By the time we got down to Abu Simbel, the worst was over for me; but for others, it was only beginning.
There was one really rude lady on my bus. I had witnessed her obstreperous harangue to a bartender the night before, overhearing her yell, "Don't you speak English!? What the hell is the matter with you people?" The Ugly American rears her ugly little head. *Sigh.* You are in a foreign country, and the entire world does not speak English, Missy. But she got her just deserts when we arrived back at the hotel because as our bus was pulling up she leaned over her seat partner and barfed out of the bus window; and as I looked over, I noticed a spreading brown pool emerging on the back of her pants. A befitting poo de grâce. Oops! Ms. High and Mighty had crapped her khakis! "IT'S COMING OUT OF BOTH ENDS!" she shrieked.
Her poor seatmate's face was beyond disgust. He clearly wanted nothing more to do with Countess Chocula. Judging from his expression, you'd have thought she'd crapped on his upper lip. I tried my hardest not to laugh, almost developing a hernia from trying to hold it in. After all, she was an unpleasant, malicious person, so this assuaged my sotto voce giggling somewhat.
And you know what? By the time the trip was over, that big roll of two-ply bunny-fluffy toilet paper I brought was g-o-n-e! Always listen to the tour company, children. Always.
The good news is that I lost ten pounds on that trip; and how many people can say that they crapped from Cairo to Nubia?
In retrospect, probably quite a few.