12. FIT food: (full)

FIT independent traveler's food options can range between snacks & DIY pasta ‘gut-bombs’ to expensive 5 Star restaurants, if available. 

If you are passionate about foreign cuisine, scour the most recent guidebooks, restaurant reviews in English, TICs (Tourist Information Centers), and ask hostel staff.

   TIP: Ask the locals where they eat or show them your list or a map of local restaurants. Let them choose.

I am not a ‘foodie’, so my culinary exploits include snacks, take out or delivered, street vendors, ’in-my-bath-sink’ salads, market groceries prepared in a hostel kitchen, and local, authentic restaurants or specialty cultural restaurants.

My usual ideal is either the hostel kitchen or an authentic, non-tourist, local restaurant near hostel with a menu item I recognize & can eat night after night. Easily pleased

Occasionally I discover a dish I can’t live without every night.  😄 

    Anecdote: Hiroshoma’s Okonomiaki:  A grilled pancake from Edo period (1683- 1868) Buddhist ceremonies. Hiroshima’s okonomiakistyle was popularized after the atomic bombing when food was scarce.

           Hiroshioma's wonderful 'grill-made" okonomiaki

My Practice: 
    1. Breakfast:
I am usually up & gone early so I can experience the community waking up. I look for freshly baked bread that can munch on all day long or a pastry. 

Often, I visit the early open market, buy a few different veggies, return to my hostel to purify in Clorox water  & snack on them during day.               Please SEE: bleach 

I burned so many calories every day I could afford the carbs..

    2. Lunch:
Usually at large open market food stalls, or street food.

    Anecdote: Quito, Ecuador’s Mercado Central’s food stall with seating & great menu variety.   

    3. Dinner:                                      
       a. Small authentic local restaurant or street vendor: 
Usually a locally recommended restaurant or street vender serving a dish
I'd happily eat often.

                      Bangkok Chinese Market area of food & lunch

At days-end, I crave a quiet solo, predictably enjoyable meal … reading anything that distracts from my travel focus.            Of course, contrary to its detractors, social media does the same for me.

    Anecdote: Quietly off the main drag on a side walk:    a Chaing Mai, Thailand’s street vendor stirred fried in his wok by the curb while I sat on the sidewalk’s small plastic stool & table watching, mouth watering.. So good …. night after night.

                                                Tunxi Dumpling street stand     

 b. Hostel Kitchen: Most often I enjoy shopping local small/large market foodstuffs and preparing in hostel kitchen, then settling into my reading or conversation with fellow travelers.

CAUTION Warning!  

Allergies

I am mildly allergic to penicillin, maybe, ... which can easily be avoided by using a myriad of alternative drugs

BUT, ...  I am deadly allergeic to sea bass fish. A ‘sea bass’ allergy may seem humorous, but it can be deadly, very deadly because you & your doctors may not recognize it as a potential risk until it strikes you & even then, neither you nor your Doctor may draw a connection to sea bass fish. 

ACTIONs

If you have ANY allergies, discuss 'preventions' with Grok & get Doctor's recommended preventive medications BEFORE traveling.

        ANECDOTE 1>3:  Sea bass ‘anaphylactic shock’ episodes 

Anecdote 1: Dating Game Euro trip: Amsterdam’s Red-light District. At 28, after my Dating Game’s free Italy experience, I visited several other European countries including Netherlands.

In Amsterdam, a high-level advertising executive of an international advertising agency I worked for in Los Angeles, took his wife & I to dinner, at a historically famous Red-light District restaurant. 

Note: (Still a tourist site) https://www.urbstravel.com/post/history-of-amsterdams-red-light-district#:~:text=)

Sometime during dinner, I went to the men's room, fainted & when awakened by my friends who found me writhing in bathroom floor’s swill. I remember little afterward except for 3-day recovery in my hostel.
US doctor tested me for some kind of seizure, but found nothing.

Anecdote 2: 2nd experience - getting worse.  A few years later, skiing Mammoth Mountain, CA, I had dinner, slept & awoke in bathroom screaming & trashing about knocking a shower door off its track until an Olympic athlete grabbed me around my shoulders … containing me.
Again, curious & concerned, I sought a doctor’s opinion, nothing conclusive.

Anecdote 3: Even worse effects, "Next time could kill me".   At 39, in solo law practice, I awoke in my apartment’s bathroom semi-conscious, thrashing in delirium .... hours before I had to appear in court.

Whites of my eyes were totally blood red (pre-Michael Jackson's "Thriller") Not blotched in varied shades, but totally blood red.       Scary as hell. 

I approached the court clerk, & she immediately said, "Wow you look like Judge _____ looked. "  "I asked what she meant?" & she forcefully suggested I visit the Judge in chambers for his response which I did.

Judge took one look at me, immediately asking if I had eaten sea bass. “Yes,,Sir!”, I responded, “Last night for dinner.”

He said, “Sit down. I have a story to tell you.”

Judge’s story:

Shortly after eating BBQ’d sea bass with friends I suffered what I later learned was an “anaphylactic shock.” An ambulance was called, but technically I died & was resuscitated en route to hospital. Once in ER, I died again to be resuscitated. Obviously, I recovered. 

Los Angeles Coroner, Dr. Tom Noguchi*, Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner for LA County, had my stomach contents analyzed, advising me that I was allergic to sea bass fish. Not every sea bass fish, only those fish from certain bays along Mexico’s western coast. 

These coastal bays contained very toxic bacteria that MY sea bass consumed causing OUR allergic ‘anaphylaxis shock’ & near death.

* Dr. Nuguchi, popularly aka "coroner to stars”, most famously for the autopsy of Natalie Wood, Robert Wagner's ex-wife & co-star in legendary James Dean’s, classic movie “Rebel Without a Cause”.

My Solution: My sea bass allergy’s travel strategy:  
    1. Avoid ALL fish unless POSITIVE (?) not sea bass.
     2. Research & write down (in cell phone & “Important Info page”): all host culture's translations of “sea bass” in host country’s language of ALL country(s) I would visit.

      e.g.: Thailand:  “allergy”. = โรคภูมิแพ้.     Rokh p̣hūmiphæ̂.           
                              sea bass: = ปลากะพงขาว. Plā kaphng k̄hāw

    3. Epipen: I carry 2 for emergency
allergy self-injection.
    4. Once in host country, find someone fluent in both languages & confirm your translations are correct.

If you have allergies, Prepare before a trip to cope with your known allergic reactions, in case, for some reason, you don’t/can't avoid them.

For broader health info,
        Please See: Travel Healthx