Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards

My fianc� loves to travel - and he's especially fond of the Asian countries, like China and Japan for example.

I have only been abroad 2 times (not counting trip to neighboring countries) - once to Italy and once to China (Beijing). I got sick both times with D and throwing up and this was before the IBS got bad. So I am scared silly of going again because I've read that stomach and bowel infections can make your IBS worse and possibly trigger a long bad IBS period. Then there's the fact that you don't know where you can find bath rooms typically, and in the Asian countries you're lucky if you find a toilet you can SIT on instead of the traditional hole in the ground type.

I'm also scared of going abroad since you can't bring the stuff you need. If you want to go to the US you can't bring anything but your medicine with you on the plane and I'd be scared they'd lose the other bags and I would be left without it. In the US you can probably fairly easily find similar products but still. It just feels safe to have your own stuff that you're familiar with. In the US it's probably easy enough to find food too at a local supermarket, but if you go to Asia this might not be so easy. And you're not allowed to take food with you to another country actually. If you're lucky they don't check, I was able to bring chocolate bars when we went to China but when we were going home the woman in the customs actually took the one I had left I think.

(And guess what - she even opened my unopened tampon packet. I was totally shocked. Yuuuuh!) Anyway, I'd like to be able to bring safe snacks et.c. I mean, you can be sure to find white rice in Asia, but you don't want to live on just rice for a week.

Does anyone have any tips? I'd really like to go abroad with my fianc� again some time (we haven't planned anything but it would be nice to do it some time). At the moment though I'm proud of myself when managing to take the train to Stockholm, walk around there or visit friends and then go back home again. Baby steps, right?

/Ulrika, IBS-D

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