Sick as a Dog and no doubt my own fault...

So, I got sick.
Sick-sick. Like stuck in the room-sick. Live off of french fries and Sprite-sick. I'll never really know what happened or where it came from... but I have a few sneaking suspicions.

Some potential culprits (all within six hours of one another):

*lukewarm fish on a stick with a side of black flies...

* Ok this, I actually didn't do

But thiiiis...

* Ok, this I did...

Five minutes prior to this~


... there was the walking by this...

... as well as the handmade cardboard sign that advertised the strength and mightiness and such that drinking the snake-infused wine would infuse one with.


"Never!" I exclaimed knowing what people were thinking as I'd just done this about an hour earlier:

(another extremely likely culprit of the sick sickness: river water inhalation)

The sign continued further.

"You can't leave Laos not try snake wine just once"

"Oh yes I can," I stated boldly.

But the seed was planted...

As you can see, the snake wine was potent and I almost died then and there. But as the venom coursed through my veins, the poison obviously mixed with my DNA and I was overcome with a magnificent confidence. Euphoria even. Power...

and something else... which leads us to another especially likely culprit of my disease:

And if it wasn't accidentally inhaling river water... or eating three day old fly-fish... or shooting centipede-flavored lighter fluid... or making out with a Laotian hobbit alchemist... it most definitely was this sandwich I ate on the plane to Cambodia the next morning.