A Delicate Piece Of Medical Advice
Hong Kong’s airport – don’t you just love it? I do. It’s so so airport-y! I had been looking forward to spending a couple of hours there before my flight to Mexico (I’m now in Mexico! Wooooooo!) but Lantau’s taxis had other plans. They have decided not to be around in the mornings; apparently they just want to drive people from Tung Chung to Cathay City from 07:00 to 09:00. Who knew? Oh, that’s right, everyone except me.
So I barely had time to dash through the airport with hardly a glance at a shop. The thought of missing planes makes me nervous and I can’t rest properly before I’m at the gate. There was also another issue. A delicate issue which caused me a lot of hand-wringing, to put it mildly. Last time I flew to the USA, I suffered three days of constipation afterwards. I tried ‘special’ teas, I tried walking, I tried drinking lots of hot water, eating fibrous stuff – nothing. It was such an awful feeling, like being poisoned from inside.
And this time I would get straight onto another flight without respite. Ahrrghhh, what to do?
I’d like to say it was this lovely lady who saved me from embarrassment with a flick of her wand, but she was too busy pushing moon cakes on unsuspecting tourists. (I can’t say for sure, but I imagine moon cakes wouldn’t exactly alleviate constipation?) No, the electric internet it was that had the answer.
Constipation is caused by dried-out intestines. Alcohol dries out the intestines. Therefore drinking lots of white wine and little water (because asleep) on a long flight is not smart. It should be the other way around.
Also, a good exercise is sitting down and lifting one knee up to your chin 20 times, then the other 20 times, etc, until you feel you don’t need to do it anymore. I followed both pieces of advice and what do you know! Great success. It was boring though, not drinking wine on the flight. Especially seeing United Airlines – gasp – don’t have individual TV screens at the back of the seats! But health is the most important thing. Good health, I mean. Not bad.
機場 (Gei cheung – machine park/airport)
羊咩屎 （Yeung mee si – goat bleat shit/constipation)
墨西哥 （Mak sai goh – Mexico)