Slouching again toward the West

If you want something to truly kick your ass, there's nothing like an Indonesian virus--in combination with the degree of jet lag one incurs between Denpasar and Amsterdam.

Ping-ponged about by alien food and water, sweat, and alternating tropical rain and heat, the typical Western immune system is particularly vulnerable to Indonesian viruses, which run rampant in Indonesian hospitals, looking for a good home.  If you spend any time in such a place, they will waste no time finding you and taking up housekeeping in your body. They probably can't believe their good fortune.

Shortly thereafter, you'll want a full pharmacopium dancing the fandango in your system. Start with some over-the-counter Balinese multivitamins, heavy on the vitamin C and designed to cure rainy-season runny nose. Toss in some yellow-and-ochre Moxilin antibiotic caps prescribed by an earnest Bangkok pharmacist. These will remind you of antibiotics' gut-scouring effects, which must in turn be counteracted by the Imodium and Enterofermenti given to you months ago by kindly Dr. Biagoli of Orvieto, Italy. For your ribcage-rattling bronchial cough, knock back that Mucosolvan long-effect ambroxoli hydrochloridum, contributed by a sweet blonde Czech pharmacist. "One a day, in morning." And Ibalgin-400 as needed for the fever that you will assess with the fourth thermometer that you've purchased on your trip: finally, the old-fashioned, shake-down variety that never expires, as its slick $5 Balinese electronic cousins are apt to do. You might even try a potent antihistamine for that stuffy nose, at least until it keeps you awake all night and subsequently makes your head feel as if it may explode at touchdown on every new runway.

But reentry into the Western world is what will most strike fear into the little hearts of Indonesian viruses. This helps explain the immediate sense of comfort I felt upon stepping out of a cab at the Marriott Courtyard Flora in uptown Prague.

And I am grateful for one other thing. We very nearly met our driver Gandek's wife and son. He kept promising us this pleasure, but it never came to pass.  Shortly after we left Indonesia with our own set of viruses, we learned that Gandek's wife had been hospitalized with smallpox, for which I am probably not vaccinated and would have proven to be fertile ground.

A long vacation is meant to end, not with a celebratory fireworks display that leaves you sad to return home, but with extra covers on the bed, ample hours spent napping, and Cup Noodles for supper. You are meant to yearn for your own bed, in a room where you can set the temperature exactly the way you want it, rather than changing hotels in order to be cool enough or turning your short-stay apartment's gas burners on to raise its temperature above freezing.