The beach in front of our hotel
The tap water in El Nido, Palawan was way worse than we expected. At least ten people per day get food poisoning, either from restaurants or, more probably, from the water. We had to call in an ambulance to put us on IV fluids!
We arrived in El Nido, all excited for our upcoming two-week stay. Contrary to our previous travel pattern, we had planned to spend a bit more time here and not rush to our next destination. Our hotel was right on the beach—just a one-minute walk to the water. We only had to cross some wooden planks over a very sketchy sewage system. On some mornings, after rainy nights, our walk to the beach was accompanied by the lovely smell of poop. I just held my breath for the one-minute crossing and barely noticed it after a while.
We also accidentally booked a bunk bed room instead of a double bed for the first few days, but it turned out to be fun. I hadn’t slept in a bunk bed since summer camps in Slovakia about ten years ago.
Our first days were pretty amazing. We watched the sunset while eating dinner at a restaurant, lay on the beach to gaze at the night sky, and woke up nice and early for morning swims. By the third day, we felt like we were living our best lives—until we were suddenly stopped in our tracks.
The beach in front of our hotel
Erik got food poisoning. It’s hard to say from what—our first guess was the pork belly he had at a restaurant the night before. But later, we found out that might not have been the cause. Doctor Larry, who treated Erik, told us they see at least ten cases of food poisoning every day in El Nido and typically do one or two home visits daily. There was no way we could have made it to the hospital; even standing up caused Erik severe pain (and vomiting). It was pretty bad.
Apparently, the high number of food poisoning cases in El Nido is most likely due to water contamination. We knew not to drink the tap water or even brush our teeth with it, but we hadn’t realized how serious the issue was. Even taking a shower and ingesting the tiniest amount can have terrible consequences—especially in the area where we were staying. I started being much more cautious, and at one point, I noticed the water had become kind of yellowish. Only for a few days, but still—it was disgusting.
We called a doctor to our hotel
And what can I say about the food poisoning? It was horrible. I got it one day after Erik. I woke up at night feeling strange—unsure if my stomach hurt or if I was just tired—and debated whether I needed to use the toilet. I decided to climb down the ladder from the bunk bed and go. Good thing I did. I won’t go into too much detail, but let’s just say that for the next 12 hours, I emptied everything out of my system (you could call it an extremely fast detox). When I couldn’t even keep down water for a few hours, we called Doctor Larry again (he remembered Erik from the day before). I got an IV, some medication, a blood test for bacterial infection, and a prescription for antibiotics.
After a week of recovery, I finally saw the first ray of sunshine. We changed to a room with a double bed and a balcony. From then on, everything was good.
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