Being sick in Klang

One of the most obvious downside of being sick, apart from the pain, is the feeling that you're down in the dumps. And its been more than two days that I have this blocked nose and sore throat. Drinking gallons of orange juice (with VITAMIN C! screamed the box) did not help much. And so, while I was in Klang, my sore throat required me to search for another shop that sells orange juice. And after looking high and low for the 7-11, I came across this lady selling some weird stuff. Since I can't read the chinese words, I decided to try my luck as there were other recognisable characters suhc as Ubat (Malay for Medicine).

And as luck would have it, she can speak Cantonese and so I told her my symptoms. She said, no problema and proceeded to her range powders. She took teaspoonfuls of dark brown powder, light brown, green, sand, earth, clay, etc. And then, she mixes it with some warm dark liquid. Oh, and she added some salt for my sorethroat.

"Drink this and your sorethroat will go away very fast. But do not eat chilli tonight or you will undo everything", and so, I took the glass of eart...er, medicine, and drank it in one go. Boy, I could not explain the taste except that it made my whole face grimace like the Grinch. It tasted like crushed dried watermelon mixed with earth, some smooth tasteless clay, everything that goes bad in your life and the only saving grace was the mint like feeling that left the whole mouth feeling cool.

"And now, drink this", she told me, handing me a glass of sweetened liquid with a golden tint. I nearly finished it in one gulp but had to save some to rinse my mouth which by now, felt like I had just ate and drank a lot of mud.

More than half an hour later, I realised that my sore throat was slowly disappearing and I can shout at my technicians again.

But the weird thing was, on the next morning, my hands felt like it has not moved for centuries and when I formed them into a fist, there was pain everywhere, as if every muscle and tendon were opposing my command. And for the rest of the day, my hand looked reddish and very tender to the touch. Dipping them in cold water did not even help much.