Tim Roxborogh's travel bugs: Satay-induced heartburn

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A weekly ode to the joys of moaning about your holiday, by Tim Roxborogh.

"Have you been drinking?" The pharmacist was peering over his glasses and I knew it would make zero difference no matter what I said. So I told the truth: "I've had one beer."

He didn't believe me.

Winding the clock back half an hour, my wife and I were sitting roadside on Kuala Lumpur's famed Jalan Alor waiting for our satay to arrive. This inner-city night-spot is one of Southeast Asia's greatest street-food destinations and after a day of on-foot sightseeing, we were a good kind of knackered. The kind where you're physically tired but in a sprightly mood knowing you've had a fun day and burned a few calories in the process. Plastic seats were sat on, satay and beer ordered and life, in this steamy, never-boring metropolis, was good.

Good, that is, until I decided to de-satay my skewers in such a hurry it was as if the wooden sticks were toxic. Without thinking, I slid my mouth down one entire skewer, removing all its chicken in the process and dumping the empty skewer on the plate. I didn't mean to eat the pieces all in one go, but there they were, in my mouth. So I had to either spit them back out (next to the other nine uneaten skewers), or swallow them. I swallowed.

One skewer down, nine to go and given the amount of satay we'd ordered, I guess this method seemed like quite an efficient technique. None of this polite nibbling and conscientious-chewing tomfoolery. I repeated this eating style for the second satay stick, sipped some beer, chatted with my wife about our love of Malaysia and started to realise I was in a spot of bother.

Heartburn. I get it from time to time — funnily enough, if I've eaten too quickly or if I've drunk even a small amount of alcohol after exercise. But this was coming on fast and with a level of pain I couldn't recall. Within a couple of minutes of that first fat mouthful, I knew I'd stuffed up the dinner. Quickly paying and leaving most of the food behind, we had to find a pharmacy. Not ideal honeymoon behaviour.

Luckily, the Jalan Alor/Bukit Bintang region of downtown KL isn't short of pharmacies, because I was clutching my chest and sitting on the floor once we found one. My wife had determined that it wasn't a heart attack and did all the talking while I slumped myself beside the counter, looking like a drunken or drugged-up idiot of a tourist in the process.

Soon I was swigging liquid Gaviscon, but still the agony was real. Quite a sight I'm sure:
white, curly-haired male, pained facial expression, clutching chest, sitting on a pharmacy floor in Kuala Lumpur, throwing back shots like it's a 21st. Only these shots were of Gaviscon and nobody was cheering.

The pain wasn't easing, so my wife helped me up and we upgraded our case from talking to the pharmacy staff at the front desk and went all the way to the big man in the white coat with all the serious medications down the back of the store. We explained our situation, which was when he asked if I'd been drinking. When I told him it was just the one beer, he shot me a look that said, "I deal with drunken Australians like you every week of my life! Go back to your hotel, have a glass of water and sleep it off!"

I wanted him to know I was neither Australian nor drunk, but it would've taken too much energy. Regardless, he gave me some high-powered pills that I was allegedly meant to keep taking every day for a week. I took one and combined with the litres of Gaviscon I'd enjoyed, I defied my fears I was dying and was suddenly back feeling almost 100 per cent.

Luckily this was not the first night of the honeymoon.

Tim Roxborogh hosts Newstalk ZB's Weekend Collective and writes the blog RoxboroghReport.com