Health Vocabulary for Travel

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Hello, welcome to another class. I’m teacher Robin and today we are going to be talking about Health Vocabulary for Travel. So it has been a difficult year all around the world because of COVID and I know things are starting to get better in many places and people are ready to travel again. I’m ready to travel again. So I’m going to give you some useful vocabulary that you can use when you are traveling in case, okay, in case, we hope not, but in case you get sick or you have a problem. I’m going to give you the vocabulary that you need to ask questions and tell someone, a doctor, etc. how you are feeling or what the problem is. This is really important.

So before I go over this vocabulary, I want to mention that it’s very important when you travel to another country to get travel insurance. Okay, this means that you buy this insurance for the amount of time you’re going to be traveling. And then if you get sick, if you have a medical issue, you can call your insurance company and they can tell you where to go to the hospital or which clinic, what place you can go to. They can assist you in this process and you don’t have to pay for it. So that is the best thing because depending on where you are traveling, healthcare is very expensive and you don’t want to be in that situation. You want to get help, but you want to make sure you are prepared ahead of time. So travel insurance is a must. Also now, because of the COVID-19 pandemic situation, many places will require you to be vaccinated. You need your vaccine and you need to show your vaccination card or sometimes they call it a passport. So you need to prove that you have been vaccinated before you can travel to many countries. So check the requirements of the country that you’re going to. Maybe you just need a PCR test before. But also if you’re vaccinated, then that is a sure way for you to be able to travel to certain countries. So vaccinations, some countries require other vaccinations in addition to the new COVID one, so just double check what’s required before you go. 

All right. Now, let’s say you were traveling, and you feel ill, you get sick. Now, if it’s not very serious, you can probably go to the pharmacy and get some medication. Okay? If it is serious, you want to go to the hospital or a doctor and this is where the travel insurance is going to help you to know where you need to go. Okay, so let’s say you want to ask someone where you can find the pharmacy. So you ask someone in the street, for example, or maybe in your hotel, “Can you tell me where the closest pharmacy is?” or “How do I get to the pharmacy from here?” and they can give you directions. 

Okay, so now I’m going to talk about some travel vocabulary, and I’m going to put it in categories of the type of travel. Alright, so let’s start with the beach. If you want to go somewhere hot, somewhere with beaches, you may need to know these vocabulary words. Okay, let’s say you spend all day at the beach. And at the end of the day, you have a “sunburn”, your skin is red. Okay, so you want to use sunscreen. But sometimes we don’t apply it enough and we get a sunburn so you can go to the pharmacy. You can ask for a cream to believe to relieve, excuse me, a cream to relieve your sunburn or you can buy it in the store. Okay, another word “sunstroke”. So this is when we get too hot in the sun and we actually start to feel very bad. So if you spend too much time and too much time in the sun, you can actually get a sun stroke. And in that case, you will probably want to go to the doctor because they, if you feel “dizzy”, for example, if you feel dizzy, it feels like you know you’re going to fall over, you’re going to pass out and another worry could be “dehydration”. So we drink water to hydrate, but if you don’t drink enough water, or if you spend too much time in the sun, you may suffer from dehydration. So, if you have sunstroke, if you get sunstroke, dehydration is a concern. So you may need to go to the doctor. Okay, what else might happen when we’re at the beach? Depending on where the ocean, which ocean you’re going to, there may be some jellyfish. Alright, so it’s important to look or ask people around “Are there jellyfish in the water?”. Because, if there are, you may not want to go in. But, if you do go in, and you don’t know, you may get stung on your skin by a jellyfish and this can be very painful. So again, you need to go to the pharmacy, they can give you some cream or ointment to help your “jellyfish sting”. Okay, so this is something that happens at the beach. But you can ask for treatment at the pharmacy. 

Alright, now let’s change from the beach to the mountains. Let’s say you are going to go skiing in the mountains, or hiking or something. The mountains are at a very high altitude, right? So if you live at a lower altitude, one thing that sometimes happens is when you first arrive, you get “altitude sickness”. And this is just because of that quick change in altitude. So you might also need to go to the pharmacy and ask for something for altitude sickness. So when you get altitude sickness, you might have like a stomach ache, you feel dizzy. So this is something to watch out for. If you are visiting the mountains, and you don’t normally spend time there, this happened to me actually, altitude sickness. The first time I went skiing, I got altitude sickness. 

Alright, another type of vacation. You might go on a cruise ship or a boat trip, some sort of short trip on a boat or you might take a cruise. Alright, one thing that might happen when you go on a cruise, because of the water, you may get “motion sickness”. This is common on boats, on cruise ships, you get motion sickness. So you can ask for pills for tablets to help your stomach with the motion sickness. Okay, this is something to keep in mind. 

Alright, and now let’s talk about some more general vocabulary related to health and that you might need when you’re traveling. So when we visit a new country, we want to try all of the foods, we want to experience everything. But sometimes our stomachs don’t always like that because we might be eating food that’s a little more spicy, a little bit different than what we normally eat. And we might end up with either “diarrhea” or “constipation”. So diarrhea is when you have to go to the bathroom lot. And constipation is the opposite, where you cannot or you struggle to. Okay, this is very, very common, especially when traveling because our bodies are not used to these new places, these new foods. So again, you can go to the pharmacy and ask for something to help with either diarrhea or constipation. Very common. 

Right, now if you go to a restaurant, or if you eat something that causes you to vomit, alright. A lot. If it’s something that doesn’t go away, you may have “food poisoning”. So it’s important to ask about the ingredients of what you’re eating. Also, if you have an allergy, if you have a food allergy, it’s important to tell the restaurant, the waiters, that you’re allergic to shellfish, for example, or certain spices, because these foods that you have never tried may include ingredients that you don’t know about. So it’s important to talk about your food allergies. Because you may either get food poisoning or an “allergic reaction”. So either way, if you are vomiting from something that you ate, you want to go to the doctor. And if it’s an allergic reaction, it could be something itchy or a rash on your skin. And in that case, you can go to the pharmacy and ask for some medication as well. Okay, so this the “itchiness” or the itchiness or “rash” on your skin could be from food. It could also be from a plant that touches you if you are in the forest and mountains etc. So, again, if you have if you have a rash or something that’s affecting your skin Then you can ask for for an ointment, cream in the pharmacy.

Drinking water. So it’s important to also ask if water is drinkable because, depending on the country, you may not want to drink the water from a fountain, you might want to buy bottled water. So you can ask someone, “Is the water safe to drink?” “Is it okay to drink this water?”., And, when in doubt, just buy bottled water. 

Okay, a couple other things that might happen to you, you might pick up a “virus” or an “infection”. And these are things that happen if you feel sick. So it’s important, again to have that travel insurance and call your doctor, go to the hospital and you can say, “I think I have a virus”, “I think I have some kind of infection”. And they can, they can check you out. 

Okay, so I hope that this was useful for you. I hope you got some good vocabulary that you can use on your next vacation. And now I want you to tell me in the comments. Has this ever happened to you? Like, have you ever gotten sick or had to go to hospital or go to a pharmacy on your vacation? If so, you can tell us, if you want. Tell us about the experience in the comments. Did you get what you needed? Were people helpful? Were you able to use your English? So tell us all about that in the comments and whatever you are planning for your next vacation, I hope it’s a good one, a safe one. We all deserve it. And I will see you back here next week for another class. Thanks again for joining. Bye!