Continuing the series, this is the Teman Negara, a jungle rainforest deep within peninsular Malaysia, and the location of a number of mysteries for me.
This is the Teman Negara, which I visited during a trip to Malaysia:
And this is an Anopheles mosquito. Not the one that BIT me, despite my efforts to keep myself smeared with a powerful mosquito repellant, but one just like the one I caught sucking the blood in broad daylight from my hand:
Now here comes the mystery. About a month after returning from my vacation, at around 12.30 PM in the afternoon and while at work, I quite suddenly felt like I was going to get the flu: my body became weak, and I could feel my temperature was rising. I went home.
About one hour later, I was in bed with a high fever and chills. My fever was higher, my weakness was weaker, and my chills were chillier than anything I have ever experienced, either before then or since.
Now, I’m not totally stupid – I know that because I spent time trekking in an area with malaria, and there could be a chance that I could get a delayed infection, so I decided to closely monitor my temperature: if it started to rise or get worse, I’d go to the hospital immediately.
After almost two days the temperature went down almost as quickly as it originally climbed, and the chills and the weakness disappeared.
Did I have malaria and then recover? I remember the old British colonials would use the expression “to have a touch of malaria” – did I have a touch of malaria?
It’s a mystery because I guess I will never know!