Back in April of this year I did a quick 3 week trip to Thailand alone. Now I know I'm not the most experienced traveler (my longest trip to date was 3 months) BUT in all my travels I have never experienced being sick on the road. When you're not prepared - holy shit can it bite you in the ass. So here we go, my first experience with being sick while backpacking.
The story begins 3 sunburns in. In Thailand they have their New Year in April, and its called Songkran. The tradition is that you gently throw water on yourself and òn strangers throughout the day to wash away the year and to celebrate the new incoming one.
Teehee! Happy New Year
Thanks to tourism and raging alcoholism, it is now a week long party where people literally DRENCH YOU with whatever device can hold the most amount of water. This = being soaking wet for 5 days straight.
Gotta arm yourself!
My first day of Songkran was straight up disrespectful to my body. 13 hours of drinking. 13 hours of being wet.
8am rolled around and so did my boat to get off the island. On my LONG adventure to the north of Thailand (15 hours to be exact), my hangover decided to shape-shift into a full-blown fever. LITERALLY I WAS HALLUCINATING AND TALKING TO MYSELF.
Post 11 hour feverish bus ride with no medication.
Sick nose-burn bro.
In the following days, I didn't really give my fever a chance to settle down. I just managed to tame it with extra strength Advils so I could continue living my life. One of the days I even got to hang with elephants!
Woo!
I was well versed in the importance of sunscreen by this point. Unfortunately, nobody tells you that "Hey, your lips need love too." Because of my ignorance, I ended up leaving that elephant camp with 2nd degree sunburns on my lips.
Pictured: pain
Notice the white blisters in the 2nd photo
2 days away from my flight home and the score-sheet was at
Diseases - 2
Thaly - 0
In the middle of my last night-train back to Bangkok, I woke up unable to open one of my eyes. You lazy fucking thing, wake up! I managed to pry it open a little bit only to have it tear up hysterically. I took a picture to see the damage and was horrified to see that my left eye had decided to quit on life.
WARNING, EXTREMELY UNATTRACTIVE PICTURES. I'M NOT KIDDING THIS IS BAD:
"Kill. Me."
Turns out the hostel bed I slept in the night before was extremely unsanitary and GAVE ME FUCKING PINK EYE!!
How I had to walk around in public the next day.
As I landed in Canada, I had a long list of ailments. My lips were twice their normal size and blistering. My left eye was swollen shut. My voice box threw in the towel. My throat was closed for business. My lungs were living on a prayer and worst of all my tan was uneven and made me look like I was covered in dirt.
Customs almost didn't let me through because I looked partially like I had leprosy and also like I was carrying the Bird Flu back to Canada to cause a pandemic.
Just for funsies, here's me on the first day of my trip, and me on the last.
So healthy and full of hope in the left picture. So over it in the right.
Despite the fact that I looked like Quasimodo's half-sister and nearly perished along the way, I wouldn't take back a single immune system destroying moment from that trip!
Stay safe kids and bring Advil.
*Special thanks to my Editor in Chief Stella - for making sure there weren't 3000 commas.
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