Sick in Siam
From Singapore we flew over mainland Malaysia and the Malacca Strait, gazing down on islands as we descended into Phuket.
We’d had to switch our flight to earlier in the morning to accommodate the ferry schedule from Phuket to Ko Phi Phi, so when we debarked from the plane and met with an immigration line estimated to take over 45 minutes, I started to get worried we’d miss our ferry. No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than a uniformed woman approached us and asked if we wanted to bypass the line for ฿200 each.
“I don’t have any Baht, do you take US Dollars?”
“Yes. $5 each.”
Minutes later we’d loaded our bags into a taxi for the hourlong ride through the dirty city of Phuket to the ferry terminal, where we bided the remaining time before our ferry by enjoying tropical smoothies.
A leisurely 2 hours after boarding the Phi Phi Cruiser, we pulled into the Ao Tan Sai Pier, where, not realizing the porters waiting on shore would have taken our bags, we instead lugged our suitcases ourselves through the cobbled walkways of downtown Phi Phi to our hotel.
Long day or not, we’d alighted at a beachy paradise. I acquired a bottle of Singa lager and, mere feet away from our resort, took in the view from Loh Dalum Beach as the sun approached the horizon.
High in the sky I saw what looked like a balloon, until I realized it wasn’t moving and besides was too high up; it was the night’s first star. As the sun dipped lower, another appeared not far from the first, and then dusk truly began to settle in.
We woke the next morning to birds chirping. First one with a whistling sound: wheeow-whow. Then another: di di di di di-di-di-di-di. Not to be left out, two more joined the chorus: who-who-wchow who-who-wchow and ci-ci-ci chir-chir.
We broke our fast beachside with a couple of cats, one of which sat tranquilly in its seat as we joined it at an otherwise-empty table. We did the same for the rest of our mornings here, though during one I brought the Super Bowl to breakfast with me, as it had started at 6:30am local time.
After breakfast, we laid in the sun by the pool, dragonflies buzzing around and Corey sipping on a coconut smoothie. When we took dips in the Loh Dalam Bay, fish swam around us in the clear water.
In the afternoon, I took out a paddleboard and made it all the way around the small cape (or “laem”) on the west side of the bay, from where I could see Monkey Beach. It looked particularly challenging and time-consuming to go any further, my way blocked by big boats and snorkelers, so I turned around and – with effort now that the wind had picked up and more boats passed in and out of the bay – made it back along the rocks of the laem to the beach.
The pool had been full of action in the meantime. Corey had befriended a British woman on vacation with her husband, and the two had feverishly discussed the “situation” developing between an old Italian man and a young Thai woman. The two had arrived together, yet she sat apart – facing away from the pool and towards the beach – refusing to turn around whenever he swam over “like a shark!” trying to get her attention. An hour or two later they did walk off together, appearing to make some type of exchange at the edge of the pool area.
For our dinners we’d always head into the town area. Walking around, it’d stink like trash one moment and the next we’d smell delicious food. I sampled different dishes and beers from night-to-night: green curry & Chang beer one night, pad thai & Leo the next.
On our final night in Phi Phi, we came across the same Thai woman we’d seen at the pool with the old Italian man, this time not demure in the least but rather actively on the prowl. “So she’s the actual shark!”
While you can find real-life sharks right off the coast of Ko Phi Phi, not least at Blacktip Reef Shark Point, we didn’t seek them out. The most deadly-looking thing I encountered was a Nephila Pilipes spider the size of my hand, hanging out on its web at the side of a hiking trail. Though it’s not poisonous to humans, I didn’t realize that at the time.
That sweltering hike up to the viewpoint took me by piles of trash, hovels, and farm animals. At least the view from the top made up for it.
Our final morning on the island, I woke up with an upset stomach, which only got worse as the day went on. At least this time the porters helped with our luggage, and a speedboat got us back to Phuket much quicker than the ferry. A quick hop over the Malay Peninsula brought us to Ko Samui.
Maybe it was the outdoor airport or maybe it was the tropical welcome drinks at our 5-star resort, but we felt far more relaxed here than we had in Phuket. After checking in, a hotel attendant drove us by golf cart uphill to our villa, in which the staff had prepared a sumptuous display of rose petals. From our deck’s private pool we looked out into the Gulf of Thailand with Mad Lang Island to our right.
Peaceful as the island may be, I still felt sick to my stomach, so I got a club sandwich from room service. Who would have thought curry for breakfast every morning wasn’t the brightest idea? Although truly I blame the pad krapow that I’d eaten in one of Phi Phi’s outdoor markets.
Sick from food I got here? Shocking.
We spent most of our time swimming and lying by the pools, both our private pool and the beachside pool down the hill. On the afternoon of the second day we got a couple’s facial and massage. The sakura oil of the former reminded me of the natural beauty of our trip to Japan; the acupressure of the latter left me with a sore neck & traps.
We’d booked tickets that night for a ferry to take us to Koh Phangan for its monthly Full Moon Party at Haad Rin Beach. The full moon had actually been out the prior night, but it had conflicted with Buddha Day and its associated ban on alcohol sales, so they delayed the party one day.
We’d been going to meet up with two of Corey’s friends for it, but they hadn’t caught the scheduling change and had already moved on from Ko Phangan. For our part, I hadn’t recovered much at all from my stomach bug and seriously considered not going, but ultimately felt I’d regret coming all this way just to sit it out. So I downed an espresso at dinner and we boarded the shuttle at around 8pm, by which time the waning gibbous had already risen.
In dire need of an espresso
On that bus to the boat we met a young Israeli guy & girl and a pair of Australian moms who’d met 25 years ago on a bus to Las Vegas and were traveling in celebration of one of their 50th birthdays. Corey hit it off especially with the Australians, keen to hear from other travelers.
At the port’s beach we walked up portable wooden stairs and onto a speedboat that raced us across the few miles separating the islands, past many of the same stationary boats with green lights that we could see at night from our hotel. We debarked to a dock decked out for Valentine’s Day, which would commence in a couple of hours.
Upon entering the party zone we immediately met with stall upon stall of body painters. I asked for a dragon and a short negotiation later ended up with a yellow-and-orange one all the way down my arm. Corey went with her staple of butterflies: pink with yellow-and-blue wings.
We’d been having fun chatting with the Australian moms and thus decided to spend the party together. So we all went together to acquire the ubiquitous alcohol buckets. As mentioned ad nauseum, my stomach couldn’t have been more upset, but at the same time I couldn’t pass up drinking the symbol of the party, so I got one with gin, schweppes, and red bull.
It got more and more packed as we approached the beach, and by the time we reached it, it had become an absolute madhouse that stretched as far as we could see. Bars lined the beach from end-to-end, in and out of which young Brits, Australians, and Germans spilled constantly.
Across the sand undulated a sea of people dressed in neon and behind whom neon signs announced the sections of the party. One moment you’d be at a rave, and a couple steps further you’d be inundated by rap music. You couldn’t look anywhere without seeing fire rising above the crowd: fire twirlers periodically accompanied by partiers around whom they spun the fire as close as they could; fire breathers blowing as if on a horn; partiers hopping over the fire jump ropes, first one then two then three and four; words lit up in fire such as “Amazing Full Moon Festival 2025”.
Often the jump rope sessions ended with someone falling and getting hit by the burning rope. Sometimes nothing happened; the person’s shirt remained unignited. But one dude got his entire shirt lit on fire and the people surrounding him barely got it beat out in time before he got a serious burn.
We passed the night hopping from bar to bar. When we got tired we’d sit on the beach, looking up at the moon and people-watching such characters as a woman in a light-up butterfly cape, or explorers climbing up to the top of a rickety wooden structure, presumably for the views.
We left for the ferry at around 2:30am, the party still in full swing. I considered us lucky that our ferry departed by 3:30am – as some of the ferry companies had lines going all the way down the pier that must have taken hours.
Most people on the speedboat hunched over, exhausted by the night. This one German family probably had the most energy of anyone, as they kept loudly conversing in their native tongue – all except one of their daughters, who appeared high school or college-aged and could barely talk, had to be helped to walk, and spent the entire ride hiccupping on her dad’s lap.
We bid farewell to our Australian friends back in Ko Samui, promising to hit them up next time we’re in Melbourne. We finally laid down to sleep just before the sun rose and slept past all our alarms, but that’s why we’d gotten an afternoon flight.
Samui’s rustic airport with its wooden beams, mountain views, and lily pond soothed us, as did Bangkok Airways’s free snacks and drinks in the concourse area as we waited to board.
They had such good service that they served a free meal – of flat noodles with shrimp, mushroom, and tofu – on our short flight to Bangkok, where we had a short layover before flying over the hazy landscape and touching down in Chiang Mai as the sun set. On our way to the baggage claim, a Buddhist monk walked ahead of us, stopping to wait for his roller bag like everyone else. Perhaps he’d just come in on a Nepal Airways flight.
Catching up on texts after his flight from Kathmandu?
At the Shangri-La, Corey walked into a hotel room of decked out with balloons, flowers, rose petals, kissing swans, champagne, and a heart-shaped cake in dual celebration of our honeymoon and of Valentine’s Day. “Ohhh my god… this is so cute I can’t even deal!”
The next morning, I felt nearly as ascetic as the Buddhist monk, my body allowing me to eat just the smallest breakfast and drink just the smallest bit of tea before our day of temple hopping.
We stopped first at Wat Buppharam, its steps gloriously decorated with a five-headed dragon, a three-headed dragon, and a dragon eating itself. Inside, the temple held beautiful jade green buddhas. Downstairs, the wallpaper evoked scenes of Siam, prompting me to imagine – somewhat paradoxically – a simpler and yet more crowded life.
Next we walked down Tha Phae Road, overarched by Chinese zodiac symbols on one side and horoscope symbols on the other. From there we approached the old city walls, the most eye-catching of which were on the northern side where we found elephant sculptures ringed by colorful displays left over from the flower festival.
A flock of pigeons welcomed us through Tha Phae Gate, and we walked down Rachadamnoen Road to Wat Chedi Luang, almost precisely in the center of the Old City. In this large complex of temples, the first one we encountered allowed only men inside, and despite not agreeing with the custom I couldn’t help but take a look as Corey waited outside.
She didn’t miss much though, especially compared to the main temple, where worshippers scattered all throughout the large hall facing the massive golden Buddha flanked by his disciples; we stayed in the back so as to not get in anyone’s way.
Outside again, we walked around the large brick Grand Chedi, inside of which had a massive golden Buddha of its own sitting cross-legged. Around the edges, stone elephants stood guard, which reminded me of my mom’s affinity for elephants and for Buddha.
The final small building we visited in that temple told the story of Ajahn Mun Bhuridatta, who spent years alone in the mountains, concerned about the “encroachments of modern ways” back in 1926. I wonder what he’d think of our modern ways today.
By this point we’d worked up quite an appetite and stopped to dine at Goodsouls Kitchen, an all-vegan restaurant whose fresh vegetable rolls and khao soi definitively eclipsed our favorite vegan Thai restaurant in Los Angeles. If we’d had the stomach to stay and eat our way through the entire menu, we would have.
A Northern Thai specialty
The next day we set out in a tour group of 10 people. We drove an hour and a half past rice paddies and orchards into the forest where we got out of our bus and into the back of a pickup truck to go down a steep hill to an elephant sanctuary. There our guide introduced us to the Changs: Mona Lisa and her baby December, just 2 months old. Unlike human babies it had hair all over its body and could walk, but like human babies it spent most of its time acting cute and fooling around.
Next we walked to a hut for lunchtime for the rest of the elephants, which we fed by passing sugar cane first to their trunks and then directly into their mouths. From there we walked uphill into the trees where an elephant placed a hat on my head and then kissed me with its trunk.
We learned that the elephants need to eat 200-400 kilograms per day, which I’m surprised is even possible despite them living in a wooded area.
To conclude our morning with the Changs we took bath time, us pouring water on them and them spraying water on us.
Our group loaded into the back of the pickup truck to go back uphill to our van and from there to lunch. Corey & I happened to get in first, so we stood at the front of the truck bed nearest to the driver, and everyone else loaded in behind, the people in the back being kept from falling out by a DIY door with a railing latch. Halfway up the rocky hill, we went over a bump and the woman leaning against the back railing screamed as the door gave out and she fell out of the truck, landing hard on her back; her boyfriend landed near her, though it happened so fast that I couldn’t tell whether he’d fallen too or whether he’d jumped after her in pursuit. Given his lack of injury, I surmise that he jumped. His girlfriend wasn’t so lucky, however; she could barely move and laid on the ground in pain.
The other three in their party got out to stay with her as they took the rest of us to the top where we sat in the van while they waited for medical attention to arrive. Fortunately she was able to walk, but she’d badly injured her back, and her and her friends’ tour ended with a trip in an ambulance to the hospital.
And then there were 5, the lucky ones who’d happened to be in the front-side of the truck bed.
“I’ve been doing this for 10 years and this has never happened… Good thing we have insurance” our guide nervously remarked a few times.
Our now-intimate group got to know each other better over a lunch of cashew chicken and pork soup. Along with us were a mother & daughter duo from St. Louis & Chicago and a solo Bostonian dude with Cambodian parents. He was going in the opposite direction of us, having just come from his parents’ native country.
After lunch we drove uphill past plenty of water buffalo in the fields, and then past biker after biker participating in the Inthanon Challenge, up and up and up until we reached the tallest point in Thailand – a shrine in the woods of Doi Inthanon National Park.
From there we had a short drive to the resplendent King & Queen Pagodas, which overlooked a hazy vista of the surrounding mountains. We strolled around their gardens and inside each temple and their beautiful buddhist art with imagery of life in Siam, one of the few places in the entire world that was never colonized by Europe.
Inside the King Pagoda – the name I’ll stick with given I can’t come close to pronouncing Phra Mahathat Naphamethanidon – we learned of the Four Holy Places of Buddhism, the places of the Budda’s birth, enlightenment, first teaching, and passing away.
“On that night, his mother, Queen Mahamaya, dreamed of a white elephant presenting a blooming white lotus, reverently circumambulating the Queen three times”
On our way back down to Chiang Mai we stopped at a waterfall and tried some longans, a type of fruit kinda like a grape or lychee and with a big seed inside. After the guide dropped us back at the hotel, she went to the hospital to check on the woman who’d fallen. We never learned how things turned out for her.
Place of the Great Parinirvana
As the sun set on that Sunday night, tired as we were, we walked back into the Old City to experience its massive Sunday Night Market. The same streets that had been nearly empty when we’d walked through them the day before were now packed with people exploring the wares and sampling the foods.
Still not quite well enough in the stomach to eat curry, I sampled a bit of chicken satay and peking duck, and Corey found some vegan gyoza. For dessert, we shared mango sticky rice.
The next morning we lounged around the hotel before setting off to the airport, intending to make a connection to Cambodia. We met with problems virtually from the moment we arrived at CNX.
We’d originally planned not to visit Chiang Mai but Bangkok, and had all our flights booked nonrefundable. When I tried to rebook, AirAsia didn’t have any options for our route, and the other airlines were all really expensive. But I noticed a one-way AirAsia ticket from Chiang Mai to Bangkok that would get us in 2h10m before our flight departing from Bangkok to Siem Reap. I booked it and figured we’d just explain this to the gate agent and get our bags checked all the way through. No problem!
Well, problem. The gate agent insisted that their system couldn’t combine two reservations and that they had a 3-hour minimum for connections. In other words, we’d have to retrieve our bags in Bangkok then re-check them. From this frustration they routed us to their bureaucratic process for handling overweight bags; the long DMV-esque ticket queue almost caused us to miss our flight.
Yet up in the air I felt at peace again. The logistics and hassle and discomfort flying can suck so much and yet it always feels worth it when you gaze down in silence at the tiny world below and deplane in a new city hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Back on the ground in Bangkok, the line to re-check our bags took an hour and we got to the front just in time. We’d only planned to spend one full day in Cambodia, so if we’d missed that bag check or that flight we wouldn’t have been able to see Angkor Wat.
Our least-favorite airline
As we waited in the DMK basement for our now-delayed plane to arrive, Corey got into conversation with two Chinese girls after complimenting their nails. They were from Wuhan and waiting for a flight to Shantou, having spent 5 days in Bangkok: “we travel there all the time because it’s close.” When we told them we’re going to Siem Reap they conferred with each other in Chinese and I picked out the words 不知道 “bù zhīdào” – perhaps they didn’t recognize its English name.
Well I 不知道 why I ever booked us on AirAsia. At least the plane finally arrived and we boarded the bus which took us onto the tarmac and out of Thailand.
Thank you for reading! Up next will be our 44 hours in Cambodia.
