Right before I went to Thailand last year, I had to take a trip to somewhere even more foreign: Florida. My mother, who moves down there to work in the winters, had requested that I come down and visit her before I got on a plane and went across the literal world. Knowing how lovely Florida is in January and, of course, because I love my mother, I obliged.
It wasn’t until I arrived that I figured out why my mom had invited me down so suddenly.
“I thought it would be crazy not to see you before you go to Asia, just in case anything happens.” she said to me while we sat by her pool out back
This was not a new conversation for us. The first time we’d had it was when I was applying to college. One of my top choices was a school in Chicago, some 700 miles away from our home in Hockessin. After a weekend out there to visit, we returned home only for my mother to say:
“I’m not sure if I would let you go to Chicago. It’s too far if there were ever an emergency and I needed to get to you.”
I remember being perturbed. In general, I don’t love it when people impose limits on me. If I had to explain it, which I’m trying to do less, I would classify it as a Sagittarian need for independence that, being written in the stars, is inherently beyond my control. Furthermore, I had convinced myself that, at the old age of seventeen, I had already spent far too much time doing exactly what I wanted just to now start doing what others told me to.
Despite my annoyance, I tried to keep in mind that my mother only ever wants what she thinks is best for me. While she and I may disagree about what, exactly, that is, her intentions are always pure. I understood that, if anything were to happen to me, she wanted the peace of mind that comes with being able to get in a car and be with me only a few hours later. On the other hand, I also knew that looking at a prestigious university carried a different weight than being accepted to that university. An acceptance would, perhaps, change her mind. So, in a pretty aberrant move for me, I decided to be patient and wait to see where all the chips fell.
When I was eventually rejected from that university, the conversation was tabled for a while. However, it would come up again when I decided that, as a part of my travels after college, I would go to southeast and east Asia. If my mother thought Chicago was far, then Thailand, Japan, and Korea may as well have been distant planets in a galaxy far, far away.
“What if you get an appendicitis?”
“Mom, I’m not going to get an appendicitis.”
“But you might and I can’t get to you.”
“Yeah, mom, and I also might get into my car tomorrow and get t-boned at an intersection and die. Does that mean I should stay in our house forever?” I’m not sure I actually ever said this to her. And if I did, I definitely did not do so in words as cogent. I thought about it a lot though, and I still do: there’s a lot in our world that is life-threatening. However, would that stop me from living my life? I didn’t want it to. I never want fear to stop me.
At some point, I booked the flight to Thailand and a group tour for when I arrived. I don’t remember a specific conversation that reached a resolution, if there even was one. Making those commitments, though, did mean that the debate was over. I was going to Thailand.
My mother letting me go, though, did not assuage my own fear. For whatever reason, I remember being really anxious about the flight. This was strange because I started flying on airplanes very young, and I never remember being afraid of them. I know traveling by plane is much safer than traveling by car, and probably safer than the 1 train I caught headed downtown at three AM on Saturday morning, but I was still freaked out. I had flown with the airline before, I had already been to the connecting airport in Istanbul, and I had flown over the Atlantic several times; not to mention the fourteen flights I had taken on the first leg of my trip. Why, then, was I so stressed about this one?
I had a feeling I was testing fate. I had taken a break from travel for two months after jetsetting through a dozen countries across two continents. I allowed myself to wonder how many times I would be so lucky as to arrive safely at my destination before my luck ran out. It wasn’t necessarily a rational thought. I’m reminded of the scene in the Sex and the City movie where, after finally getting pregnant, Charlotte expresses to Carrie how nervous she is over the prospect of losing her pregnancy, to which Carrie replies, “sweetie, you shit your pants this year. I think you’re done.” The fact of the matter was that my travels had not all been smooth sailing. I wrote a whole essay about how my bag was lost for eleven days in Greece, but I also got food poisoning in Paris and missed a bus to Amsterdam, among many other mishaps. If the most catastrophic event in my mind, i.e. the plane going down, did happen, then it would not be a result of my having too much good luck.
Maybe that idea of luck was not primarily what caused my anxieties. Perhaps more than that I had a hard time wrapping my head around going to travel again. All the travel I did in late 2022 and early 2023 was transformative in a way I believe I will be unpacking for a long time, maybe even the rest of my life. Experiencing all these new places, absorbing the sights they had to offer and the knowledge of their respective histories, and navigating the logistics of getting myself through all of it was a lot. While I was so fascinated and excited and grateful for the experience, it was also uniquely exhausting and isolating. In a similar way to my very own life, no one was going through it except for me, and I continue to struggle with that part of my travels as well as my life. Therefore, perhaps my anxiety can be read as a part of my brain trying to stop me from doing it again. But, as I stated before, I didn’t want to let the fear stop me. I believe it’s okay to be afraid; letting fear control me, though, is something I’m not willing to accept.
It happened a couple days into my trip.
Twenty five hours of travel was simultaneously much easier and much more difficult than I’d imagined. While I had gotten some sleep on the planes, trains, and automobiles I took on my way to Bangkok, the exhaustion I felt those first two days, in particular, was unique from anything I had ever felt before.
Despite that exhaustion, I immediately felt affirmed in my conviction not to let my fears stop me. The fatigue was distinctive, but so was Bangkok. The taxi I took from the airport had to drop me off about a quarter of a mile away from my hotel, as it sat in the middle of the Baan Wanglang Market on the banks of the Chao Phraya River. The not quite open-air yet not quite enclosed market contained paths that were so numerous and narrow that no cars had any hope to fit through them (scooters, however, were a completely different story). The market, itself, was like one big organism; alive with customers and vendors all talking amongst themselves, usually breaking up their speech with laughter.
Aside from the market, my fellow travelers and I got to explore much more of the city. We found ourselves stunned by the various structures as we wandered The Great Palace, fed fish as we rode through the Chao Phraya in a long boat, and I even ate a scorpion for the group’s enjoyment on Khao San road
Along the way, we got to know each other. I was joined by a pair of honeymooners from Rhode Island, a pilates instructor living in Idaho, and a travel nurse from Florida among others. The travel nurse and I first bonded when, in the middle of gnashing on some deep fried banana slices, we realized we had brought the same brand of travel toilet paper.
That day, though, we left Bangkok early in the morning and headed for Ayutthaya. Ayutthaya, which was first founded nearly a millennium ago, is the former capital of the Siamese Kingdom. At that time, it was a sprawling metropolis and commerce center.1 Now, it’s an archaeological site containing all of these impossibly large and breathtakingly beautiful monuments
Upon our arrival, we were presented with two choices. We could either ride a tuk tuk, which is basically an automated rick shaw, or we could ride bikes to the historical park. Now, I had not ridden a bike in, at the very least, ten years. I remember learning to ride a bike quite late; I was in the third grade. Why I thought it would be a good idea to get back on one, I’m not quite sure. However, I was not letting the fear control me, right? Plus, I had already played Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Shooting Star” in a tuk tuk the night before, so I felt like I had already sort of mastered that form of transport.
I should mention, however, that these bikes were not exactly top of the line. While testing my bike out, I noticed that rust had spread itself across the silver handlebars. On top of that, it was quite low to the ground, and, considering I stand at six feet and three inches with my legs making up a significant portion of that length, each pedal made it feel like my knees were trying to lodge themselves in my armpits. As someone who’s quite statuesque off of the bike, I imagine I looked more like one of those circus clowns that pedals away on a too-small tricycle as the audience looks on and laughs.
Still, though, after taking a couple loops around the parking lot, I wanted to ride this bike.
When we set off, I was the caboose as a group of us rode through the ancient city. As someone who hadn’t ridden a bike in a long time, I was turning on many muscles I forgot I’d had. However, I was also having a lot of fun. It was a unique opportunity, introducing the childlike wonder that I found in bike riding to the utter awe I was in at the ancient sights all around me. When we arrived at the park, I felt proud of myself. Without having ever ridden a bike on a public road, I did pretty well.
We stayed in that section of the park for about an hour before setting out for our next destination. After mounting our bikes, our tour guide told us that we would take a shortcut through a different section of the park while the tuk tuk crew stayed on the road. I had been on this bike for all of twenty minutes and we were already off-roading. What could go wrong?
Riding through the park, we came to the first bridge. They were these wooden, arched bridges that were about eight to ten feet wide (whichever makes me sound like less of an idiot in a second). The bridges expanded over the tiny water ways that weaved themselves through the park. Our tour guide led us over the first one and it was immediately challenging. I had to pump my legs hard enough to get my body to the top of that bridge, hit its crest, and then fly down. Nevertheless, I made it over the first and the second one.
I remember hearing “pick up speed” as we approached the third bridge. So, I pedaled harder. Just like the two before, I made it to the top and prepared myself to roll down. I don’t have a specific reason for what happened next, all I know is that I began to veer to my left. I realized what was going to happen right before I hit the side of the bridge and dislodged myself from my bike.
The travel nurse had been riding right behind me. She had seen the whole event transpire. Later, she would tell me that she thought I was going to go over the side of the bridge and into the stream below. Anyhow, she was the first one on the scene. I tried to get up, feeling remarkably okay (thanks, adrenaline) and she immediately told me to get back down.
“You’re bleeding quite a bit.” she said to me.
She would also tell me later that, at that point, all the color drained from my face. This caused her to be a bit more forceful in helping me to calm down. She began to lead me through a breathing exercise, and I remember being a little annoyed. Some part of my mind was already processing the bruise that my ego would endure from falling off of a bike in front of a group of other adults, and now I was doing a lamaze class on top of that. I mean, I had fallen off a bike, I wasn’t pushing a baby out after forty-two weeks of gestation. However, I understood something was wrong, and I deferred to the professional.
“Where are those wipes?” She asked.
“In the pocket of my green bag.” She went and fished it out of my bike’s basket.
After tearing open the aquamarine packet, she began to dab at my chin, which had impacted directly into those rusty handlebars. Luckily, the nurse had also brought a comically large backpack, which she affectionately referred to as “Big Bertha,” full of first-aid supplies. It’s ironic that I found the bag a bit funny when she first showed it to us, but, after having my ass laid out 10,000 miles from my home, I was suddenly very grateful for its existence.
She cleaned me up, disinfected the area and, at my request, accompanied me to the hospital. I was very angry during that ride. More so than being worried about the laceration on my chin, I was disappointed in myself. Why did you get on that fucking bike, Quinn? How did you think that would just work out? I had gone and done the very thing that I told my mother I wouldn’t do. I had hurt myself. I had come so far and was enjoying myself so much just for it all to be over so quickly.
We arrived at the hospital, and it was immediately so different from any experience one would have in the US. Firstly, someone must have called ahead because I was taken directly from the van and laid onto a bed. Then, the travel nurse filled out my intake forms for me. She took such a lead in the situation that I imagine the staff thought I was non-verbal. Although, they probably didn’t think too much about me because they were so fascinated with the fact that she was a nurse in the US. From there, it all went quite quickly. A doctor came in and sewed seven stitches into my chin, I was given a tetanus shot (because, much like the last time I rode a bike, I could not quite remember the last time I’d had one of those), and I was soon waiting for my prescription (an antibiotic and two different types of painkillers) to be filled. All told, we were in and out in less than two hours and it only cost me $152 without insurance. The travel nurse projected that, in the US, the same accident would have cost me about $2000 before insurance and been an all-day affair. While a trip to the hospital is never quite an ideal situation, this one, at the very least, added a lot of shading to my understanding of our healthcare system here in the US.
While this was certainly a tough moment, in retrospect, it really didn’t have much of an effect on the rest of my trip. I took my antibiotics, stayed on top of my pain medication, and periodically redressed my bandages. I was still able to do mostly everything I wanted to, the only notable exception being that I was unable to swim in the Andaman Sea. But, hey, there’s always next time!
To put this all another way, the worst case scenario happened: I ended up in a hospital in a foreign country. Even though that incident occurred, it did not ruin my trip. I still got to partake in a ladyboy show, meet a bunch of elephants, and take a Thai cooking class. It’s a similar place to where I landed when I wrote about losing my luggage. In travel, and life more broadly, there are countless mishaps that one can spend their time fretting about. If there’s anything I glean from this story, it’s that, sometimes, whatever I’m worrying about will happen. However, whatever it is I’m worrying about might not end up being as bad as I think it will. In fact, one day, it may turn into a story I think about to make myself laugh.
Herein lies another reason it’s so important to me to make sure I’m not being controlled by my fears. Sure, it is true that a healthy amount of fear keeps us from putting ourselves in harm’s way. Sometimes, though, our fears become so much larger than they need be. If I had let my fears dissuade me from going to Thailand, then would I have avoided a trip to the hospital? Probably. My trip to the hospital, however, did not define my experience. Instead, it’s the new places I saw, the unique people I met, and the laughs I got to share along that way that stick out when I look back. I understand though, despite these happy memories, that fear will always exist. I guess that simply means I have to hold onto that positivity a little bit tighter. I don’t know, though. After all, I am the very same genius who thought that riding a bike would be “just like riding a bike.”
This week’s recommendations:
Ryan Beatty’s Calico
This essay by Keara Sullivan of Aspiring Indie Darling
Having a writers’ date with your friend!