Not Afraid of the Fall

by Kyle James

  9/18/15

  Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand

  In my dream I was searching a large store for the bathroom because my stomach hurt. I continued to search in a panic, and after being unsuccessful to the point where I was going to have a major accident, I stirred awake in a bed full of hot sweats. I came to my senses to find a gut-wrenching gut wrenching. I scooted to the bathroom like a scared dog and made it just in time as my bowel faucet turned on.

  I had to cut my losses while I was still somewhat ahead, and pounded one of our two large water bottles. This routine happened every thirty minutes until the morning, three hours later. Well, except for the water-pounding part. I ran out of water shortly.

  Ash woke up around 8:00 a.m. as I was in the bathroom and came in to apologize for sleeping in. She always seemed to feel bad if I was up first.

  “It’s okay, baby. Don’t worry about that,” I said with my last bit of energy. “I need water,” I added, desperately dehydrated.

  “My god, you look awful,” she said as she saw my white face dripping with sweat.

  I was trying to figure out how I’d gotten sick and she hadn’t. This wasn’t just my body reacting weirdly to the food. This was a parasite, a disease, a virus, something serious. Then it all came back to me. You idiot. After my massage, the masseuse had handed me a cup of tea and watermelon as I put my shoes and socks back on. They had either washed the watermelon with water or had used unfiltered water for the tea.

  Ash returned with bottles of water. I drank as much as I could and tried to get some rest. I had been awake since 3:00 a.m. and was exhausted by the fluid loss. Once she knew I was comfortable in the clean bed, she headed down to the beach.

  Ash was so much better about doing things on her own since we’d left Denver. In the beginning of the trip and even when we were back at home, she probably would have just stayed with me, but she had been meditating a lot lately. I think she had truly found confidence in her self-image and worth since she had been around so many kind people who weren’t competitive or lost in a world of supermodels and shows that portray women as objects. I was just happy to be able to experience her transformation firsthand.

  I rushed to the bathroom, deep in thought and shallow in hydration.

  After a few hours of napping, I mustered up the strength to venture to the beach. As I walked slowly down the path, I truly realized how weak I had become in the last twelve hours. Diarrhea is a deadly force. It literally drains you of water, energy, and butt softness. This was when I truly appreciated the wiping hose of Thailand.

  In the States I would have wiped my butt raw at this point, but here, with a plumbing system not built for toilet paper, people had to throw their toilet paper away in a trash can. There was a hose to spray before wiping so you avoided the smell of shit in your trash. I had grown to love these hoses. I laughed at the thought of being in Europe and not wanting to use a bidet, but here I was in a mosquito-infested outhouse in the jungle in the pouring rain, spraying my butt with a water gun.

  I returned to Ash and took shelter under a cabana. It truly had been raining all types of rain since we’d arrived. “Ash, let’s go in the water!” I suggested.

  We rushed out into the warm sea together and took seats in the water, crisscross applesauce. The white sand underneath was soft, the warm water was soaking my chilled body, and the rain massaged my head and shoulders. We both sat in silence as the rain pounded the water around us. I stared at the surface of the waves and let my mind escape. Instead of focusing on anything, I watched the silhouette of the rain hitting the water. My mind watched the drops rise rather than fall, similar to when tires look like they are rotating in reverse at high speeds. It now looked like thousands of drops were slowly rising out of the water. This self-created hallucination mixed with the humming sounds of the earth’s shower gave me a natural high that no drug could replicate. The rain let up after fifteen minutes, and I snapped out of the lucid trip.

  “Wow,” Ash said softly.

  “Yeah, that was intense,” I replied.

  “Do you want to look for seashells for Madi?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “Just as long as there’s a bathroom in sight.”

  Ash’s niece, Madi, was basically like her little sister. Ash’s parents had been helping raise Madi since she was a young girl. I could tell this was who Ash missed the most. We walked along the beach, collecting seashells for the rest of the afternoon.

  9/19/15

  Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand

  Another sleepless night. I didn’t mind not being able to eat, but not being able to sleep was going to be the death of me. My stomach would wake me up semi-hourly to dispel all the water I’d just drunk. I drank as many liters of water as I could throughout the night and never peed once. These sleepless nights were catching up to me, but my priority remained hydration.

  I woke up and was happy to discover that the three-day rainstorm had finally passed. (No, not the diarrhea; that was alive and well.) It was sunny outside. I found a note on the dirty bed from Ash saying she was at the beach.

  I had been in the shower for so long that my water had gone cold. I heard a knock on the door; I forgot I had the only key. I knew I was going to get the floor wet, but Ash was rather impatient when she was outside in mosquito country. I tiptoed over and opened the door. Hmm, Ash looked a lot like two housekeeping ladies. Oh shit! I slammed the door and apologized through it as I stood there naked and cringing. They were probably scarred for life.

  When Ash got home a few minutes later, I told her what had happened.

  Her response: “Those poor women.”

  We ate takeout for dinner in the dirty bed and watched the only channel in English on TV. Which also happened to be the best channel on TV—Nat Geo, baby. This was our idea of a great night. We cuddled in bed, our bellies full of pasta, and watched epic wild animal battles. My stomach had kept us from doing too much the last few days, but it felt like a blessing in disguise. Sometimes we took quantity over quality and tried to do so much that we failed to see the beauty in what was right in front of us. We had a lot to process in the coming weeks, and it wasn’t going to be easy without rest.

  9/20/15

  Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand

  Let’s just say the gun hose next to the toilet was out of ammo. I didn’t know how much longer this could go on before I couldn’t keep up with the hydration. I had promised Ash we would rent a moped tomorrow to find the waterfalls. I still had a bit of moped post-traumatic stress disorder from our crash in Greece, and a bit of pre-traumatic stress disorder from my pending diarrhea. This accumulated to one hell of a stress disorder. We really didn’t have much of a choice, though; the taxis were four hundred baht to the other villages, and a moped for the entire day was only 250.

  The guy at the front desk ordered us a moped, and two Thai girls showed up minutes later, each on a moped. They dropped one off with us, and both drove off on the other. Before we set off, Ash asked where our helmets were. I assumed they were under the seat like with most mopeds, but they had not given us any. Luckily, our resort had extras. (If I died on a moped without a helmet on, my mom would kill me.) We sped up the hill, chasing waterfalls against TLC’s advice.

  It was really tough for me to get used to driving on the left side of the road. I would have it down for a mile or two, but then, when I pulled out of a turn, I would naturally merge into the right lane. It also was tough for me to get used to driving as chaotically as the Thai drivers. We reached a two-lane roundabout, and I didn’t even attempt to figure it out. I just beelined diagonally to the road we wanted, as did a Thai truck next to me. I think I was learning.

  We spotted what looked like the area where we were supposed to pull over, and I slowed down onto the rock-covered parking lot. There were no signs around, but we saw a truck full of guys pulling out of the parking lot. I pointed to the trailhead across the street and tried to ask with my facial expressions if that was the waterfall. Every single guy on the truck pointe
d and nodded. The truck pulled away, and they all smiled sincerely and waved good-bye.

  The trail was an easy one, and we came to the first small series of falls within a few hundred feet. I was treading carefully to keep an eye out for poisonous snakes, scorpions, and centipedes. I was sick enough with this norovirus (what I deducted after researching this morning); I couldn’t afford to add poison to the mix.

  As I took pictures of Ash on the waterfall (Instagram gold), I noticed that I was getting red and overheated for some reason and found that my bootleg sunscreen from 7-Eleven was simply clogging my pores. Instead of allowing my sweat to cool me down, the sunscreen was trapping it and overheating me.

  This was the luxury of being on an island: you could drive in any direction and eventually reach water. Soaking in the sea turned out to be a futile attempt at cooling off. The water on this beach felt like it had been sitting in a teakettle on the stove. We did succeed in washing off the white paste that was sold to us as sunscreen. Then we dried off and sat at a beach restaurant to try to cool down and let our sweat go to work for us.

  Ash ordered a sandwich, and I set off to the bathroom behind the café. It was a cinder-block room that looked like a torture chamber. It had no mosquitos, though, which meant it was perfect in my book. My standards on bathrooms had dropped so sharply that as long as the bathrooms didn’t have mosquitos, they could be much worse.

  We finished our food and got back on the moped to get some wind in our faces. We passed lines of coconut groves and elephant camps, where the elephants were either doing work or being ridden around on by tourists. This broke my heart as I thought back to the stories we’d heard at ENP. I wanted to throw a coconut at the riders and knock them off the poor animals.

  The island was absolutely gorgeous. We cruised through small villages, waving and smiling at as many people as we could. We were trying to feed back into the positive energy grid that we had been using for weeks now.

  It was our last night in Ko Pha Ngan and our best day yet. This island was improving our spirits immensely. I’d spent much of our time in Ko Pha Ngan deep in thought, and that was exactly what I’d needed out of Thailand. We were going to be leaving this magical place soon, and I wanted to be able to capture and bottle up the kind nature and energy of the souls who inhabited it.

  We lay in the dirty bed before showering, discussing our time here and how it had been another great piece of our puzzle. As we chatted, Ash leaned in and pulled something out of my beard. That something was a large beetle. I had no idea it was in there, as I hadn’t felt a thing. Well, there went my shot at romance tonight. Ash was dry heaving in the bathroom. I really wish our helmets had had visors.

  9/21/15

  Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand → Ko Tao, Thailand

  This was it. The night where my immune system held a press conference with the rest of my body to let it know we had defeated the norovirus. I awoke and glanced at my clock to see what time it was and figured it would be around 8:00 a.m. When I saw 11:15 staring back at me, I knew we had to move quickly. Our boat to Ko Tao was at 12:45 p.m. We threw everything haphazardly into our bags and started running to the village.

  As we hurried to the pier (in the bed of a laundromat owner’s truck who agreed to take us for ten dollars), I was having vivid, lucid flashbacks of water rushing into our boat as we thrashed about in the sea. I couldn’t believe we were going to venture back into this water. But we didn’t have much of a choice; we couldn’t stay out in the middle of the gulf forever.

  The clear skies and calm water gave us ideal cruising conditions. Other than an occasional bump, it was literally smooth sailing. This was good for my mental state. I couldn’t afford to lose that; my physical state had already deteriorated.

  The sea looked like a scatterplot with no correlation as multicolored boats hunted fish in all directions. We waved to captains on boats that looked like Forrest Gump’s boat, Jenny. (I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that is my third reference to Forrest Gump. Somehow our trip reminded me a lot of that movie, and I couldn’t begin to tell you how, but I felt good about it.)

  I felt the boat drop gear and slow down as we cruised toward Mae Haad Pier. I glanced over the edge of the railing and saw the clearest water yet; it looked like our boat was gliding on air. I could make out every single fish, rock, and piece of coral. This place felt unreal. I was glad that bartender in Antwerp had told us to come here. It looked like we had saved the best for last in Ko Tao (Turtle Island). Just how we’d planned it.

  Our hosts, Alan and Heidi, were a British couple who had lived in Ko Tao for ten years. They seemed to be in their midforties or fifties, and were a rare combination of quirky, sweet, and smart. Alan used to be a financial advisor, and Heidi had been in customer service. They greeted us with the two-cheek kiss. This greeting seems like a distant memory.

  We followed behind them to their small pickup truck, and Alan asked, “Do you want to ride the boring way or the dangerous way?”

  That was like asking a person with an excruciating hangover if they wanted one ibuprofen or three.

  We climbed onto the back of the pickup truck that had a handlebar above the cab. Ash and I stood on the bed and held on to the bar as Alan backed out of the pier parking lot. We laughed with excitement as we rode the truck like a roller coaster through the coconut groves. The tall palm trees grew to be forty to fifty feet tall here. Many still had a full chamber of coconuts. If we took one of those to the head. we’d be scre—

  Thwap.

  “I’m hit, Ash! I’m hit!” I screamed.

  “You idiot, that was just a branch. Keep your head down when we pass the trees!” Ash responded while laughing with joy from the thrill of the ride.

  In my defense, it had felt like a coconut. I kept my head on a swivel from that point forward.

  We turned onto a dirt road that must have been the driveway to our place, the Star Villa. It was basically a mountain, and it took more power than I cared to use to keep my bag and myself from flying off the truck. I felt like I was doing a pull-up hold at the top of the bar as we climbed. We reached a point where I could feel Alan holding down the gas, and we barely made it over a lip before flattening out and stopping abruptly.

  Once we got out of the truck, Alan led the way up steep steps and told us to have a seat on the rocking chairs at the top on the porch. I slid off my backpack and felt a surge of relief. Our view was unreal. We were on top of a mountain, looking down over the coconut grove and all the way out to sea.

  Alan did a rundown of the swanky villa, from electronics to AC, to food and drinks. There were surround-sound speakers and a DVR system. We’d been lucky if we had a TV with English channels up to this point.

  Even better than the place itself was the phone they provided. They gave us an old-school “burner” phone and told us that all the taxis and good restaurants were contacts in there. They also told us to call them twice a day to get a ride down to the village. Thank God, I thought. We were trying to figure out how we were going to get to and from this place.

  We thanked them for the hospitality and took time to unwind. After four months of traveling, Ko Tao was our last real stop. Just writing those words made me sick to my stomach. Almost everything in Thailand made me sick to my stomach, but this was a different kind of nausea.

  9/22/15

  Ko Tao, Thailand

  This morning we walked to the porch and looked at the view, then drank coffee and ate toasties (ham-and-cheese paninis made famous by 7-Eleven) and omelets that Alan had made for us.

  After breakfast and enough coffee to get us moving, we packed our day backpack with towels, sunscreen, the GoPro, and snorkels that Alan and Heidi were letting us borrow. Alan drove us down the steep hill as we held on for dear life in the back and watched for coconuts and trees. He dropped us off at the moped rental place. After mapping out what we wanted to do this week, we found that renting a moped for three days would be cheaper than taking taxis.

  Our first beach
was called Aow Leuk Bay. Alan and Heidi said it was their absolute favorite and that they had spotted many sea turtles and stingrays there. Before we left, he warned me that it was a very tricky drive on a moped but it was doable. That was concerning, but we had already crashed once and lived.

  Driving in Thailand is essentially just a series of near misses. There were few rules here. I hadn’t seen a police officer since we’d arrived, and people had very little concern for mopeds. Cars and SUV taxis blew past me, giving us a foot of space. It was honestly terrifying, having Ash on the back. I wouldn’t mind if it were just my life at stake. After a stressful fifteen minutes, we reached the turnoff for Aow Leuk Bay.

  Now let me set the scene when we reached the beach. We had been to the gorgeous beaches of Greece, the rocky coast of Croatia, and three other beaches in Thailand. After a short discussion, we decided that Aow Leuk Bay in Ko Tao, with its white sand, took the cake.

  We walked onto a magazine cover, plopped our stuff down in the sand, and waded into the water to snorkel. I put my mask on and went underwater to make sure it worked. When I dropped below the surface, I found myself staring into the eyes of at least forty fish.

  The bay was overpopulated with fish. I didn’t even know where to look. The farther out into the bay we got, the more coral and sea life there were, with at least two dozen different types of fish in sight at all times.

  There were plenty of your usual clear and white fish with black stripes, but we were gravitating toward the school of neon fish. It felt like we were those people you always wanted to be as a kid: the ones in the large tanks at the aquarium. Every time one of us spotted a large fish, we pointed and made awkward drowning noises to each other.