One of my best travel friends, and indeed best friends ever, named Pete, is full of profound wisdom. This undoubtedly comes from having incredibly bad luck…a curse I am all to familiar with. He has given me some great advice at some important points in the last year-and-a-bit. Strangely the advice is always the same. When I got myself in a sticky political situation with the management at our school in Korea, he bowed his head and suggested, “Don’t Do That.” When I left my prescription glasses at a friend’s house 3 hours away, he consoled, “Don’t Do That.” When I got the chicken pox, and a subsequent blood infection last month on Koh Phi Phi, he advised, “Don’t Do That”. And finally, when I needed to go to an expensive hospital in Bangkok….he prescribed a sage “Don’t Do That.”

This is good advice. Don’t get sick when traveling. I have unfortunately visited the hospital a few times over the last few years. My motorcycle accident in Vietnam required stitches, and multiple follow up visits to monitor for infection. I had double eye injections in Nepal, which required some strong drugs.

But this last time was the most worrying. Worse than having a laceration on my leg on some remote mud road in a jungle. I felt like this:

Just about a week ago, I hired a taxi to take me to the Phuket International Airport to pick up my friend Meghan, who had flown all the way from Vancouver to hang out. Well, and probably to have some fun in Thailand too. Sorry Meghan, that didn’t work out as well as I thought it would

We set off for Koh Phi Phi, and had a great first night, granted with a few speed bumps. Quiet Meghan.

The next day, I was feeling really tired. I’d been drinking a fair amount during the ESL course that I had just finished, so I thought it was just the old “one night too many” shakes that can confront the backpacker/alcoholic. I slept for a few hours, and went back to the beach for a relatively quiet night with Meghan, Jack and Colleen at a tikki hut called the Deaf Gecko. Watched a fire show, had about 4 drinks, and enjoyed.

However, for the next 6 days, I struggled to get out of bed. I’ve only recently started to become aware of my body enough to know when something is mildly wrong, and when something more serious is wrong. I’ve had some great talks with my dad about it, and maybe its human nature to know–on some level–when you need to get to a hospital. And as I laid in bed beside the beach, unable to scuba dive on the most beautiful island in Thailand, I started to get that feeling.

I booked a ferry+bus ticket to Bangkok on the national holiday of Songkran, which essentially involved switching between several modes of transport amidst a nation-wide waterfight. I double-dosed extra strength Tylenol and held cold bottles of water to my pulsating forehead as I psychologically nursed myself through the long journey to the hospital.

I arrived with minutes to spare before the admissions department closed, and begged to be admitted for the night. Now full of Tylenol, my fever was absent, and the doctors–I suspect–thought that I was looking for a free night’s accommodation on my insurance company’s dime. But by 4am, the fever was back, and they began a flurry of tests, checking for Malaria and Dengue fever. At first, they thought it was H1N1, but after double checking the tests, they dismissed it. In fact, they never really found an explanation. I had a mild throat infection, but nothing that would explain a 40+ degree fever, cold sweats, and immense fatigue.

And that’s it! I’ve been released with all these drugs, and while I feel hydrated after 3 days on the drip, I can’t say that I feel 100%. I’ve now been on 4 different anti-biotic drugs in the last 7 days, including IV antibiotics, liver fixing drugs, anti-histamines, crazy cough suppressants, and a frightening number of Tylenol pills. So I’m going to hang out in Bangkok, and see how it goes.

What is the point of this post?? Good question. In regards to getting sick while traveling, Don’t Do That.