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November 29, 2004

Heart of Darkness: A Failed Travel Blog

I'm gonna let Ken provide you with the color-commentary on just how this adventure played out. It took a wrong turn the night he decided to stay out all night drinking with the locals of Ayutthaya.

His sickness started that next morning and followed him to Bangkok. Out of sheer will he woke up and managed to find Thad and I in a bar off Sukhumvit and joined us in drinking a fair amount of Thai whiskey.

When we arrived in the south the next night the first signs of delirium and high fever began to show. We still managed to take a longtail boat to to a remote beach and I convinced Ken that he could live without air conditioning.

We set up shop in a small cluster of bungalows and stayed put for a while. It was idyllic. While Ken stayed in his bungalow sweating and dying I ate grilled sea bass on the beach and drank a few beers. I assumed he would get better and we could soon resume the adventure.

By the next night I joined Ken in a nice bout of the Hong Kong flu myself. I awoke at 2 am in a bizarre delirium hearing voices and having to make a decision between puking in the toilet and crapping on the floor or the complete opposite. In the end I think I made the right decision. I spent the next twelve hours staring at the ceiling fan through my mosquito net sweating and talking to myself as the blades contined to thump thump thump into my skull.

So this is how this adventure started. We both hit the very bottom and stayed there for quite some time. We finally took a boat to Phuket and found a doctor. She gave us shots in the ass for two days and bags of little pills. We sat in our rooms for several more days.

In the end, we made it back to Bangkok and managed to salvage the whole thing. We had some really great times in that city. But our spirit was a bit broken. We couldn't bring ourselves to write about much and this whole travel blog died in the water. Maybe next time.

I'll let Ken wrap this whole thing up for you, I can guarantee that the journey was much more prolific for him. He fell to the bottom and managed to rise above it all in end. There were pockets of enlightenment throughout it all, but in the end Lao was highly elusive. Even a bit of an ass if I do say so myself.

Posted by Lookatlao at November 29, 2004 3:28 PM