Disgusting. I was disgusting.
The thick dreadlocks in my hair were matted with sweat and various other liquids. Most of my body was sticky, although I couldn’t really remember why. I assumed it was something to do with my peeling sunburn and the general layer of grime covering my skin. My eyes were bloodshot and sunken from days of drinking and sleep deprivation. I’m certain I must have smelled terrible, although in my present state I was no longer consciously aware of this.
I watched the Thai countryside speed by through the window of the small van ferrying me and nine others northward from Bangkok. As I drifted in and out of consciousness, images from the past week flashed through my mind.
Most of it was a blur. Less than a month prior I had come across a few cheap tickets to Bangkok. After several messages and calls around, it was determined that myself and two of my friends would be taking an impromptu trip to Thailand. We didn’t bother making any further plans. It seemed obvious that there would be more than enough in Bangkok to keep three young men busy for a couple of weeks.
★ ★ ★ ★
The first order of business upon checking into our dingy hostel was to get a cold beer. This soon became two beers, then three and so on until we were drunk. We didn’t really sober up again for the next five days.
At some point between the blurs of hot, crowded streets and hotter, more crowded bars, my friend Peter came across an interesting booth by the side of the road. It was a man advertising what appeared to be some kind of travel service into the jungled north of the country. We would ride elephants, sleep in wooden shacks and swim in the River Kwai. It seemed the perfect opportunity to escape from the cesspool of booze and sweaty clubs we had been wallowing in for the past week. We paid the fee and set our departure for the following morning.
Of the three of us, Richard was the only one who decided to sensibly prepare for our 7 a.m. departure by turning in early for the night. Peter and I on the other hand, thought that a final night of clubbing would be the best way to say farewell to Bangkok for a few days.
★ ★ ★ ★
I stumbled back into my room at 6:59 a.m. and fell face-first onto the bed, remembering almost nothing of what had transpired over the last several hours. My blissful 60 seconds of sleep was interrupted by Richard’s abrupt thumping on the wall. I was too delirious to care that this marked the third consecutive night with almost no sleep. As I stood and grabbed my backpack, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.
I had long, matted dreadlocks that hung over my face and shoulders. My eyes were sunken with deep purple rings surrounding them. My arms and neck bulged slightly with muscle exaggerated by the scrap of a dirty Heineken tank top draped over them. My skin was visibly shiny with a layer of sweat and Bangkok street-grime. I looked like a mixture between a cave man, a homeless alcoholic and some sort of jungle demon that primitive villagers would use to frighten young children.
It was in this state that I stumbled out of the youth hostel and into the early morning sunlight. As the three of us walked to the designated meeting spot, I noticed that Peter actually appeared to be in an even worse state than I was. For this trip he had decided to sport an attempt at a painter’s brush mustache that was only partially successful. His Hawaiian print short sleeve button-up, black Ray-Ban’s and huge, bulky muscles left him looking like some sort of celebrity body guard. The hair on his face and head was nearly as matted and unclean as mine. More than his appearance, however, what gave away Peter’s dismal state was the offensive smell wafting from his direction. With my stomach already unsettled from the previous night’s drinking, standing near him actually made me feel slightly nauseous.
We were packed into a small white van with a patchwork collection of other tourists. In addition to ourselves, there was a group of young Korean women, two Russians and a middle-aged German couple. I began to fade in and out of consciousness almost immediately as we took off down the long stretch of roadway running north from the city.
In my semi-conscious state I was blissfully unaware of the suffering that Richard was experiencing pressed into the seat next to me. Despite having spent the night sleeping and preparing for the day ahead, he was battling a bout of motion sickness that was threatening to overwhelm him. As I repeatedly lost consciousness and slumped over onto him, my rank, sticky dreadlocks scratched against his face like a poorly made sweater. The lack of proper air conditioning would have made the cramped space at the back of the van stuffy if two people were seated there. With six it was stifling. Richard soon called the van to a halt to avoid vomiting on everyone present.
After a brief stop for several minutes of dry heaving on the side of the road, Richard boarded one of the window seats near the front of the van. The German couple now seated across from him were clearly disgusted by the obnoxious young tourists ruining their vacation. As the van began to bump along the road, the familiar feeling of nausea crept over Richard once again. Mortified by his recent incident, and painfully aware of the shameful spectacle that he and his two companions were creating, Richard decided against speaking up. He would simply endure this temporary bout of motion sickness until it passed.
Unfortunately, it did not pass. As it became clear that he was again going to vomit, Richard made a desperate grab for the window switch. The blast of air from the front of the van woke me from my stupor just in time to see Richard shove his head out of the cracked window and begin spewing vomit over the side of the van. The liquid splattered over the windows inches from the faces of the young Korean women, prompting high pitched cries from their entire group. As he bent emptying the contents of his stomach, Richard’s backside was pressed close to the faces of the German couple opposite him. With one massive heave, he simultaneously vomited and released a long rumbling fart directly into the faces of his victims.
I was wide awake by the time the driver had parked to clean the vomit from the side of the van. It was all I could do to stifle my laughter when I saw the pure, seething disgust on the faces of the unfortunate German couple.
The next hour or so passed uneventfully. We traveled the remainder of our shuttle journey north and disembarked at a small town. After a short time exploring several mundane tourist sites, we were gathered together and ushered onto an old train.
It was here that things began to go wrong.
Our train car was some distance from the area where the rest of our group had boarded. To this day I am not sure why we were assigned this particular car so far from our fellow travelers. Perhaps it was simply a convenient way to separate our offensive trio from the group and spare them our various odors and bodily functions.
The train ride itself was quite beautiful. The carriages were old wood coated with fresh paint in muted red and green tones. They jostled through the Thai countryside with an oddly soothing rhythm. The air blowing in through the open window frames was just soft enough to feel like a warm beach breeze.
At this point, my nights of sleep deprivation finally caught up with me. I lost consciousness still sitting up on one of the wooden bench seats. As we bumped along my head bounced back and forth, rolling in erratic circular motions like some sort of rag doll corpse. My jaw was slack and my dreadlocks whipped back and forth like a toy being shaken by a hyperactive toddler. Richard was kind enough to film this spectacle, wasting precious battery from his signal-less phone. He would later share it with our school-mates, cementing this flattering image of myself in their heads.
I woke suddenly to Peter shaking my shoulder and saying that it was time to get off. We had arrived at our destination. Or so he thought.
I stumbled out of the train car into the bright sunlight. I stood for several minutes squinting at our surroundings and attempting to collect my thoughts. As the train rattled down the tracks and out of sight I grew increasingly confused.
We had left the open countryside and were in the middle of a jungle. Several meters on either side of the train tracks had been cleared away, and a small dirt path led to a collection of structures that were little more than wooden huts. No one from our tour group was anywhere in sight. In fact, Richard and Peter were the only people I could see milling about the dirt area leading to the village.
I approached and asked why we appeared to have alighted in some random patch of jungle, separate from our group with no other point of contact in sight. Peter shrugged, smirked, and explained that he might have misinterpreted one of the train staff’s instructions as orders to disembark.
I glanced back at our surroundings, wondering aloud if Peter was somehow still drunk, or simply just an idiot. At least our next steps were quite forthcoming. The only thing in sight other than trees was the small collection of wooden buildings. Without further discussion we decided to proceed in their direction.
The village was slightly larger than it first appeared. There were huts scattered haphazardly along paths that branched out from the dirt road. I noticed motorbikes leaning against several of the structures and an entrance to what appeared to be some sort of outdoor dining area.
The three of us split off in separate directions to try and determine where we were and how we might catch back up with the rest of our group. I headed to the dining area to investigate the only apparent non-residential structure in sight. Upon entry I was surprised to notice mid-sized groupings of Caucasian families seated and eating at rows of long wooden benches. As I moved closer, I could overhear them speaking some sort of Slavic language, likely Russian.
As I smelt their food wafting towards me I became overcome with hunger. I realized that I had not eaten for the entire day and was completely famished. There seemed to be some sort of informal buffet from tin trays set up along the table with simple rice and pork dishes.
I weighed my options. I was already running very short on money. We had only carried a small amount of cash with us from Bangkok, as the costs for food and board on the tour had been paid up front. I had no idea how much this meal would cost, or if it was even for sale. If I asked and was turned down I would have no choice but to walk away hungry.
In all honestly, however, these may well all be justifications appended onto my cloudy mind after the actual events had come and gone. I was hungry, and didn’t really care what these strangers in the jungle thought of me.
I sat down at the end of the table and began eating. The families closest to me gave me sidelong glances and ushered their children farther down the bench away from me. After inhaling several generous portions of steamed rice and barbecue pork, I quickly stood and out proceeded out of the pavilion.
Having accomplished nothing to improve our circumstances, I decided to see if Richard and Peter had been any more productive. As you might guess, Richard has been equally unsuccessful, only managing to wander around the village and engage in a series of failed communication attempts with the locals.
Surprisingly, Peter was the only one among us who had met with some moderate success. He had located a family who owned a small van and managed to communicate to them that we needed to get back to some sort of populated area and find our “friends.”
This Pyrrhic victory would soon prove the most disastrous of our trip.
★ ★ ★ ★
We paid one of the family members 300 Baht, helped him unload several cases of beer from the back of the van, and piled inside. I was feeling much better about our situation as we started off down the dirt road out of the village. We had secured transportation to a population center. Even if we could not locate our tour group, at the very least we would be able to find someone who spoke English and negotiate passage back to Bangkok.
We rattled along in the van for some time. It appeared to lack any functional shock absorbers and left me with the sensation of riding a jackhammer down a gravel road. The path grew narrower and rockier as we wound through increasingly dense jungle. It split off into nearly identical trails at strange angles and appeared to double back on itself at regular intervals. I noticed a group of monkeys swinging through the nearby trees.
After a long stretch of time we rolled up to a clearing where the path bisected a slightly larger dirt road. Our driver began motioning for us to exit the vehicle. The three of us looked at each other and took turns asking him for confirmation that this was the population center we had been looking for. He grunted some kind of response and continued to motion for us to disembark. We crawled out of the van and onto the patchy grass by the side of the road. The vehicle revved its engine and rattled off the way it had come, leaving the three of us standing glancing back and forth in each direction.
There was nothing. No buildings, no people, nothing. The dirt road stretched off in each of the three directions until it went out of sight among the trees. Dense jungle encroached on either side of the road like an impassible green wall. The only sound was the light drone of insects buzzing and clicking in the undergrowth.
We stood there stupidly for several minutes without speaking as the gravity of our situation settled onto us. Peter silently took a seat on a nearby rock.
We were completely lost. We had no idea where we had traveled in the many hours since we first embarked on the train. Richard was the only one who had brought a phone, and the battery was long dead after hours of filming and reviewing bits of our idiotic exploits. Not that it mattered, since none of us had functional phone service in Bangkok, not to mention this godforsaken piece of remote jungle.
No one knew where we were. We had informed no one on our decision to leave Bangkok for this excursion north. It would be at least another week before anyone began to question why we had not yet returned from Thailand and even longer before they began to look for us.
The sun was beating down hot and bright, further dulling our already addled brains. I slowly looked back and forth from Richard to Peter, both staring with blank gazes down the dirt road.
“What are we going to do?…” I slowly asked them. Richard turned his blank stare toward me. Peter had no reaction at all.
Anger and frustration at the blank looks on their faces crept into my voice as I went on, hissing each word as if explaining something to thick children, “We don’t know where we are. No one knows where we are. There are no people here, and I don’t see a single thing in any direction besides these goddamn trees.”
No reaction.
“What. Are. We. Going, to DO?!?!” I spat at them.
A smile slowly spread across Richard’s face and he began to chuckle. With glazed eyes and a deranged grin, he looked at me and said, “Well…. We could sit on that rock and slap each other’s sunburns.”
I stared at him, wide eyed, slack-jawed and completely speechless. Several long moments passed in silence.
Peter farted. The same grin spread over both of their faces as they let out short, grunting snickers. A longer and heavier silence passed. My blood began to boil and I battled the urge to reach out and throttle Richard. Was this a bad joke, or had they honestly begun to lose their minds?
I closed my eyes and released a long breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Looking at both of them, I decided it didn’t matter. I took a minute to collect myself before going on.
“Fine. Let’s start walking. There must be something down this road eventually.”
★ ★ ★ ★
We trudged down the jungle road for what must have been hours. The sun moved ever lower in the sky.
Thoughts began to drift through my mind about the prospect of spending the night in this place. Would we simply lie down on the side of the road to sleep when it grew too dark to walk further? If we slept too close to the ill-defined edges of the road, would some vehicle drive through in the middle of the night and crush us? What if we chose to nestle ourselves into the adjoining undergrowth? Would we be assailed and eaten alive by all sorts of exotic crawling terrors?
We walked in silence. I was glad for it, as I had no desire to hear any more of the idiocy that had come from Richard and Peter during our last exchange. In the back of their minds I was sure that they were aware of how precarious our situation was. If we did not encounter any other people before sundown, planning for survival would become something more than an abstract specter floating at the back of our minds.
I thought back on my own monumental stupidity. I hadn’t even attempted to communicate with the Russian families back at the village. Granted, circumstances at the time had not seemed nearly so dire as they did now. My mind had been addled by hunger and exhaustion, but that was little excuse. Perhaps if I had been more concerned with solving the problem at hand, and less with stealing food from strangers, we could have avoided this entire predicament.
Finally I saw it.
A building. A run-down building smashed into the side of the jungle, but a building nonetheless. It was likely not abandoned, as anything left alone in this place would certainly have been consumed by the surrounding foliage. Someone had even placed several potted plants out front. In some back part of my mind I found it ironic that someone saw the need to do this in a place where pushing plant life off your property was surely a daily concern.
We wandered onto the cleared area in front of the building like a group of cavemen discovering a shopping mall. No people were visible, but I suspected the high counter at the front of the structure might conceal the building’s tenant. At the front of the cleared area there was a dirty metal sign. Looking closer, I noticed that it had large chunks of Thai script running across it. Of course to me these words might as well have been additional dirt smears on the peeling paint. Looking closely however, I noticed one word I recognized: “Bus”.
There was no further information, but I didn’t really care. At this location, at some point, a bus would eventually arrive. A bus that went somewhere other than this abysmal piece of green hell.
Looking to my right I realized that Richard had also been pressing in to read the sign. A bit of the glossiness left his eyes when he came across that beautiful word. Behind him I saw that Peter had already approached the building and was leaning over the open counter. Richard and I turned and walked to join him.
As we approached the counter, I saw that Peter was already attempting to speak with someone inside. Looking over, I saw there was a small dimly lit room behind the counter. It was sparsely furnished and contained little more than a filing cabinet, a wooden table, and a large clock on the opposite wall. Seated in a corner behind the table was a small man, almost unnoticeable to someone taking a cursory glance at the room. He was an awkward distance from the counter, just far enough so you had to raise your voice slightly to ensure you were heard.
The man obviously understood no English and none of Peter’s inquiries about a bus or other method of transport seemed to register in his mind. After Richard and I joined in several minutes of charades, an expression of tepid understanding seemed to appear on the man’s face. In the greatest act of physical exertion he had attempted since our arrival, he reached out and pointed to a spot on the large clock. According to Peter’s watch, our salvation was less than twenty minutes away.
We thanked the strange little man and walked back to a grouping of large rocks near the dirty sign. Taking a seat, we began to engage in small conversation about this miracle place we had stumbled across, and our plans for a cold beer back in Bangkok.
Time stretched on and we grew quiet once more. Twenty minutes came and went, then forty, then an hour. We each restlessly attempted to inquire about the lack of a bus with the man in the dim room. Each time there was no response. I began to wonder if that man would simply lock us out to sleep on the ground when the sun finally set.
After nearly two hours we heard a noise. There was some kind of vehicle moving down the road. A big, loud vehicle by the sound of it.
The three of us shuffled forward, silently craning our necks to see what would emerge from behind the twisting bends of greenery. We heard the rattling before we saw the vehicle, a violent cranking and screeching that conjured up images of turn of the century industrial machinery. Seeing the bus emerge from the nearest bend in the road, I realized this was not far from the truth.
It appeared to be some sort of ancient vehicle designed before the concept of passenger safety had entered the consumer consciousness. The entire contraption visibly rattled and shook as it lurched over the uneven road. It was covered in a painfully sharp shade of red paint that was peeling in many places and had been completely pushed off by encroaching rust in others. There were no windows save the front windshield.
The bus kicked up a cloud of dirt and dust as it rattled to a halt in front of us. The front door abruptly swung open with a loud metallic clack. Without a second thought, we threw ourselves through the front entrance as if afraid the whole vehicle might suddenly evaporate.
Atop the steps was a small man seated on a chair that looked more like it belonged in an office than a vehicle. He stared at us with a bewildered look for a few moments before holding out his hand, palm-up and shaking it slightly several times. Realizing that he expected some kind of payment, I pulled out my wallet, questioningly pointing back and forth between it and his hand. Seeming to understand that I was inquiring about the fee, he held up two thick, dirty fingers. I had no idea if this meant two baht or two hundred, so I simply pulled out twenty and pressed it into his hand. He seemed to be satisfied with this and motioned me onward.
Looking down the length of the bus, I saw that it contained a mixture of humans and livestock. People were casually seated on narrow benches alongside goats and groups of chickens. I realized that most of the passengers were starting at us as we walked down the narrow isle to take our seats. Clearly sharing your commute with a Caucasian was a more outlandish experience than riding with a barnyard animal perched on your knee.
The bus rattled off again down the dusty road. I sat looking out of one of the windows, eyes squinted from the continuous blast of air beating against my face. Despite the occasional bits of road grit finding their way into my eyes and teeth, I was quite enjoying the bracing cool of the gusting air. It was a welcome change from the hot, heavy stillness of the jungle.
Between the vehicle’s loud, violent shaking and the tearing of the air around me, speaking was nearly impossible. It didn’t matter, as discussion was not really necessary. There was only one possible plan. We would sit on this bus until we arrived at some location that showed evidence of civilization.
And whatever happened, we would certainly not be following any more guidance or advice from Peter.
★ ★ ★ ★
After approximately forty-five minutes of moving down the jungle roads, the bus ride had become somewhat less enjoyable. The combination of the violent shaking, the air slapping across my face and the constant din of metal pieces clanging together had left the ride feeling more like a continuous traffic accident than planned transportation.
We had passed several outcroppings of buildings smaller than the village where we had alighted from the train. We elected to ignore these, as they seemed likely leave us little better off than we had been sitting outside the isolated bus stand.
We were aware of the danger that there would never be anything larger than these tiny hints at civilization along the bus’s route. Despite this, it seemed likely that wherever the driver eventually parked would leave us little worse off than we would be stopping at any point we had passed thus far. In a way, the feeling was almost comforting. There was really nothing else we could do for the time but sit and wait for the next steps to become apparent. And they soon did.
A structure passed by my window, then two, then five. The scattered drops turned into a trickle, and then a stream. The road grew increasingly even and maintained as we creaked our way into a small settlement. It would barley have been considered a town by most standards, but there were signs that it was designed with something beyond the needs of the local populace in mind.
There were stands and small shops selling items from blended fruit juices, to cheap, tacky nick-nacks. People who were obviously not local were perusing the displays and shuffling lazily along the street. As we slowed to a halt in the center of the village, something next to one of the shops caught my eye.
To be more accurate, it was three somethings clustered together posing for a selfie. Three Korean women so average and dull that they couldn’t seem to muster enough imagination between them to come up with two unique hairstyles. They were the most beautiful things I had ever seen.
I shot up from my seat and lurched forward, sending a chicken flying to the opposite wall of the bus. I plowed my way down the aisle like a rhinoceros trampling a herd of bunny rabbits. Richard and Peter jumped up behind me and dove into the wake I carved through the unfortunate passengers.
I exploded out of the bus doors and onto the dirt as if the ancient machinery had finally combusted. I thundered toward my targets at a full sprint, sending dirt and small rocks flying behind me. Hearing the commotion, the trio looked up with puzzled and concerned faces.
I closed the distance in a matter of seconds and let out a triumphant cry. The three women responded with cries of their own and expressions that resembled small rodents about to be eaten alive. I spread my arms wide as I crashed into the group and lifted all three from the ground in a crushing embrace.
I knew these women. These were the same women who had had the pleasure of witnessing Richard’s vomiting incident on our ride from Bangkok. The fact that they were here meant that the rest of the original tour group could not be far away.
By the time Richard and Peter arrived, I had released the women and begun another round of frantic charades attempting to determine where our tour guide could be found. It took them several minutes to recover from the shock of our arrival and process who these monstrous jungle creatures were. Once they did, they quickly pieced together what we were asking for and pointed with relieved expressions down the street to a small cluster of shops set back several meters from the road. We thanked them and set off at an elated half-jog down the street.
We found our savior standing in an open area, watching her group as they wandered among the trinket stalls. When she saw us, her eyes grew wide for a long moment before promptly bursting into tears. This time it was our turn to be embraced as she rushed forward to encircle us in a surprisingly strong set of pudgy arms.
She stepped back and, with many breathless smiles and tears, recounted what had happened since our separation from the group. She had discovered that we were missing upon the train’s arrival. No one appeared to recall exactly where we had disembarked, leaving her in a state of panic while she attempted to question every staff member and passenger she could track down. Unfortunately, her inquires uncovered nothing related to our whereabouts. She was eventually forced to conclude that she would need to wait for some contact from us. Failing that, she would have to approach the local authorities for help. They were less than ten minutes away from departing when we had miraculously appeared at the group’s final stop of the day.
Despite her earnest tears and obvious relief at our appearance, I found one part of her story suspect. At least one of the train staff had seen us disembark. Perhaps her inquiries had not been quite as thorough as she wanted us to think. Or perhaps she had been deceived by a rail employee wishing to avoid blame in the event some tragedy befell the three foreigners left in the jungle. The apparent sincerity of her relief caused me to favor this second option.
In any case, the truth of her story didn’t really matter. We were back safe with our minders. All that was left now was to enjoy the rest of our journey as passively and compliantly as we could manage.
★ ★ ★ ★
The following days passed as you might expect. We rode elephants, swam in a filthy river, and grew even more sunburnt and grimy. We behaved ourselves somewhat better, and managed to avoid all but one small instance of conflict with our travelling companions.
Upon our return to Bangkok, we took the first real showers of our entire trip. I shed my reeking dreadlocks and donned the only respectable pair of clothes I had in my possession. There would be no more serious danger for the remainder of our stay in Thailand. I even managed to locate a wealthy Thai patron and upgrade my accommodations to a penthouse suite overlooking the city.
But that, is another story entirely.
End
James B. Cutchin 