Two buses to Chiang Mai (via Bangkok)

Day three of Courtney's heat stroke, and Courtney was feeling better, without yet feeling properly well again. She even managed to eat a piece of watermelon for breakfast this morning which is a sad reflection of how much she had improved and how far she had to go. Leaving the hotel bright and early, we made our way by tuk-tuk, to the bus station.

Bus station is a charitable term. As happens so often in this part of the world, the bus doesn't make use of a bus station proper, but instead operates out of someone's house and driveway. Today was no exception.

When checking in, we met a German guy, Tobias, who was on his way to New Zealand to work for a year. He was really interested to know what sort of admin he would have to do when he arrived, and as an accountant, I was more than happy to provide guidance on the less sexy parts of moving country: bank accounts, IRD numbers, car insurance, tax systems, etc. Courtney just sat the back of the bus, quiet and avoiding the world.

After about two hours, we made it to the Thai - Cambodia border, and were forced off the bus, and out onto the street with all of our luggage. Clearing Cambodian customs was easy. It just involved standing in a line and having your photo, and finger prints taken. That this was at the end of the trip did seem strange as this didn't even happen when we arrived in Cambodia, but who are we to question what the Cambodian Border Control are doing.

And then having cleared Cambodian border control, we walked through the hustle and bustle of Poi Pot town, to find the Thai border, which was not very well signposted. The amount happening in the town was quite crazy, as goods were walked across the border by porters, or pushed by men in trolleys, or pulled across in handd-rawn carts.

Arriving at the Thai border, we waited in a line for the better part of an hour, before we were finally processed, and allowed into the country. This was not ideal, as though the queue was in an airconditioned building, it only brought the temperature down to 25C, still pretty damn warm. Still recovering from heatstroke, this was not ideal for Courtney. Somehow she made it through though.

Back on the bus, and in Thailand now, we had wifi on the bus, which I used to do a bit more research for our new German friend. This was a mistake. For as long as I have been alive, I have been incredibly susceptible to motion sickness. The fact that I haven't had it for 25 years, is a testament to the fact that I am so careful not to get it. For some reason, that went out the window today.

By the time that we got into Bangkok, I could feel my stomach starting to churn, and I was fairly confident that things were going to take a bad turn for me. But we arrived in Bangkok safely, and said goodbye to our German friend, before making our way to another bus station, to get our onward journey to Chiang Mai.

It was here, waiting for the next bus, that everything went so very wrong. Realising that I was going to be sick from the motion sickness, I left Courtney, and went for a walk outside. I just went round and round the building in circles, like some dog making sure the area is clear before it lies down. And when I was behind the bus station, next to the air conditioning units, for maybe the fifth time, I was sick.

Knowing what motion sickness i like, I thought that though being sick is an awful experience, It was motion sickness, so now that I had been sick, I would be back to normal. Confident in my analysis of the situation, I grabbed my toothbrush, freshened myself up, and even had an ice cream too. My state of happpiness lasted all of ten minutes.

It then became very clear that this was not going to be a good night for me. As much as Courtney had had heatstroke over the past view days, I had similarly been suffering a heat injury myself, though considerably more mild. I had also been careful with my water intake on the bus, as I didn't particlarly want to be using the rather dark, dingy, and smelly toilet, if I could help it. This combination of factors, meant that I was on the cusp of dehydration, and by being sick, I had just pushed myself over the precipice. This was very bad.

By the time we were getting onto the bus to head to Chiang Mai, I had been sick a further two times, and was now bringing up bile as body convulsed, trying desperately to rid itself of anything in my stomach. On the bus, I was forced to visit the tiny little toilet with an alarming frequency, every twenty minutes, as my body revolted against me. All the time I knew that I was becoming more and more dehydrated, and that was only going to make the problem worse.

And with that, I settled on the executing my worst idea ever, and consciously ingested a compious quantity of water, in the hope that at least some of it would make it past my stomach, and into my blood. Drinking two litres of later, I used every ounce of my now very limit mental ability, to hold that water down for as long as I could. I managed 35 minutes, and then a torrent of water was expelled from stomach. Fortunately for me, it was a lot less than what I had ingested.

Seeing as my cunning planned had worked so well the first time, I repeated the trick again. This time, I held the water down for just over an hour before I was forced to make a run to the back of the bus. I even had time to get like 20 minutes of sleep.

And while all this was going on with me, I hadn't really had that much time to register that the accommodations on the bus itself, were not the best. The seats were narrow. You needed the body of a small child to fit into them. The leg room was negligible. Anything over 5 foot tall, and they were just too small. And the seats were crammed in tighter than Ryan Air could ever manage on a plane. This meant that when the person in front of you put their seat back, they ended up in you lap. And you had to spread your legs to ensure that the back of their seat was able to recline all that way too. It was awful, though I only registered that at the very end. For Courtney, it was a full 10-11 hours of hell.

It was a tough day. A very tough day.Read more