Forewarning: Long story, not at all short. No, really, this is actually more like a novel, so get cozy. (And if I see this thing in theaters one day without my approval, I will sue. Lol.)

It was my first summer abroad.

In my travel novelty, I was completely oblivious to the fact that I had been living in somewhat of a hostel-style home. There were bunk beds lining the walls of cozy rooms, a beautiful rooftop kitchen overlooking the neighboring community and shared bathrooms for guests.

Being a travel virgin and all, I kind of just naively assumed that this was what life everywhere abroad was like, and therefore I had no complaints. My attention was far more focused on the fact that it seemed like I was on an international version of The Real World.

The variety of nationalities within the house was astounding. My roommates, occupying 3 of the remaining 5 bunks in my room, had family origins in Japan, India and Taiwan. The person I got the closest to on the trip was a blonde-haired beauty from the United Kingdom and, among the several other young international travelers in the house, there were two other fun and friendly travelers from the US who made me feel included and welcome during my stay.

And then there was me, the lone Black girl (well, person) in the house, constantly taking it all in.

I had quite a few interesting cultural conversations other travelers that summer, and perhaps one day I’ll dive into that in a future post. For now, let’s fast forward to my encounter with the curly-haired Alaskan guy. That’s where the meat of this story begins.

I wanted to seize my opportunity to try and avoid spending the upcoming Fourth of July holiday alone. So, on one of the more chill days when I didn’t have to report for an afternoon hospital shift, I decided to approach the friendly guy in my current rotation as he was researching travel details on the common area desktop. I mentioned that my previous holiday plans had been cancelled and he extended an invitation for my last minute addition to the road trip he was planning to take for the weekend with his friends. I could tell that he was the slightest bit reluctant to extend the invite, but I considered my forced extroversion a success. The invite was secured.

Admittedly, I was a bit nervous having been invited by only one person on the trip. Nonetheless, the spirit of travel overshadowed any worries I had. I reminded myself that just weeks ago I had braved the unknown in making my first solo flight one to the other side of the planet for my first ever trip abroad. I convinced myself that this would be a piece of cake.

The trip began with a bumpy van ride through the steep mountains of Northern Thailand with four strangers, with whom I shared nothing but the English language and a thirst for adventure.

There were two other guys from the The States, besides the guy who’d invited me on the trip, as well as a girl they’d all grown close to over the past several weeks who was from Denmark.

In consideration of the privacy of those involved in this story, I’ll keep all names confidential and all pictures will exclude any parties mentioned. Let’s call friendly curly-haired guy “Sam” and the two other guys “Jake” and “Dan”. As for the Danish girl, let’s call her “Sofie”. Got it?

I sat by Sam on our ride through the mountains and couldn’t help but to notice that he was having a pretty rough time, despite the medicine he’d taken to prevent motion sickness before the trip began. The bumpy ride was rough for everyone, but he seemed to be more prone to sickness than the rest of us. This becomes important later.

We were headed for Pai, a small town high off in the mountains of northern Thailand with a population of a little over 2000 people.

Upon arrival, we decided that we’d save motor bike rentals for the following day to help us explore the town with a bit more ease. So we started our journey on foot to find a place to stay, lugging all of our belongings behind us like the temporary nomads we were.

The small towns I was used to back in the states were surrounded by corn and cotton fields as far as your eyes could see, driving for miles before reaching any sign of civilization. But, this was different. The atmosphere wasn’t like any place I had ever visited before. There was a chill vibe, just shy of eerie. On a scale of Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Pai took the cake for having the most chill and laid back atmosphere. No one seemed to care, about anything. I had gotten used to turning heads everywhere I went in Asia with the striking color of my dark brown skin and the “exotic” appeal of the long braids I was wearing for the summer. But here, I could just be. For a moment it almost felt like I was back in The States.

Greenery hugged homes tucked off behind quaint restaurants and mountains off in the distance framed scenery that I had previously thought only existed in the montages of Mary-Kate and Ashley travel movies. There was extreme beauty in the simplicity of it all.

We ended up picking a quaint hotel at the end of our trail and paying the equivalent of 12 USD a night for a super comfy stay.

We headed back out to an interesting restaurant where the faint sound of country music and a clearly very effective advertisement for ribs had attracted our attention.

We chose a table nearest the entrance, perfect for people watching. In doubling back, we realized that the country music and food selection were their attempt at keeping things in the spirit of what they perceived to be most representative of American culture during the 4th of July holiday weekend. The intercom was now playing a country version of the ABC’s and the servers were sporting full cowboy attire. The whole thing was far more hilarious than offensive, but it did make me wonder what odd generalizations we Americans make about other countries’ cultures that aren’t at all representative of the nationality as a whole.

I was busy making progress on my lychee cocktail when I noticed a tall, bald guy come in and choose the table directly across from ours. I wondered why he was alone. He obviously wasn’t a local, and he seemed a little older than the solo travelers that I had seen so far.

I didn’t spend too much time questioning his reason for being out in the mountains alone when I myself had just decided a few days prior to hope in a van with a bunch of strangers to a place I knew nothing about. I guess in the travel world, anything goes.

Before long, he started making friendly conversation with our group. He raved about the corn on the cob he was eating and insisted on buying our entire group one corn on the cob each. In fact, he wound up ditching his table completely to join ours. Again, in the spirit of travel this wasn’t exactly abnormal behavior. So, we just went with it.

He had an accent, but I couldn’t quite figure out the origination. We did eventually ask what he was doing out in Pai alone, but only managed to get a jumbled story from which we could only takeaway that he was apparently a retired boxer. He seemed like a pretty friendly guy.  The guys got along with him so well that they decided to invite home back to our hotel later on to hang out. Guys…look, I know. I know! Keep reading.

Let’s call mystery guy “Frank”, okay?

Before we could say much else, Frank insisted on paying the bill for the entire table and rushed off.

I could tell that the guys were flattered, but not enough to completely ignore the risk in inviting Frank back to our hotel. They had a brief deliberation about the safety of it all once Frank had officially left the building and was out of earshot. The consensus was that, although the situation was a bit sketchy, we had absolutely nothing planned for the trip nor the upcoming holiday and this guy had potential for being a really good source of local knowledge for the weekend. Plus, there was strength in numbers.

It was a go.

After we left the restaurant, I have faint memory of us wandering around a bit and stumbling across a couple of pretty neat areas, one outdoorsy spot with a live jazz band and another indoor spot with a chill vibe and modern music. Every corner of the town was beautiful, but I couldn’t escape the eerie feeling. The streets were quiet. Life was present, but things seemed to move a bit more… slowly.

I concluded that the weird vibe I was picking up on could easily be attributed to the low population and remote location and shifted my focus to the stray dogs roaming the streets around us to distract myself from the empty street-food stands and my rumbling stomach. If I only knew how long it’d be until I had a decent meal again.

Once we got back to the hotel, Sophie and I spent a millisecond in our room before heading next door to the guy’s suite to wait on Frank. It wasn’t long before he showed up bearing gifts in hand. From his bag Frank pulled out mangoes and other fresh fruit for us to snack on. I didn’t over-indulge. I wasn’t sure where he’d gotten this all from if most street vendors were closed for the night, but I was in no space to deny free nourishment.

Frank glanced around the room in awe and went on to explain that he had actually stayed in this exact hotel suite for a few months with his ex-girlfriend some time in the past. That was pretty shocking, and we all commented on the strange irony of events before naturally moving the conversation along to something else.

But Frank kept on.

He described that his ex-girlfriend looked like…me. He pointed my way as he casually mentioned that she was “Black, mixed with something else”, and proceeded to ask where I was from.

The sheer fact that his ex was mixed race let me know that we more than likely did not look alike at all. But since my blackness was now the topic of conversation and I had finally had the floor to speak, I jumped at my chance to gain momentary relief from feeling like a perpetual background character in the conversation.

The relief didn’t last long. The awkwardness of the topic eliminated any pleasure I could have gained from my two seconds in the foreground.

“I’m from Georgia.”

I stated very plainly.

“No. Where are you really from? Like, where are your parents from?”

Frank clarified.

“Oh. Well, my parents are from South Carolina. My entire family is, really, but I’m the only one that was born in Georg—“

Frank rolled his eyes in frustration.

“No, like where are you really from???”

He said again.

I finally understood his question. With a defeated tone, I tried to quickly mask my embarrassment and clear frustration with the question I knew all too well and replied with,

“I don’t know. I blame slavery.”

The room filled with awkward silence.

I could feel Dan across the room emitting “This is why we shouldn’t have brought the Black girl along. This is how ‘they’ think.” vibes. I could hear Sam pondering the dismissive “Aren’t there Ancestry results for that?” question in his brain, meanwhile the disgust in Sophie’s face screamed, “Why would you even say that and disrupt the comfort of my privilege?” The optimistic part of me hoped Jake’s expression reflected empathy. One can only hope that he was thinking, “Wow, I’ve never actually thought about potential present-day ramifications of slavery.”

For the record, Ancestry.com is a fun tool, but it can’t magically retrieve lost and unkempt slave records, which documented broken families by physical identifiers alone, along with their price, and give us all the answers we’re desperately searching for. Even Oprah ended her ancestral trace somewhere off in the woods, I mean “graveyard”, with an unnamed white plank that was somehow supposed to represent the tombstone of her great great grandparent. Where do you go from there? Here’s a hint: You don’t.

I digress.

As many times as I had been asked that question, I’d never answered it so bluntly. I mean, it could have been worse. I could have said, “My right to answer your question was stripped away centuries ago.” but I figured my unintentionally blunt response was adequate enough to get the point across without further explanation.

Frank nodded his head to signify that he genuinely understood. He honestly seemed a little embarrassed for having briefly forgotten his US history and probed so hard in the first place. He changed the subject.

Naturally, I faded back into oblivion as the conversation pushed forward, leaving me room to reflect on what had just happened. I concluded that planting a seed of moral reflection in even one person’s mind was ultimately worth the awkwardness the whole debacle had caused. In a different setting I may have been okay with opening the floor for discussion, but I certainly wasn’t going to try and tread the depths of the race topic outnumbered 4:1.

Soon enough Frank’s visit came to an end. We thanked him for the fruit and the group agreed that we’d meet him again in the morning to grab motorbikes and explore the town. Admittedly, I wasn’t super excited about seeing Frank again but he was the only person who knew the location of the remote waterfall a few of the guys were anxious to see so, at least for now, ,he was still running the show.

Frank showed up bright and early the next morning on his motorbike and waited for us outside of our hotel. I decided to leave the awkwardness of the night before behind me and focus on all of the possibilities of our first non-travel day in Pai. After all, it was officially the 4th of July and I was feeling the holiday spirit.

I’ve got to admit, it was pretty cool celebrating a US holiday abroad. Here on the other side of the globe our national Independence Day meant nothing more to locals and other travelers than another excuse to celebrate and have fun. It made me realize that we Americans aren’t that odd for celebrating holidays that aren’t necessarily our own. Not saying it’s right, but I think there’s a universal disregard for the historical context of things. By and large, this was an eye opener that people just want to have a good time, regardless of the reason, no matter where you are in the world. Who knew negligence was so widespread?

I partnered up with Sophie at the motorbike station. My time shadowing docs back in Chiang Mai had confirmed that The Hangover II wasn’t false in stating that motorbike accidents were among the leading caused of injury and death in Thailand. Nevertheless, I released all caution and put my entire life in Sophie’s hands as she eagerly took the wheel. Sorry, Mom.

No one rode alone.

Well, except Frank. He led the way.

We flew through the mountains at who knows what speed in an attempt to follow Frank and not get lost along our way to the waterfall. I took advantage of being one of the non-drivers and clasped my hands around Sophie’s waist to keep steady as I nearly broke my neck to do double takes of the outstanding scenery. The greenery around shops and homes grew into expansive mountainous views as we drove farther and farther away from the main part of town.

It was totally worth the risk.

The sights were beautiful. The whole thing was so adventurous. I couldn’t believe this was my life.

I was in the midst of admiring the fact that Sophie’s driving wasn’t half bad when we came to a random stop in the middle of some dirt road. Still beautiful, by the way. Frank had gotten off of his bike to greet an old man tending to some chickens. They had a quick exchange and he hopped back on his bike with zero explanation of what had just happened, signaling us with his hands to continue following him. We glanced at each other with confusion and decided to continue on. I mean what were we gonna do, stay with the man with the chickens instead?

When we finally arrived at the waterfall, we parked our bikes and took notice of the extremely low saturation of tourists. The spot was tucked off in the woods on the opposite side of a what looked like a small mountain. We didn’t question anything. Our intent was to visit the waterfall that was the least populated, and we were grateful to have run into a local like Frank to show us the hidden way.

We left our motorbikes somewhere near the trees and started our hike up the mountain. Along the way we crossed paths with a couple of Australian tourists who heard us speaking English and wanted to join in. They ended up filling us in on a 4th of July celebration that was scheduled to happen at a popular hostel later on. We decided that we’d check it out after our mini waterfall adventure was over. Y’all, I love travel. People are so friendly; things are so… spontaneous.

We kept on our upward path and eventually reached an area where there was no point of access except to literally climb up the steepness of the mountain. Each person had to be extremely careful not to slip and fall.

Frank insisted on remaining behind me, which made me a bit uncomfortable. I wasn’t exactly wearing an outfit modest enough for mountain climbing, and clearly he was being a creep. I moved as quickly as I could. Strike 1.

We finally reached the top of the mountain and picked a spot to rest. The waterfall was down below and, yet again, the view was amazing. I couldn’t help but to have yet another one of those, “Wow. I’m actually in Thailand. I made this happen. I really made it.” moments as the remainder of the group made their way down the opposite side of the mountain to the calm pool at the end of the waterfall. I was okay with staying behind. I had no interest in my life story ending with:

And, knowing that she could not swim, she followed three Alaskans and a Danish girl, whom she barely knew, into the unknown depths of a waterfall in the middle of a forest in Pai, Thailand. Try as they might, no one could save her from her watery demise.

So, no. As adventurous as I had been up until this point, I had no interest in further exploration. The views were just fine.

Frank insisted that he stay at the top of the mountain with me while the rest of our group went down the mountain to explore. Strike 2. Even though the group was pretty far away from us, they were still within eyeshot. My intuition told me what this may have looked like from their perception. It looked like Frank and I had made the joint decision to stay behind together, but that was not the case at all. In fact, as soon as I realized that Frank was going to stay behind with me, I attempted to casually relocate to a new spot to rest. Whenever he tried to start up a conversation with me via his ethnically-centered compliments, I gave short replies to indicate that I wasn’t in the mood to chat.

Frank didn’t take the hint.

Anytime I moved away, he moved closer.

My discomfort was starting to transform into fear. I wasn’t sure if my getting up and moving down toward the others would be his signal to abruptly grab my arm and start pulling me in the opposite direction, towards the woods, never to be seen again.

I looked ahead to avoid his piercing gaze at my side. I could feel his eyes penetrating my personal space from my peripheral view. At this point I was blatantly ignoring his small talk about how nice he thought my braids and skin were since, so it should have been very clear that I was disinterested, but Frank just didn’t care. How many #metoo tragedies begin in this way? *rolls eyes* You don’t have to throw punches to indicate to a pursuer that you’re non-consenting to their advances.

At this point I was extremely uncomfortable, but I maintained cordiality. This had all come from left field just moments ago and I no longer had the slightest clue who I was dealing with. The guy was an ex-boxer, after all. In full survival mode, I discretely gathered up my things, hoping to not attract too much attention or alert him of my next move. I considered the best way to quickly make my break down the mountain towards the remainder of the group.

And then Frank reached over and grazed his hand against my arm.

Game over.

I inched away discretely. Although we were technically still within eyeshot of the group, they weren’t paying very much attention to Frank and I. At first I had caught them making giggly glances back at us under the false assumption that we both desired this time alone, but now they were far more focused on having their own fun. It’s not like I could shout down to them,

“HELP! I DON’T WANNA BE UP HERE ANYMORE. I NEVER DID!!! THIS WAS ALL HIS IDEA. COME SAVE ME!”

Besides, that would just alert Frank to make whatever kidnapping move he had in mind right then and there before they had the chance to realize what was actually happening and come all the way back up the mountain to save me. Even if I did call out, I wasn’t sure that they would even hear me at all. I’m not exactly the loudest person in the room.

I glanced at the woods to the right of me and knew that this tall Georgian ex-boxer could wisp me off into the woods at any moment that he pleased. Did I ever mention that Frank was from Georgia, the country, not the US state? That’s apparently where the interesting accent was from.

I had to be smart about this. Frank knew exactly what he was doing. Each action he took made it more and more clear that this was all calculated and intentional.

As soon as I felt Frank’s hand slide his hand up my arm, I immediately stood up and backed away slowly, then quickly made my way towards the group at the bottom of the mountain.

He followed.

I made it to what I had hoped would be a safe space near the water, but the group greeted me with giggles and smiles as they saw the two of us approaching. I was mortified at the thought that they may have also just seen Frank’s most recent advances and thought that it was mutually desired.

I only had a little bit of time before Frank would catch up to me. Sam and Sophie were the closest in proximity and were my best bet in trying to plead my case. But alas, Sophie was too busy gushing at the love story that she thought was unfolding to fully hear anything that I was trying to say.

Lovely.

It was a lost cause. Frank was now right beside me. Sophie immediately swam away, leaving me on the edge of the water alone, with Frank. *face palm*

At this point, I knew that cordiality and coldness weren’t enough. I hate being rude, but Frank left me no choice. I ignored everything he said. Clearly my words and actions weren’t enough, so I pretended like I was preparing to jump in to join the others.

Frank FINALLY got the hint.

I turned around to see that Frank and his bruised ego were headed back up the mountain, alone. I could finally breathe again!

The others immediately swam back over to me to hear what had happened. They wanted to know everything, and I finally had the floor to speak.

They all got out of the pool and sat by a smaller body of water atop the mountain as I told them everything that had just happened. I could tell that they were trying to discern whether to trust my story or what they had already presumed to be true about Frank. It wasn’t until mid-way through my story that we realized that Frank hadn’t just walked away to take some space for himself; he’d vanished completely.

He was gone, and we never saw him again. He’d taken all of his belongings and left us stranded in the mountains of Pai, Thailand.

It seemed the group finally believed my story. They questioned how many times he had done this sort of thing before and how many tourists he’d targeted. We wondered how many of his schemes had been successful.

We sat there for a while thinking about how we could reason our way back to the hotel on our own. Sam pointed out that this whole thing with Frank, from start to finish, was just a plot for him to get closer to me. He recounted our group’s initial encounter with him at the restaurant and recalled his subtle looks in my direction that apparently the entire group had been aware of unbeknownst to me. Note to self: Be more aware.

Once Frank realized that his plot was a fail, he’d bailed on it completely and fled the scene. It was obvious that he had a motive. I wondered if he wanted to get away before I had the chance to tell the group everything, before we had a chance to look him up and discover who he really was and what he was really doing out in the mountains of Thailand alone. I even gave benefit of the doubt in acknowledging that he could have genuinely been interested me and left simply in spite being turned down. Whatever the case, him leading us to the middle of nowhere and then ditching us wasn’t okay in any scenario. What kind of person would do this kind of thing?

I sighed in relief. I knew that we were now lost with no way to get back to our temporary home and all, but I was just grateful that I had trusted my instinct and gotten away from Frank while I could. Clearly, he wasn’t such a nice guy after all.

Shaking off the astonishment of it all, we headed down the mountain, grabbed our bikes and let our instincts lead the way home.

Using context clues alone, somehow our long ride through the back roads of Pai proved to be successful. We made make it back to our hotel and wasted no time in trying to find the party that the two Australian girl’s had mentioned earlier. It was still 4th of July, after all. We didn’t want our entire Independenc Day to be a total loss. When Frank left, so did our plans. We had no place to be and nothing to do. So, we set out for phase two of our Independence Day adventure. If we only knew just how adventurous it would be.

Y’all, I know this story-time is long, but TRUST me, it gets even more interesting.

We didn’t have the slightest clue where we were going. The two tourists we’d met earlier only provided us with the name of the hostel and nothing else. There was no guidance to help us along our way, so we played the entire journey by ear. No, really. We literally stepped outside of our hotel randomly decided to turn right. It felt like an episode of Dora The Explorer.

We managed to find a sign with the name of our hostel on it, which may have been helpful if it didn’t have an arrow on it directing us towards a dead end. I was exceptionally hungry, and quite frankly (no pun intended) tired of playing outdoor detective. It was hot, my stomach was screaming and there seemed to be no end to our search. Just when we were about to give up hope, we heard music.

We’d finally made it.

We were atop yet another mountain and the views were gorgeous. There was an infinity pool at the opposite end of the entrance, which framed the bottom of the picture perfect scene. A gazebo-looking structure sat to the left for those who wanted a quieter scene and a hooded seating area on the right sheltered those who wanted to mingle.

There were travelers everywhere.

Excluding Sophie, we were among the few Americans there, which was kinda cool. It seemed like we were the guests of honor that everyone suddenly wanted to become the life of the party. As far as the party goers were concerned, we were to be protected at all costs.

Random note: I’ve had many enlightening conversations about the word “American”, and I hear the concerns. But, guys, there’s no other word in the English language to describe our nationality. There’s no “United States-ian” type of term that I can resort to in order to be more country-specific. So, pretty please, don’t come for me! 🙂

I took this time to try and strengthen my connection with Sophie, but got drawn into a more compelling conversation with other travelers about how and why they ended up in Pai. The bleach blonde girl with the killer back tattoo gets an honorable mention. Think present-day Jhene Aiko. She’d been traveling the world with her boyfriend… until they broke up. She continued the trip alone until she met the girl at her side who had also been traveling the world alone. They’d been inseparable ever since. Between her story and the story of the 18-year-old girl who decided that she’d hop on a plane to Thailand immediately after her high school graduation to explore the world on her own against her parents preferences for some place in Europe, I just didn’t feel like,

“Oh, I’m here for a medical internship. But, we came to Pai for the weekend.”

was adventurous enough to chime in.

It may not have seemed as striking as the other stories, but I had to remind myself that more than likely these folks had had access to travel their entire lives. This experience wasn’t just handed to me; I went after it on my own. That kind of gumption was adventurous in itself. I decided that should count for something.

Time escaped us. Between pool time and game time, it’d been hours since we first arrived. There wasn’t any real food there and I was still incredibly hungry. But, it wasn’t a total loss. Sam and I had won a partnered toss game, which earned us each a carved out watermelon full of liquor. That, ladies and gentlemen, was dinner.

At one point I’d visited the gazebo area to watch the fire twirler. Yes, a fire twirler. But before long Dan came and signaled that it was time to head to our next destination. Sophie, who’d been boo’ed up with some French guy for the past several hours, was the toughest one to wrangle up. To keep the peace with with her, we ended up having to drag the French guy along with us as well.

We were on our way to a bar. But, not your average bar.

The guys were on a mission. Earlier at the party I had inserted myself into a conversation that Dan, Sam and Jake were having with some other guy about ‘shr…omething. Adding to Sophie’s weary looks, I chimed in with the little that I knew about about hallucinogens from a Fungi class I had taken in college. I explained that things could go really good or really bad. The whole thing was a toss up.

The guys decided that it was worth the risk.

Once again we were on foot, chugging along to some unknown destination that we had no idea where to get to.

But, hey, who’s counting?

After a pretty long journey through pitch black darkness, we saw a sign which read the words we were desperately hoping to find. We all made it to the bar in one piece, but somewhere along the line we’d ended up ditching the French guy in exchange for a French girl who’d apparently had this bar on her travel bucket list. She had found us about halfway through our trek.

We were greeted at the entrance of the bar by two very tan Thai men with long locks who greeted us with grave suspicion. Jake decided that he’d take leadership in being spokesperson for the group. He placed his hands on the counter, leaned in closely, and signaled a drinking motion with his hands before saying,

“Do you all have the…milkshakes? The shakes? The shr–??”

The hosts smiled, erasing any preconceived concerns they had, and brought us back into the bar.

Siding with Sophie, I decided that I didn’t want a shake of my own. I much rather preferred sipping on someone else’s. I figured almost being kidnapped was enough risky business for one day.

The bar wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before. There was no dancing. Everyone was really mellowed out and in their own zone. Some were on hammocks, while others were laid out on the floor. There were strange colors and interesting decor. The whole thing was trippy.

We picked spots on the floor and before long the guys were face-to-face with glasses full of what looked like a giant grape smoothies.

Torn between living in the moment and living at all, I bit the bullet and took a few giant sips of Jake’s giant shake. We all just sat there, looking around at each other, waiting for an immediate reaction. When it didn’t come, Sam shrugged his shoulders and said,

“I don’t feel anything.”

Dan co-signed and said something about how we likely wouldn’t feel much and the whole thing was probably all hype. We each returned to the separate convos we were having before we received the shakes. Jake and I were chatting about a semi-serious topic when I noticed that he had shifted his attention to a leaf. His eyes were huge and full of allure. I casually shifted my focus as well, and turned my head to see what the others were doing. When I whipped my head back around to return to the convo, I called out,

“Did you see that?!”

Jake had no clue what I was talking about. Besides, he was lost to me now. The leaf had his full attention. I tried explaining what I was seeing to Dan instead and shortly realized that I was clearly the only person who could see animals leaping across the room. The French girl was across the way, now walking in slow motion, moving her arms as though she were pealing her way through drapery or a bushy forest. I could hear her call out to no one in particular,

“Just look at all the colors. It’s…it’s so beauuuutiful!”

She was definitely in her own zone; she was seeing the bar through an entirely different lens.

Sam on the other hand was not okay. He’d toppled onto the floor just outside of the restroom. Dan and the two hosts rushed to his side and helped him over to a seated position. I could see the worry on their faces from across the room as I made my way over. One of the hosts left momentarily and came back with a giant bucket of water. And, before any of us could question his intent, he dumped the entire bucket of water on Sam’s head.

His eyes bulged as if they were going to fall out of their sockets. The two men looked at each other and smiled, patting Sam on the back before going on about their business. They obviously knew something we didn’t because Sam still wasn’t okay. It wasn’t until later on that Sam revealed to us that he had temporarily snapped out of his trip when the water was dumped onto his head, but that only lasted for a few seconds.

Dan made the executive decision on behalf of Sam’s current state that we we ought to start our journey back home. Everyone was in agreeance.

As we made our way outside, I turned around and said,

“Wait, what about the French girl?”

She was still in her own zone, and the group decided it was best to leave without her. If it were up to me, I would have grabbed her myself, but at that point I felt like it was a leave-or-get-left type of situation and I was in no space to try and find my own way home.

The way back was a full adventure in itself. But I’ll spare you most of the details. I get that this story is absurdly long as it is.

We had only the moon to guide our path, and we had no idea where we were going.

Jake was still collecting leaves and refused to put any of them down. Meanwhile, Sam was clearly in the worst condition of his life. At a few points along our journey back down the mountain I could hear Sam trying to reason himself back to reality. He repetitively stated something along the lines of,

“I have a mom, a dad and a sister. My sister is getting married. I have a life. I have to make it back. I have to go home. I have a mom, a dad and a…”

The guy was sweating bullets. Aside from the incident outside the bar bathroom, his shirt was still soiled from the giant bucket of water that was dumped on his head. It didn’t come as a surprise when he took his shirt off, but it did catch everyone off-guard when he proceeded to throw his shirt as far as he could off into the distance and then asked Dan to go fetch it.

Dan did as he asked.

He patted Dan on the back and walked a few blocks (?), miles (??) before stopping in the middle of our dirt path to do push ups. We questioned his behavior and he got up and continued on like nothing ever happened. He later revealed to us that both of these things were tests he was giving us. You see, in his mind, we weren’t real. The trees were talking to him and, as far as he was concerned, we were yet another one of his hallucinations. From his perception, our journey (which admittedly was taking forever) felt like an eternity of wandering aimlessly with no end destination. Whenever we reassured him that we were in fact heading back to our hotel, he insisted that we were a figment of his imagination trying to keep him entrapped in his bad trip forever.

Kids, do NOT try this at home.

The Dora The Explorer saga of our day’s adventures kept on. The only thing that we were missing was Swiper. Instead, we had a leaf man (Jake) and a random pack of howling dogs guiding our decisions whether to turn left or right to avoid being attacked in pitch black darkness.

We crossed over a small bridge and finally recognized our surroundings again. We had arrived back at the hotel, but I had reached the point of hanger. While Sam nursed himself back to reality and the others laughed their way through regaining their own states of mind, I snapped at Sophie when she carelessly ignored my question about whether she still had an orange in her backpack. I felt pretty bad about that.

This had easily been the longest, most adventurous and spontaneous day of my entire life.

We FINALLY grabbed real food at a breakfast spot the next morning during our last few hours in town and took the time to process all that had happened during our visit. I brought up the fact that I was the missing link in our interesting series of events. Had I not come on the trip, Frank would have never pursued our group. If we never met Frank, we wouldn’t have gone to the waterfall and randomly met the two Australian girls who just happened to tell us about the hostel party. And, had we not gone to the hostel party, we wouldn’t have ever found out about that trippy bar. It all could be traced back to my presence on the trip. Without my random addition to the group for the weekend, things would have gone way differently.

I could tell that the others were reluctant to accept this fact at first, but they each knew without a doubt that in tracing each event back I had unknowingly been at the center of all the madness, thanks to Frank.

In true movie-style fashion, the French girl we’d left at the bar causally walked past our restaurant and joined us at our table. Like, what? Gotta love travel. The guys looked pretty embarrassed for deciding to ditch her the following night, but she didn’t seem to mind at all. She told us about how she successfully returned to her hostel on her own and journaled about the entire experience once it was over.

I knew that I one day wanted to do the same.

This is in no way is it as raw as it would have been had I recorded this experience in an actual journal, nor as vivid as the details would have been had I written this all down at the time that it all occurred. But, it’s something. It took half a decade for me finally decide to sit down and write this whole thing out from memory, but I’m glad I did it. And, for what it’s worth, I’m glad that I took the leap outside of my comfort zone to go on the trip, even if it did temporarily get me Targeted and Left Stranded in Thailand.

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