Take With Food

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Narrated by Justin

We rose before the sun, allowing sufficient time for the walk to the Arcade Bus Station in Chiang Mai. Breakfast consisted of one Doxycyline apiece to ward off malaria. Libby had a second course consisting of two Dramamine -- as she is prone to motion sickness --and we washed it all down with a slug of water. We walked briskly and with our packs in tow, managed to work up a lather. Libby looked exceptionally rosy-cheeked, which I attributed to our early rise and brisk walk. I stood in line and procured the tickets for the soon-to-depart bus.

I returned to find Libby visibly flustered and asking me, between difficult, deliberate gulps, if I had any food. My brow furrowed in what seemed an obvious contradiction between eating and vomiting, but my mouth remained shut. It was clear by her tone that this was an order and not a request, as the literal interpretation would have it. I dove into my pack and found a granola bar, half of which she promptly ate. Thus fortified with oats and sugar, she slowly regained her composure. Upon her assurance and reassurance that she was OK (and some muttering about pills and empty stomachs), we decided to board. Our packs were stowed in the coach’s belly and we took the only remaining seats behind the driver and across the aisle from each other. The driver took his seat and Libby responded to all my queries in the affirmative: Yes, she was OK.

I couldn’t help but ask one last time, “Are you SURE you’re OK?” Her response? “I think I’m OK,” and while she said it sans italic, this time I heard the literal meaning and not the one she implied with the strength of her tone. As the driver released the brake, I suggested that tickets were cheap and how about we catch the next one, to which she readily accepted.

I signaled the driver and Libby communicated to him in flawless Thai that she was feeling ill (she hunched forward slightly and rubbed her belly). He was glad to let us off, as he was directly in front of Libby and thus the line of fire. It took a few minutes to retrieve our bags and it seemed as though she would recover; maybe it was the stuffy air on the bus that had tipped the scale. But alas, she began a quick descent from the precarious perch between sickness and health, namely on the sick side. This time her query-faced demands were accompanied by watery eyes, a rapid, two-handed, self-face fanning and a certain flushness in her complexion.

“Do you (gulp) have (gulp) any change (gulp)?”

As she discovered on an earlier trip, the bathrooms at the bus station require a nominal fee for their use. Rifling through pocket after pocket, all I could muster was a 100-baht bill. “I just (gulp) need (gulp) some coins (gulp),” she responded.

The urgency was apparent and contagious. I re-rifled, but it was too late. She turned and left me for some vague promise land on the outskirts of the terminal. I was devastated, failing to fulfill her one simple wish for the semi-privacy of a restroom to throw up in.

Until I had turned my pockets back in and lashed our bags to my body, I lost sight of her. Stumbling off in her last known trajectory, I spotted her bright pink jacket in the distance: legs upright, torso perpendicular to legs, arms acting as corbels twixt shoulder and knee. She was in the last throws of her convulsions. By the time I reached her, the remnants of the pills, the water and the granola bar were neatly piled in the weeds. All I could muster was, “Are you OK?”

We stood there recovering for a few minutes, recounting how grateful we were to have gotten off the bus. Just then a tuk-tuk driver ambled by and peed in the weeds, affirming Libby’s choice in excrement eviction sites.

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Photos

Happy to Be Here
Recovering from our nasty episode in Chiang Mai

Comments

[Rachel]

Poor Libby!
Libby- I have to say as I felt bad for you, I also had to let out a huge belly laugh at my desk especially at the part of the tuk-tuk driver joining in for a relief, thanks for the laugh! Take Care (along with food and spare coins!)