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“Mai pen drai. Mai pen drai,” the nurses kept saying gently to me, smiling, as I lay on my back in a hospital bed. They were trying to reassure me: no big deal, don’t you worry. “Pen drai…pen drai…” I weakly whimpered back, knowing very well that this was not a legitimate phrase for “all this puke is too a problem!” The nurses ignored the pleas of the foolish farang (foreigner). They gave me an “anti-womitting” pill that I quickly purged myself of and then tried to insert an IV into my shaky arm.

One hour previously I had announced to a vanful of fellow students (heading home from Bangkok) that I wasn’t feeling well and then promptly yarfed into a tiny plastic bag. The driver quickly detoured the van of disgusted, irritated students to the nearest hospital. After the IV was in me, they wheeled me into a large room full of beds with other people, all in apparent agony, where I surveyed the surroundings in dismay.

This was a small rural hospital. My friend helpfully said, “Oh! This reminds me of Haiti!” While I sat up spitting the last of my stomach lining into a bowl, brave friends rubbing my back, the director of my program called. We discussed vanning it to a bigger hospital in the city, but mid-conversation I uttered a quick “okay, gotta go,” and leaned over the bowl once more.

Meanwhile, the previously disgusted classmates were slowly dropping – not feeling well, lying down on open cots…moaning. Nevertheless, we all agreed to speed into town to the bigger hospital. Along the way, disaster. We quickly ran out of little plastic bags to contain all the vomit being produced in this tightly packed, nine-person van. Windows were opened. Soon eight of the nine students were sick and the lone non-puker sat huddled in the back corner, one hand on her stomach, the other pinching her nose.

Eventually we made it to the larger hospital. The man who opened the van door for us violently shook off his hand without disguising his revulsion. The eyes of the staff widened when eight wan, bedraggled farang shuffled into the waiting room. In the end only one other student and I stayed overnight, receiving bag after bag of the “anti-womitting” medicine. We later learned that the second van of our fellow travelers (headed the opposite direction) suffered the same calamity. After all the tiny villages we had stayed in, all the street food we had eaten, Bangkok got the best of us.

Read more: Bangkok, Sickness, Thailand, Travel


Llalan specializes in all things Ohio, but has funny stories from all over the US and Canada, plus a few snort-inducing ones from Thailand. And not only does she read books from around the world, she also samples beers in as many languages as possible. Favorite style: the multi-national American Double IPA.

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