52 Countries in 52 Weeks, Part 29: Southeast Asia (Part 1)
In Which I Hang Out With Elephants, Sleep In Treehouses, Be At Peace With Tourism, And Do Something Very British Columbian For The First Time
After nine months, I made it to the place where I was going to think about my future — but I had already figured it out.
Koh Tao would need to have a new, if slightly less important, purpose.
While planning this year out in very prescriptive fashion, I decided to book five days in late January at this Thai island in a very silly beachside hotel.
There, I told myself, I would snorkel, watch the sun set, and figure out what changes I’d make after returning home in early March from this amazing intermission between Act 1 and 2 of adulthood.
The world doesn’t stop while you’re travelling around it though. Your brain has revelations at random times, no matter what you’ve written on a far too detailed spreadsheet.
So I had already gone through that process of discovery, and was feeling pretty content with life and secure in my action plan prior to arriving in Koh Tao.
On one hand, this meant I could fully enjoy the beautiful island — incredibly touristy, yet plenty of amazing nature on land and snorkelling at sea, and far from being gentrified at the level of a Mexican resort.
On the other hand, I wanted to do something unique here. Something worth the five days of boat, train and bus travel to get here from northern Laos. And selfishly, something that would internally justify spending more money on this waterfront hotel room than any other accommodation this year.
Rent a motorbike? It would be fun, but the roads on Koh Tao were both hilly and windy, and horror stories about repair costs for damaged bikes (or damaged limbs) were legion online.
There had to be something else I could do for the first time. Something relatively safe, something cultural, something that might provoke a new depth of feeling, that would meet my goal of better appreciating the breadth of human experience.
And then, as I saw another store advertising the same products with the same logos for the 14th time on this relatively small island, it became clear what I would do on my final night in this amazing place.
It was time for my first edible.
Every winter, millions of tourists from Europe and North America decide to stop shivering for a few weeks and experience the warmth and culture and affordability of a Southeast Asia adventure, and in some ways I was no more different and no more basic.
My other stops in Asia contained one or two places that were somewhat off the beaten path. Yet after researching the options, I decided to go with a fairly standard itinerary: starting in Vietnam, heading south from Hanoi to Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh, west through Cambodia (primarily for Angkor Wat), across to Thailand to enjoy Bangkok and Chiang Mai and Rai, then down the Mekong River in Laos before ending at Koh Tao (one of around 10 different areas in south Thailand that tourists pick between for their beach of choice).
In part, my choices were informed by a sense I had back in 2023 that by this time in the journey, I would be somewhat tired.
And indeed, this was proving to be the case: after 9.5 months and more than 100,000 kilometres, my ability to keep up a frenetic pace day after day was lagging, so keeping to a more basic path had advantages.
For another, given my “fly as little as possible” edict, the transportation logistics of the region meant things had to slow down and get a bit more basic: trains don’t really connect between countries, Cambodia doesn’t have a rail system between the main tourist areas, and long stops at every border are just a fact of life here.
(Also, while Laos has a brand-new shiny rail system thanks to massive funding from China, Thailand and Vietnam’s trains are generally on the slower and older end, making for long rides that are generally less comfortable than the rest of the world.
Then again, unlike Canada, at least they actually have a comprehensive passenger rail system.)
It was a phenomenal time. I was kissed by an elephant, ziplined across rainforest treehouses, floated down the Mekong, was awestruck by Angkor Wat, and loved the array of Buddhist temples across the region.
Yet more than any other leg of the trip, I felt acutely aware of being a tourist.
It’s hard to do the seminal experiences alone, which usually necessitated guided tours. There’s a very clear delineation (much more so than the rest of my Asia trip) between the restaurants and businesses geared for citizens versus visitors, and you’re very aware of your status and the fact you’re getting a very filtered window into what that place is like.
If that was the vibe for my entire journey, it would have gotten annoying quick.
For these five weeks though, I was comfortable with the tradeoffs.
After months of diving into brand new cultures for weeks at a time, usually in isolation, it was nice to have smaller goals: get on the bus or the boat, see the really cool thing, share your enthusiasm with a bunch of other people, repeat the next day.
And after all, it’s not like there was anywhere that I really regretted missing. Plus, I find the philosophy of “act like a local” a bit smug and misguided: the point of going somewhere else shouldn’t be to cosplay living there. You’ll never approach the depth of connections and understanding of actual locals, no matter how many hidden gem local artisan authentic cooking meditation off the beaten path homestay experiences you organically seek out.
You’re a tourist. Be fine with doing touristy things.
Or more accurately, do the things that interest you, with plenty of curiousity while accepting the limits of your understanding of a place.
And sometimes, you’ll be smiling in elephant pants like millions before you, and still enjoying the giddy fun of it all.
When your friends talk about their trips to Vietnam or Thailand, it’s generally about those elephants or the bike rides or the river cruises or the natural environment, and less about the intricacies of city design or urbanism.
Yet there was still plenty on those topics that interested me, from the prevalence of Buddhist temples in city cores, to Bangkok’s mixed success in combating congestion, to the night market culture.
But today, let’s talking about the most unifying and regionally distinct urban element: the motorbikes.
You can be told “motorbikes are everywhere” before you arrive and sort of nod your head. It’s another thing to be on a sidewalk with hundreds of them passing by each minute, not a traffic light in sight, and figuring out how to cross.
According to a 2016 Pew Research Center survey of 44 major countries, the only places where more than 60% of households own a motorcycle are Vietnam (87%), Thailand (86%), Indonesia (85%) and Malaysia (83%), with similar numbers found in other surveys of Cambodia and Laos.
(For comparison, the number of motorcycles and mopeds registered in Canada is around 900,000, less than 3% of our population)
They’re on main thoroughfares in Bangkok and dusty side streets in Phnom Penh, they take over sidewalks across Vietnam, and it all seems to work, if slowly, a controlled chaos that appears to avoid major accidents of some cities where cars are more dominant.
It provided a interesting visual aesthetic, and their popularity is generally attributed to household incomes being too low for vehicles yet comfortable enough for bikes, but is the end result, you know, good for its cities?
I lean towards no.
The city I’ll remember most in this trip was Hanoi, the cultural capital of Vietnam and a place that filled me with so many big emotions.
The city gives a great first impression, with the fading colonial French buildings, leafy green streets and modern market bustle creating a distinct mix of things to see and consider. The food culture is superb (I’ve discovered I’m a more of a Bun Cha buddy than a Pho fella), there’s tons of great museums (I’ve fallen in love with the tactile detail of Vietnamese lacquer paintings), it’s almost impossible to spend more than 10 bucks on a meal, and the famous train street — where you can sit on patios in an alley that come within a foot of the passing cars — may be a tourist trap, but one that’s free and way more unique than another viewpoint from the top of a tall building.
However, as the days went on I had a harder time fully enjoying Hanoi, because of avoiding the motorbikes while inhaling their fumes.
Motorcyclists are given free reign over the streets, and the sidewalks are also de facto reserved for them. Within a day or two, you’ll get the hang of crossing and knowing when to dip between the sidewalk and the street. Still, it’s an unfortunate state of being to get from Point A to Point B.
And then there’s that air pollution — frequently among the worst in the world — making what the core area a tough place to spend more than a few hours at a time outside, a tragedy given how charming and interesting it is.
It seems the governments feels the same way. Vietnam has ordered the centre of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh to effectively go motorcycle free by 2030, while both Malaysia and Indonesia have debated similar bans for their capital cities.
I wonder if they end up going through with it, and I’d love to see what the transformation looks like after the fact. A city dominated by one mode of transportation might be convenient for those using that mode, yet there’s a reason that when cities make big changes to prioritize equality of transportation options, they rarely go back.
Hanoi might lose a little of its aesthetic, but I have a hunch it’d gain a lot of livability.
At first it was nothing except a mild dull buzz, as though I had drank a light beer on an empty stomach.
Then I felt my muscles sag, and then my brain slowed down: not a massive amount, but enough to feel a calmness, a mild blocking of some of the 20,000 thoughts racing around the head at any one time.
After a couple of hours, it deepened slightly, and that was that.
It was relaxing and peaceful, though not otherworldly, a satisfying if not entirely memorable end to my time on the island.
Or it would have been.
Then — fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective — I decided two things: I needed to go to a restaurant a couple hundred metres down the street.
And, I deserved to have one more gummie.
Walking there, I noticed changes in depth perception, and began to be fascinated with how my feet were hitting the ground.
it’s probably nothing
Then I had my soup, but the soup was not as interesting as how my feet were hitting the ground, and then I wanted something to fascinate my taste buds as much as my other senses, and there was a 7-Eleven between the restaurant and the hotel, and how convenient was that?!?
(do not answer this question)
Then in the 7-Eleven it started to feel like time was moving both quicker and faster, which was a terribly exciting development, and then the lineup to pay for my chocolates and chips was very long, or at least it felt very long, and that began to annoy me, but then the snacks were eventually paid for, and I wandered to the hotel, with the time and the space and the feet were all making it a very interesting walk, much more interesting than any previous walk.
Then I started laughing at how absurd these feelings were, and then I started laughing at the fact that I *was* laughing, and having all the same dumb feelings and experiences that I’ve watched in movies and sitcoms over the years, and then I was gleeful at having so many different thoughts, and then I was like “these are very important thoughts,” and then I was like “these are probably the same thoughts millions of other stoners have had before you”, and then I begun having too many thoughts, and then my brain couldn’t stop the thoughts, and then I was like “a lot has happened in the last hour” and checked my phone to discover an hour was, in fact, “fifteen minutes”, and then I was like “perhaps a nap would be nice”, and then I focused on napping, and was able to nap, and it was glorious, and then awoke at midnight for a scheduled meeting to plan a friend’s 40th birthday, where I spent most of the time vacantly smiling and contributing nothing of note.
So Koh Tao did end up having an important purpose after all.
This was the best. Both because I love Koh Tao and I love that you had your first edible.
Can’t say I have read everything on your Substack, but what I have read has always been thoughtful and entertaining. I’ll catch up on everything I’ve missed when your book comes out!