I Got Sick My First Day in Bangkok! What Happened Next?

The title says Bangkok, and this episode is filmed on a walk through Bukit Bintang in Kuala Lumpur. That’s because it’s the story of my first week of slow travel in Bangkok, told a couple of weeks later once I’d made it to KL: getting sick within 24 hours of landing, and then living through the March 2025 earthquake.

The flight. I’d been planning this trip for about seven years, so I was a little too excited to rest. I booked Air Canada’s direct flight from Vancouver to Bangkok to avoid connections. The catch is that it leaves around 10:30 at night and lands around 5:15 in the morning. My plan was to rest in the Vancouver airport hotel (they rent rooms in eight-hour blocks), then spend a few hours in the lounge before boarding. I barely slept. Everything I’d been planning for years was suddenly real.

Getting sick. Within 24 hours of landing, I had a cold and my first case of traveler’s stomach. I’d packed activated charcoal for the stomach, but nothing for a cold, and when I went to order medicine through Grab, none of the brands were familiar. I had to use Google to work out what to buy. I spent most of my first five or six days at my first hotel, the Holiday Inn Bangkok Sukhumvit, trying to get better.

The earthquake. On the Friday I was due to switch hotels, I was waiting in my room on the 24th floor with my bags packed by the door when the earthquake hit. I’m 6’3″ and 230 pounds, and it threw me around. All I could think was: hit the floor, cover my head, pray. When the shaking stopped, the building was still swaying. I grabbed my bags, stepped into a hallway with new cracks in the walls, found the emergency stairs and headed down, letting a mom with four kids go ahead of me. We all made it to the ground floor.

The first thing I did was message my family that I was okay. That turned out to be smart, because right after the quake everyone was outside and on their phones, the roads were gridlocked, and getting a Grab was impossible. My driver accepted the ride, but we never managed to reach each other.

The walk. So I walked to my next hotel, the Holiday Inn Express on Soi Soonvijai, with a carry-on, a backpack and a travel vest, in the Bangkok heat. Before long, two kind Thai women told me to stop and sit down, called across the street, and someone brought me cold water. One of them said nothing like this had happened in about 20 years. Lucky me. Then they suggested a massage. The typical Westerner in me assumed it was a sales pitch, but they were just trying to get me out of the sun before I had a stroke. It was great advice: my first Thai massage, taken with all my bags piled in the room, and the air conditioning let me cool down.

I drank about eight more bottles of water on the way, stopping at a convenience store and a small Japanese restaurant that happily gave me water without ordering. The walk took about two and a half to three hours. The Holiday Inn Express Bangkok Soi Soonvijai was only eight stories, with zero damage, and the front desk was running normally. I was so relieved to find it in good condition. It’s where I finally recovered. I got to my room, dropped my bags and lay on the floor for a while before I felt human again.

What’s next. None of this changed my plans. I’m on the 17th floor in Kuala Lumpur as I film this, and I’m fine. I started this channel to show the process, not just the polished answers, so the next person saving up for their own adventure can see what it’s really like, mistakes and all.

Looking back, I wouldn’t change much. It wasn’t really the result of any choices I made; it was just a rough start.