A breakup leads heartbroken Hannah to her usual crutch – travel – but, let down by the hedonism of hostel life in Thailand – and soaked in the Songkran celebrations – she battles loneliness to gradually refind herself and sense of purpose.
Travel fixes everything. Bored? Book a flight. Lonely? Go meet the world. House burnt down, treasured possessions blazed to smithereens, and, in general, life as you knew it dismantling before your very eyes? Go to Vietnam. That’s it. That’s the solution. Just go to Vietnam.
Travel fixes everything… Until you’re heartbroken, homesick, and handling the biggest upheaval of your makeup so far. Then travel doesn’t fix everything. Then, travel drains you. It picks at you. It unravels you until you’re forced to confront everything that went wrong; every detail about yourself that you don’t like; and every possible avenue the story could have gone down had you made better choices.
You see, travel betrayed me. Travel was my ride-or-die. My go-to solution. My one and only hobby that had a 100% guarantee rate of making me feel all-round, instantly better. We had a long history of running away together, skipping off into the sunset on far-flung volcanic islands, and frolicking in the sand while forgetting that I ever had a job, a situationship, and a lack of life direction. Together, we pushed all my issues to the back of my brain and focused on what was important: cheap fun and pulling the fittest bartender. When I was sick of studying, I moved to Australia. When I had little money, I hopped over to Asia. When another silly boy bit the dust, I disappeared to Latin America.
Simply put, whenever a problem arose, I packed a bag, booked a flight, and left. And it was bloody great. I would sit on tropical beaches, beer in hand, believing I could somehow make a living out of doing fuck all. I would eat the cheapest, most delicious meals in sea view restaurants and wonder how I ever put up with English prices. I would befriend dormmates, receptionists, and tour guides, marveling at how much better life was when tanned, anonymous, and on the back of another curly-haired local boy’s motorbike.
But when I found myself ending the messy, yearlong situationship that had rampaged through my life like a hurricane, I packed my trusty backpack once more, fled to Thailand, and discovered something much more unsettling than the fact that I was unable to maintain a lasting relationship: travel doesn’t fix everything.
Rather than enabling me to forget, I was reminded of my losses. I saw his face everywhere I went, finding obscure meanings in random objects that somehow connected me to him. His drought of text messages not lighting up my phone was like a constant alarm bell, forever reminding me that this was it: he was gone. I was alone. Metaphorically and physically, very, very alone. But stay with me, please. This is not a depressing story.
I was not ready to be around people, parties, and plethoras of young and gorgeous backpackers looking to hook up. So what did I do? I went to Pai in Northern Thailand, AKA the epitome of young and gorgeous backpackers looking to hook up. When did I go? Right before the biggest party in the country, Songkran. Why? Because I can’t make smart decisions that benefit my goals, sanity, and general well-being (keep up, I thought we’d established this already).
While group after group of rowdy backpackers recycled in and out of the hostel’s doors – laughing, flirting and blissfully riding a permanent state of tipsiness – I moped in uninhabited corners of the common room, silently sulked in hammocks, or drew my privacy curtain and hid in my coffin-style bed. I resembled a depressed little demon girl from a horror film – bloodshot eyes, blotchy face, deadpan expression – watching everyone having fun while I snarled from the sidelines.
I could not speak to anyone, and after weeks of downward spiraling, believe me, I had tried. Each time I struck up a conversation with a fellow traveler, I would zone out, struggling to laugh at jokes on time and finding my tolerance for eighteen-year-old TikTok wannabes dwindling each time they looked me up and down and said, “Oh my god, you’re twenty-five?” Every day, I would eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner alone, walk the town’s streets alone, and sit in coffee shops alone, all while fighting back the tears that kept springing to my lashline each time I spotted a couple holding hands. I was a shredded snake-skinned version of my former traveling self.
Heartbreak is hard, but first-time heartbreak is hell. While running away may ease the pain for many, for me, the effect was the opposite. I needed home, comfort, and the means to begin my post-breakup glow-up (a wardrobe, hair straighteners, and non-humid air so I wouldn’t pour sweat like Niagara Falls each time I stepped outside). I needed a routine. I needed stability. Honestly? I needed my mum. I could not handle the obstacles travel naturally brought on top of my all-consuming, main-character-moment, trip-defining devastation. Every minor inconvenience was a disaster and the boy-shaped hole in my heart was sucking the life out of my tried-and-tested mantra: travel fixes everything.
So, when on the day before Songkran I decided to navigate myself from Pai to Chiang Mai, stomping to the bus stop with all my belongings, naively assuming the water celebrations would not begin until the next day, I was not mentally stable enough to handle the shock of pistols and hose pipes and water balloons being thrown in my direction. I did not want to sit in wet clothes for the duration of my two-hour bus ride whilst trying not to think about the latest male to ruin my life. I did not want to ring out all my clothes, diary, and underwear on arrival in Chiang Mai. I did not want to pretend a water fight was my idea of fun when all I wanted to do was curl up in a dark room with air conditioning and get lost in my well-polished reel of loved-up memories from one month prior. If I was going to be miserable, I at least wanted to be dry whilst being it, y’know?
But with nowhere to hide and a bus to catch, reluctantly, I began the ten-minute trek to the stop. Children waited in paddling pools, beady eyes trained on their targets until the time came to strike then POW, like an assassin who never misses, they fired their shots and cackled at the horrified expressions of their victims. Buckets were poured from behind, people took swills to the face and drunk foreigners walked armed with water guns. As I watched a fellow unprepared backpacker with his entire worth of belongings get drenched, I realized there was no mercy in this war of water: everyone was out for themselves and no one was safe.
He spotted me from a mile off–the little Thai boy with mischief in his eyes and sabotage on his mind. I shuffled against walls like an MI5 agent, clutching my backpack to my front and taking the water celebrations as seriously as a soldier on a life-or-death evacuation mission. The little boy watched me sneak closer, refilling his pistol while his laser pupil focus latched onto mine. I was aware of what was happening (that I was being unfairly picked from the mob, most likely because of my bone-dry exterior and that I probably looked like I could do with some cheering up), but still, the outcome was unavoidable. The kid’s base was outside the bus station. I had no choice but to power through.
The sadistic child smirked as I approached, knowing he was about to get his kick out of watching me suffer and there was nothing I could do about it. As he fired his pistol – aiming right between my eyes – I flinched at the shock of the freezing water blasting my face. As I was trying to block the attack with my outstretched hands, another little dickhea– sorry, I mean another little Thai boy appeared from the crevasses and tossed a bucket of ice-cold water over me.
“Happy Songkran!” the evil twins sang, their wide smiles pushing into their chubby cheeks as they admired their handiwork.
“Happy Songkran,” I replied through gritted teeth, wiping the water dripping from my brow while resisting the urge to scream, “SONGKRAN STARTS TOMORROW! CAN YOU NOT WAIT ONE MORE DAY? IS THIS NOT AGAINST THE RULES? CAN YOU NOT SEE I HAVE MY ENTIRE WARDROBE IN A BAG ON MY BACK? WHERE ARE YOUR MOTHERS?”
The early water celebrations had already kicked off as I arrived in Chiang Mai. As I braced myself for the tuk-tuk ride to my hostel, I wondered why no one had warned me about this casual pre-party mania. Was it an unwritten rule that Songkran always began early? Were these fully grown adults simply too excited to wait? Did this day technically class as Songkran Eve, or was this foul play?
As I watched the water madness from the relative safety of my tuk-tuk, I thought: this would never happen in England. If a three-day nationwide water fight occurred in the UK, the parades would turn into riots. There would be fistfights. People would probably die. For a moment, I missed England and its boring rules and regulations; its straight-cut Karens and moaning myrtles; its wonderfully unexciting predictability and love for all things standardized and scheduled and unspontaneous. Thailand was too wild, too cheerful, too happy-go-lucky for a girl so heartbroken any chance of onward happiness seemed unlikely. (Huh? Who’s dramatic?)
But the next day – the official start of Songkran – I awoke with a strange feeling. I didn’t recognize it at first for it had been so long, but as the sensation stirred in my stomach, I realized what it was: I felt optimistic.
I could hear cheering outside and laughter downstairs. From my top bunk, I peeled back the curtain and saw a manmade monsoon of sprays and showers and tsunami-style uproar. The streets resembled an intensified Splash World, with locals and foreigners playing outside like ‘90s children with no WiFi. The hose pipe frenzy made yesterday’s unannounced water warmup look mild, and suddenly, I wanted to get involved.
I drank a beer for breakfast. I joined in the hostel’s games. I smiled… and for the first time, it wasn’t forced. I made friends and laughed at jokes on time and no longer resembled a depressed little demon girl in a horror film. I became excited about life again, and even more excited when I remembered I had three whole days to embrace this madness.
In the center of Chiang Mai, people were packed so tightly it looked like a concert crowd. There was barely one foot of visibility ahead due to the waterfall from every angle, forcing me to hold my breath and scrunch my eyes, grabbing my new friends’ hands so we could guide each other along like a family of blind mole rats. The streets were flooded with ankle-deep water and as I paraded through, local after local waited alongside the pavement, waist-high barrels of icy water at the ready. I flinched and screamed and laughed at the craze, accepting the spirit-cleansing water to wash away my sins and welcome in the Thai New Year.
For those three days, I felt like a backpacker again.
After Songkran, the cloud of gloom caught up with me again, running into me on the morning of my three-day hangover buildup and never straying far after that (the cloud played dirty: it knew how to strike when I was vulnerable). To be honest, other than the multi-day water bender, my whole three-month trip was pretty miserable, but Songkran had been the peep of light during the long stretch of my happiness powercut. It was the first time I felt reassured that my personality-sucking heartbreak disorder would not last forever.
When I returned to England, the “depression” didn’t leave. I was still a different version of myself, but being at home allowed me to rejuvenate. It gave me the emotional comfort I so badly needed: my friends, my family, my glorious wardrobe. Solo travelers can get used to relying on themselves; we can forget that sometimes, we need the support of others.
And lastly, in case you’re interested (or worried, or nosey, or the man of my dreams wondering if I’m finally ready for you to show up in my life), I eventually got over the boy. It took a while for him to seep out of my system, but when the dregs finally drained, it was like I could see clearly again; his pedestal was dismantled. Finally, I stopped making excuses and saw him for who he was. It was like waking up from a drunken night out – one of those where you open your eyes, your head spins, vomit forms in the back of your throat and you think, “What the fuck was that?”
Travel may not have fixed my broken heart, but my three-month stint – the trip that forced me to face ugly truths; the trip that taught me I am not invincible; the trip that made me realize that sometimes, there is no place like home – was not a waste of time.
After all, I learned one of the most important lessons a trip has yet to teach me: Travel may not fix everything, but I would figure it out.
