After nine months of sober travel, a Christmas fiesta in the Philippines triggers a series of bad decisions, spiralling towards a serious medical incident and the urgent need for a fresh start. This story was selected as a finalist in our “When Things Fall Apart” travel writing competition.
Their bodies wormed and writhed, matching Budots shapes to the thump of dance anthems. Feet stomped emphatically within the hand-drawn lines of a covered basketball court, which made the stage for this barangay’s annual fiesta. From the corners of the steel-pillared hall came endless beams of red and green lasers among the stentorian roar of the bass. The crowd brought together everyone from island elders drunk on rum to young drag queens who entertained the audience with garish outfits and meticulously crafted lip syncs. Christmas was just four days away. I was accustomed to shivering inside my English apartment at a time like this–instead, I walked on sandal-clad feet with a short-sleeved shirt buttoned halfway up my torso and a constant urge to fan myself down. This was December in the Philippines.
“Every night for ten nights. Welcome to Camotes!” said Angela, a companion who introduced me to the LGBTQ disco on this energetic, beaming Filipino island just off the northern tip of Cebu. Here, I spent my days unblocking waterfalls and building trails as part of an ecotourism project, but the festive season had ignited a fierce spirit among the locals, and each night brought increasingly spontaneous and hedonistic plans. I met Angela on the fiesta’s opening night. Me and the friendly, towering Dutch couple I was working with stood out a clean mile from the residents who danced and sang with lifelong friends, large intertwined families and local councillors whose faces were pasted across the shopfronts. The inescapable warmth of the Filipino people was immediately apparent, and I couldn’t pass anybody without a hand enthusiastically grabbing my arm and pulling me in for a dance.
There was just one problem. After every dance and before every conversation came the offering of a drink. It might be a swig from the giant bottle of warm, strong beer swinging idly from a sweaty dancer’s hands, an airborne shot spiralled from the nozzle of a portly bottle of local rum, or maybe even a pocket cocktail concocted of cheap liquors that didn’t bear thinking about. The new friends I made wouldn’t just drunkenly offer it up; they’d insist upon it. All this, and I was two years sober, not a drop of alcohol in that time. ‘Sober’ and ‘travel’ are words existing on entirely different plains. In nine months of travel, I had almost seamlessly brought the two together and built a new acquaintance under my confident leadership. I was steadfast in my commitment to both of them. Loyal and convinced. But of the hours spent worrying about what might tempt me over the edge into a familiar darkness I’d vowed to depart from indefinitely, I never gave a minute to consider an LGBTQ disco on the island of Camotes.
On opening night, Angela found me outside the basketball courts, taking a break from the confounding chaos of music and dancing. I needed those minutes for myself. It was a way to recharge in the absence of a more obvious social lubricant. Angela sensed the quiet rehabilitation happening in me. My eyes were closed, and my breaths were long as though I were locked in prayer. She parted from her friends and walked along the gravel path to the spot where I rested, glinting with perspiration as the wall vibrated against my back.
“Hey, you’re the British boy,” she said, pulling me from my trance.
“Yeah. I’m with the Dutch couple,” it felt necessary to confirm. Angela shook my hand and encouraged me to introduce her to my Dutch friends, so I did. The four of us talked outside the fiesta, where our voices carried further than the music. We asked Angela about her life in Camotes, and she interrogated us about Europe. Then Angela invited us to meet her family. I was keen on the idea. Sitting in a calm home with some island locals, possibly grilling a fish and passing around the karaoke mic, sounded like a charming alternative to the intensity of the booze-addled fiesta. So, me and the Dutch followed Angela to her home.
There was one bar serving the entire fiesta: a long wooden shack with fairy-light trims glittering opposite the basketball hall. As luck would have it, Angela’s family was the owners and inhabitants of that bar. Inside was an old and pixelated video game machine, a barrage of ice buckets harbouring constant cycles of lukewarm beers, free-flowing rum, plastic tables sticky with spilt liquor, and the Filipino staple of a karaoke machine. Angela grabbed two large bottles of beer from behind the bar and served up a cup to each of the haphazardly combined guests at our table.
“A gift from my mother,” said Angela as she placed a cup of beer in my hand. I placed the beer on the table out of reach from myself, then leant back in my precarious plastic chair. I began to rehearse a polite rejection in my head: ‘I only drink Scottish whiskey’ had worked for the Americans I’d met in Sri Lanka. ‘I’m a Zen Buddhist and recently took my precepts,’ kept the Vietnamese bike-riders at bay. For some reason, I didn’t believe in the strength of a simple yet truthful ‘I don’t drink.’
Angela’s mother, a silver-haired woman with a brilliant, toothless smile and tearful eyes, watched me from the bar, nodding emphatically as the rest of the guests at my table raised their cups until I was the only one so rudely disobeying the celebratory ritual. Angela’s father called my name and gestured to the beer. Angela laughed and did the same as though I’d impishly failed to spot the roaring beacon of imminent disaster before me. Every set of eyes was on me. My pulse rose, and veins tightened. Cups drifted to the ceiling’s naked bulb. All were waiting patiently for the British boy to get his act together and relieve them from the thirst-addled limbo they were in. I didn’t travel across the world to disregard the selfless offerings of humble people. To disobey the order of innocent proceedings. To ostracise myself from a warm, familial welcome. How could I refuse?
That was the first of many over the course of the Camotes fiesta period. I built a base for myself there, one I could come back to at any time, but I can’t look back without knowing what went so terribly wrong for me on that island. How I’d undone two years of difficult work I’d needed to get me there in the first place.
For all my efforts, the cycle of descent had begun. I spent three weeks in Camotes, then rolled on to the island of Siquijor, where I told myself I’d return to sobriety. Siquijor brought in the turn of the new year, and beneath the ethereal glow of midnight fireworks on a white-sand beach, I anxiously chugged beers with new Irish and German friends. Next was Bohol, where I swigged vodka beneath burning stars with fellow campers in hammocks. Camiguin had an untouched aesthetic where I rediscovered my foreign orthodoxy and shared local rum with the welcoming families living there. Mindanao took me on a bike trip down the coast, where I watched the evening tide with a cheap beer to hand. My final destination was Siargao, a teardrop island famed for some of the world’s greatest surf with an even gnarlier reputation for nightlife in the ever-bustling General Luna district, where taco stands and late-night kebabs melded with reggae bars and beach parties. It was not the place for a recently relapsed individual playing roulette with their own health under the guise that their travels would be over soon, and everything would go back to normal.
I arrived in Siargao in a blur. Ready for sobriety but trapped in the folds of omnipotent temptation. In two and a half weeks, I would be flying to New Zealand to start a new life, one far from the inertial drag and existential fatigue that drove me to insanity and then sobriety back in England. The plan was to arrive in Queenstown with a clear head and fresh perspective after nine sober months of travel, but things fall apart. A spectacular run of my greatest times had become so easily tainted. I couldn’t bring myself to address it. I saw it as a part of the story I could easily omit. A lifestyle blip. An error to be scraped from the walls of my worrisome mind. By the time I left Siargao and boarded a plane from Cebu to Brisbane, then from Brisbane to Auckland, I was haggard and worn out from my drunken island-hopping. Touching down in Auckland hit me like the deepest and purest breath I’d ever taken; the inhale before a primal scream. I was safe. I could wipe the slate and reminisce on the Philippines not as a mistake, but an uncompromisingly wild and debauched time I surely deserved after so long without a single slip.
My first morning in Auckland was wonderful. The February sky was blue as a Swiss lake. The roads were quiet and unbothered by traffic. Little patches of lawn outside white-walled bungalows were littered with bicycles and basketballs, paddling pools and picket fences. I walked twenty minutes from the hotel to a breakfast spot up the road. I chased scrambled eggs on toast with two coffees, one succeeding the other fluently as per my ordering strategy of the past month. This is how I wanted the travels to end and the new life to begin. With coffee and fresh air, I walked idly through safe family neighbourhoods while I awaited my final flight to Queenstown that evening.
I had everything packed and ready to go. My bags were safe in the hotel lobby. My headphones were charged; my passport and boarding ticket secured in the front pouch of my bag. I had nothing but time to kill, and I was sure, certain I was safe. But the cracks finally gave as I walked from the cafe to the hotel. This was the result of a gradual succession of beach beers and midnight wine with hostel friends, but the consequence was as immediate as the darkness that follows a flick of a light switch.
A severe, burning sensation pulsed from the centre of my abdomen. The pain got worse and worse. Ruthlessly unrelenting. It tore from the spot between my two lower ribs all the way down to my belly button. It spread across my guts and to each of my kidneys like lava. In a state of panic and anguish, I made it into the hotel, where I vomited uncontrollably all over the lobby toilet. I lay hopeless on the dirty floor between headfirst plunges into the bowl. After my stomach had emptied itself and nothing but dry heaves were coming, I pulled myself up, washed my face, and made my way back to the lobby, where I collapsed into a footstool. The receptionist watched with awe as this delirious scene unfolded.
“I need a hospital,” I groaned. I wasn’t talking to anyone in particular–it was a plea for anyone who might care to assist. The pain was barbaric, and I was desperate for somebody–anybody–to help me.
“Get me to a fucking hospital!” I shrieked again, the pain in my voice drawing a crowd of stunned guests who had been calmly awaiting check-in. My eyes were clenched shut, opening in little bursts to identify the blurred heads bobbing like balloons around me.
“Call an ambulance,” I heard someone say.
“No ambulance,” I insisted. I didn’t know if I was insured for an ambulance ride, and at the time, my hazy, battered brain was too busy blaring panic alarms to consider the small print of my insurance policy. I was ushered into a taxi. I lay across the back seats, sweating profusely and stinking of my own vomit. A car horn howled like a wolf. The driver cursed beneath his breath repeatedly. My insides were being cut, stapled, and burned, and I thought I might black out. When I got to the hospital, I was paralyzed by the pain. My knees were pulled close to my chest, and I gripped the passenger headrest until my fingernails cracked. Two arms grabbed me by the shoulders and thrust me into a wheelchair. I fell to the floor and vomited over the large, yellow edge of a disabled parking bay emblem. My hands clutched the tarmac. Stones dug into my palms. The pain took control of my body.
“Hold him up!”
I had caused a stir of panic as blue scrubs descended upon me. They commented on how much I was sweating. The colour of my vomit. Skin so pale they could see the outline of my rotting veins. As I lay twitching on the hot tarmac of Auckland hospital carpark, black dots consuming my vision and a pain so severe it tipped me into a strange and tragically brief state of hypothermic euphoria, it crossed my mind that this could be it. The end of my travels may well be the end of me, and it was precisely the result of my own poor choices. At least I’d enjoyed myself. At least I was brave. At least I wouldn’t be dying in the dusty office chair I’d frequented for so many years before leaving England. This is the cost of putting myself out there. Karmic retribution for leaving behind friends, family, careers, movie nights, pubs, first homes, final exams, energy bills, regular paycheques, safety, security, certainty – all for the sake of putting my own adventures first. Where had it gotten me? The floor of a hospital carpark, blind with pain.
Within an hour of arriving at Auckland Hospital, I was administered morphine and ketamine to dissolve the suffering. A doctor told me my blood lipase levels had surpassed three thousand. I was diagnosed with acute pancreatitis, then wheeled onto a ward with geriatrics, alcoholics, and diabetics, where I spent my next five days miserably reflecting on my choices. By the time they discharged me with a bag of sweaty, vomit-soaked clothes, a tramadol prescription, directions to the nearest pharmacy, and some suggestions of good coffee spots in my subsequent destination of Queenstown, I was utterly exhausted, mortified, and defeated.
That evening, I landed in Queenstown. Sobriety in tatters. Guts in ropes. A fresh start needed more than ever. I left the airport in a wheelchair operated by a kind, obsequious airport porter. Sunlight glistened on my titanium wheels. You could’ve given me a hundred guesses as to how I’d arrive at my new home, I never would’ve thought ‘in a wheelchair spinning on opioids,’ but I’d made it. I was ready to start fresh, and I knew for certain that a drink would never do me good.
I’d never felt a relief so pure.
