So… That happened.

I never expected that my first surgery would come so soon – at 24 years old – and happen whilst I was on the other side of the world, in Vietnam, alone. It entirely blindsided me. But, I suppose, such a thing would blindside anyone.

And so, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

I was supposed to be traveling Southeast Asia for two months and two weeks, from late May, 2024, until early August, 2024; enjoying a guided tour with strangers that I had just met and experiencing the cultures and countries of Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. I had organised to volunteer at the end, too, on a marine conservation project in Tianyar, Bali, where I was to learn to PADI dive and aid in rebuilding a large area of eroded coral reef just off the coast.

Only, I had to fly home after just three weeks.

It started out fine. I was filled with nervous excitement to board the plane and jet off across the world on my next great adventure, enjoying some inflight entertainment and nourishment. The first day, I met up with my group, who were to be my family for the next few weeks, and after some stiff and awkward introductions, I felt like the entire thing would go great and I was eager to get stuck in.

A lot was packed into just the first week: we got up early – four am – to visit and see the sunrise over the Angkor Wat temple in Siem Reap. The day was hot, but that didn’t stop us from also seeing the Bayon temple, with all it’s stone-carved faces, and Ta Prohm temple, famously known for where the 2001, Tomb Raider, was filmed. The trees that grew out from the rock and curved around the small spaces available were incredible to see and very majestic, and our guide was adorably very excited to show us where Angelina Jolie had filmed. He even had screenshots available from the movie that he held up to make clearer comparisons.

However, within a few days of being in Cambodia, I got food poisoning. Embarrassingly and mortifyingly, just as we were supposed to visit the Killing Fields and the memorial museum in Phnom Penh, too. I felt awful and terribly self-conscious when I had to dash away from the group and the guide, who was telling the history of the Killing Fields, in order to use the bathroom. But I felt mostly felt as thought I was disrespectful to the Cambodian people and to the land on which I was. A member of the group was kind enough to give me some iodine pills for the diarrhoea and upset stomach (though I really should have come prepared myself and I’ll know that for next time) and luckily, with her direction of how to take the medication, my toilet issue had mostly cleared up by the next day.

Izzy, the girl who gave me the medication to take, was a doctor and spoke openly about the bathroom issues that she would have whilst traveling – it certainly calmed me down some and made me more comfortable to talk about such things, too. Sickness is just another part of traveling that almost everyone will experience at some point.

Though maybe not to the extent that I did:

I started to experience discomfort on the boat ride to and from Koh Rong island in Cambodia and I honestly can’t remember much of what happened in Vietnam beyond my hospitalisation other than that. On the days leading up to my admittance, I found myself in ever growing pain, but thinking that it was from the food poisoning, I didn’t do anything about it. I continued to do nothing about it as the embarrassment over my issues came back – because it was evident that now something was wrong with my vagina! And I’m an incredibly private person, so of course I wasn’t about to tell anyone about it.

Until someone clocked the amount of pain that I was in – watched as I winced and grimaced every time I shifted in my seat from the agony, enough that it eventually brought me to tears at the dinner table one evening – and she insisted that I should go to the hospital.

Armed with Sofia, who had noticed, and Lewis, who was suffering some pain himself, I went to the hospital where I was diagnosed with a Bartholin Cyst. They sent me away with six different types of antibiotics and pain meds to deal with it.

And they worked, for a brief, blissful few hours. I remember because we were traveling by night train and I was in high spirits being all drugged up and unable to feel anything as we played card games and chatted into the night.

I wasn’t so chipper in the morning. I was in pain again. And a lot of it. But I continued with the days activities, getting stuck in and doing as much as I could – I remember sitting awkwardly and uncomfortably on the back of a buggy as some of us who couldn’t cycle, or didn’t want to, sat out of the bicycle tour activity. I remember being rather upset about that: I like exercising and hadn’t ridden a bike for years at that point. I was looking forward to it. But walking had become difficult, and I found myself hobbling everywhere, half-keeled over. Cycling was out of the question. I probably should have called it then, to be honest, and gone to the hospital to be put out of my misery; but I’d just been given antibiotics – surely they’ll kick in soon?

They didn’t kick in and I was awoken early on the 8th of June at four am. Even taking the pain medication didn’t help and I stayed awake, listening to a Doctor Who audiobook that I downloaded on a whim back home when I saw it available – it used to be one that I listened to on repeat all the time when I was younger: The Resurrection Casket, narrated by David Tennant and written by Justin Richards. The familiar story was comforting, and I needed it; especially as I had then made the decision to go to the hospital as I felt something was very very wrong.

I couldn’t get back to sleep after waking, and the waiting game for our tour guide – a lovely guy called Sochea – to wake up and let him know what was happening, was a new agony in itself. It was closer to… nine, maybe? that I was relieved to find that I was finally on my way the hospital.

It was the right call: after an unscheduled appointment and ultrasound, they admitted me then and there and I had surgery that evening.

I was offered a general anesthetic or local anesthetic, and everyone I had talked to said it takes some time recovering from general anesthesia, and I was eager to meet back up with my tour group, so I went for local. I was in such a state, however – in terrified tears – that the Vietnamese doctors were very kind to sedate me during the process.

I woke up after it all feeling much better but also incredibly overwhelmed: here I am, in a hospital in Vietnam all by myself, my tour group is moving on without me and I’ve just had surgery. I was an in-patient with the hospital for five days getting treatment: getting IV drips in my arms and being given antibiotics and meals – which were all very delicious and I was glad that I could enjoy and experience the local cuisine this way at least. But they spoke just a bit of English and I spoke absolutely no Vietnamese besides ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’ so we conversed using Google translate. I was starved for socialisation, although I did at least have YouTube and casting capabilities; I had BTS concert videos, as well as their show ‘Run!BTS’, on in the background for comfort and to hear familiar voices. It certainly made everything more bearable and I felt significantly less alone, too.

When I was discharged, I booked into a nearby hotel to continue my treatment with them as an outpatient, but when I arrived, I found that my room was like a prison cell – four walls and no windows and I felt incredibly claustrophobic. I decided to lose the money I had spent on the room I’d booked for seven days and chose to go to a hostel. It was honestly one of the best decisions of my life. I met so many different and diverse people and heard so many travel stories during my stay. I was starved of communication and greedy for human interaction, and so normally reserved and introverted me found myself asking to come to dinner with everyone and anyone I could. And everyone was so accommodating and kind – even those traveling in pairs or small groups: they were happy to let a strange individual who had made a residence out of the hostel, join them for meals where I could. They even offered for me to join them on day trips or activities outside of the hostel, but I didn’t want to impose on them too much (and I also found that I didn’t want to do much of anything beyond eat, either – I was tired and it was hot and I just wanted my body to heal. I just wanted to go home.)

The doctor made that decision for me soon after my discharge from hospital, and recommended that I do not continue with my travel plans, something which I had been at great indecision about before this point and so when she made the decision for me, it took a great deal of weight off of my shoulders. Though my parents wanted me to stay out if I could – they didn’t know the severity of the issues – on my attending doctor’s advice, I traveled home.

After all, I still had an open wound, and so I wouldn’t have been able to participate in any of the demanding activities that I had planned to do – such as hiking, kayaking, swimming, diving as I volunteered on a marine conservation project. I have had continuous check-ins with the nurse at the local GP since I got home, which seems proof enough to me that if I had tried to push on, the risk of re-infection would have been high and I no doubt would have been very stressed about what had happened to me, and how I could prevent it from happening again, and especially I’d have worried how I’d prevent the open wound from getting infected again: the Vietnamese doctor had advised that I’d have to find hospitals in every new place that I visited for the wound to be cleaned out twice a day. I really wound’t have enjoyed myself if I had tried to stay out there.

So I’m home now, and have been back since the 20th of June. It’s the 12th of July now and 22 days have passed. It almost feels as though I never really went anywhere.

But despite it all, I managed to thoroughly enjoyed myself and will cherish the memories of what I did manage to experience in Cambodia, Vietnam, and briefly, in Bangkok, Thailand. I’m glad to be home, and to be putting my physical health first – this body has got to last me my whole life, after all, and Southeast Asia will still be there to explore in the future, whenever that may be.

So, until next time…