In late December of 2004, I sat in the foyer of my five-dollar-a-night hotel room in Penang, Malaysia, arguing with an angry night guard who insisted I keep my door closed. I tried telling him I was waiting for a bus. He finally gave up and went back to bed, and my bus arrived at 6 a.m. I eagerly hopped on to head towards the Malay-Thai border. I was ready to visit a part of Thailand that I hadn’t seen before—Krabi, then Phuket, and an island or two. Maybe try diving.
Our minibus headed north and crossed the border, but before we turned west towards Krabi, we stopped in Hat Yai, a crossroads city in southern Thailand, where we pulled up to a cafe. One guy got out, then the driver looked back at me and told me to get out of the bus. I did, thinking we were simply rearranging bags. He motioned for me to hand him my ticket, which he immediately pocketed and told me to wait where I was. Then he invited two guys who were sitting nearby to get on.
“Why? I have a ticket to Krabi.” I was confused. “Please let me stay on this bus!” The driver shook his head. The two guys got on the bus. I watched helplessly as my bus took off down the street. I had no idea what was going on. I sat down at a plastic table in the cafe, but I refused to order anything. My rage was palpable.
Another bus came by after twenty minutes. When the driver motioned and asked me for my ticket, I explained that the first driver had taken it. I pleaded with him and he finally let me get in his bus, but he only drove once around the block, then returned to the cafe. This driver motioned for me to get out, and told two other backpackers waiting there to get in. Aha! The drivers were trying to fill up their buses! It didn’t matter that I had bought a ticket: I was nothing to them because I could not fill more than one seat. I was used to being harassed for being a woman, but to be treated like nothing because I was traveling alone? This was new to me.
I approached the women who sat at the cafe desk and asked if they saw the first driver take my ticket. They shook their heads. The woman in charge said, “Wait. You wait for bus.”
“But I had a ticket to Krabi. A ticket! That driver took my ticket. Stole my ticket! Did you see him?” I asked urgently.
The women shook their heads and looked down at some papers.
“Aw, come on. You must have seen him. Now I have no ticket.” I was livid and it showed, which was always a negative thing in Thai culture, according to my guidebook.
I took a deep breath and thought about my options. What did I do in Europe when I wanted to get somewhere? “Train station?” I asked hopefully.
I could have bought another bus ticket to Krabi from Hat Yai, but it was the principal of the thing. I didn’t care that I had lost a few dollars; I cared about being stranded in a city I didn’t want to be in simply because I wasn’t half of a couple. This wasn’t sexual harassment; it was single-traveler harassment.
At the train station, I looked up at the list of cities I could visit. I focused on Bangkok. I’d been there before and knew there were plenty of people walking alone—and I could be one of them! I bought a ticket to Bangkok, and seventeen hours later, I was there.
A few days in Bangkok perked me up, after which I traveled north to Chiang Mai for the three-day hike into hill tribe country that is almost compulsory for backpackers in northern Thailand. Our group hiked from village to village, stopping to eat lunch made by a local cook or to spend the night in a thatched hut. We experienced the obligatory waterfall swim, the jaunt on top of an elephant, and the bamboo raft ride down a river.
