Little Cabin of Fecal Matter

A few nights we won't soon forget

Our First Family Trip to Asia: A Night to Remember on Ko Samui

Our real trip to Asia began with a chaotic arrival from Bangkok to the island of Ko Samui. What started as a seemingly straightforward day quickly spiraled into potential (ha, ok likely) childhood trauma. But won’t these turn into great memories later?

A new Thai friend picked us up at the airport, we grabbed lunch, and did some general island supply shopping and orientation. Nothing to see here.

Here’s the thing: ever since my wife realized how little food she had access to during her early teen years, food—or rather, the lack of it—has been a psychological trigger for her. Stocking up on too much food is her way of coping. So naturally, our grocery shopping took way longer than expected and ended with the cashier taking photos of our sheer quantity of groceries purchased.

I had just one request that day: “I really don’t want to drive up that ‘death mountain’ my first time at night” My request: 0. Childhood Trauma Grocery Overshopping: 1.

Fast-forward five hours. It’s pitch black—no street lights—9 p.m., and we’re sitting in a pickup truck filled to the brim with groceries. To add more challenge: the truck is a manual, right-hand drive, so the stick shift is on the left. I only later learned that the clutch was also going out. The road is so steep our guide recommended an alternate route if it was raining. This advice was given for a partially paved road was so steep the truck would slide down the hill out of control regardless if you were going down or up the road.

The road up to our place is a harrowing, 15-minute journey straight up a mountain. I have seen some suspect infrastructure in my day. I kind of scoffed when I heard about the road before I arrived. I’ll be fine. My travels living in Latin America for 7 years provided plenty of insight navigating suspect roads and lack of engineering oversight. Nothing prepared me for Thailand mountain roads this was the major leagues. 2,000 feet darn near straight up.

Topographical map of Ko Samui showing the location of the fecal producing cabin.

Thai Roads

What I quickly learned about Thai roads is that, rather than being built with structured switchbacks to lessen the ascent, it’s as if someone simply poured concrete straight up sheer inclines and called it a day. Not paving along the ridgeline, but just paving up wherever they damn well pleased. Our little cabin was accessible by two pathways loosely described as roads, neither of which were good. These roads were so treacherous that your sanity could only handle making one trip up and down per day. There were sections of this so-called "road" where I genuinely couldn’t understand how the concrete hadn’t oozed back down the hill.

Wrong Turn in the Darkness

What transpired that night was an oh shit handle clutching, white-knuckle ride of hell. The truck lurched forward, tires spinning as we attacked each incline. My heart pounded.

I had only been shown the route to the cabin during the day, I completely forgot that there were two driveways near our place. I crested the last incline, relieved I finally found the house. I exhaled and turned left. We made it! As we crawled along a single-lane road, my heart sank: I had missed the house, we were going up again and the road narrowed.

We’re not out of the woods yet, I thought—a phrase I reserve for only the most extreme situations. The last time I used it was while debating whether I had food poisoning from questionable seafood in the UK as my stomach rumbled ominously. I was not out of the woods then, and I wasn’t out of the woods now. I realized this while stuck on one of the steepest inclines in total darkness, wrestling with a manual transmission, failing clutch and my wife yelling, “I’m so scared!” Her fear, mixed with incorrect (but well intended) advice delivered with the nervous riotousness of a karen policing her neighborhood, did not smooth things over.

I tried to turn the truck around for what felt like 30 minutes, but it kept sliding partially down the slope with our two kids in the backseat. My heart pounding, truck sliding, kids and wife screaming. The dark abyss loomed off to one side. After what can only be described as an “Austin Powers-style” 12 point turn around to get the truck somewhat straight again, I had only one option: to reverse all the way back down this rollercoaster of a road using the dim and blurry backup camera.

The Aftermath

We eventually made it to the house. All were shaken. As we unloaded the groceries, my daughter burst into the room in tears. “Someone was in the downstairs and turned off the light” she erupted. I vaulted down, adrenaline pumping, only to find nothing. The lamp light bulb had burned out just as she turned the light on. It was just her nerves, frayed from the whole ordeal.

Gale force winds, check. Nerves frayed, check. Beautiful view, check. A few nights we won’t soon forget. We lasted 4 nights on the mountain called Monkey.

The mountain is angry at us and wants us off - wife

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Drone video of one of the steep roads. If you pause at the 10 second mark you can see how this road dips down then does almost a vertical ascent.

Kids smiling at breakfast because we couldn’t homeschool due to the wind blowing the laptops off the table.

Gale force winds, check.

Cheeky man in a bean bag chair.