Stories of a Vagabond

I felt like death
I woke up that morning full of regret after seeing the empty flasks of whisky on the hostel floor.
I glanced to make sure my friend had made it back to the room, careful not to wake her up from her drunken slumber.
You'd think after weeks of partying our way through the islands of Thailand we would have learned our lesson by now.
One person can only tolerate so many drunk western men wearing neon colored tank tops for so long. I woke up, stretched, and hobbled towards the shower, hoping I could wash away the regret and hangover from the night before. No such luck.
My best friend woke up and we had no other choice but to go on an adventure that didn't include bad psytrance music and booze. At this point in our travels we were almost out of money and flat broke on charm, so we knew whatever we chose it had to fit our meager budget and guilty conscience. We'd decided on the Tiger Cave Temple, or Wat Tham Seua. We didn't have enough money to pay for a taxi there and back, so we rented a motorbike, which in retrospect was probably a terrible idea.
Neither of us had ever driven one before, let alone in a foreign country on the opposite side of the ride we were accustomed to driving on. Clad in our stupid matching elephant pants we had bought in Bangkok, we handed over our money and hopped on the bike.
Five seconds later my best friend drove us into oncoming traffic and nearly killing us, but did that stop us? No. We had already spent 250 baht and felt like dying anyway, so we ventured on. Not a minute later she nearly killed us again, falling over and giving me a nasty burn from the tailpipe. The only thing I could do was try driving myself.
After stopping at three different 7-11 stores and a lot of broken English, we somehow managed to find our way to the temple. We walked into the cave where a row of novice monks were chanting.
It all hit me at once. The smell of the incense, the burn on my leg that was blistering more by the second, the thought of dying so far from home where nobody knew our names, the poor choices that were made while drunk, and the beauty that could be found in sacred spaces while sober. I was reminded that there were different adventures to be had beyond the drunk tourists on the beach, and that I should probably learn how to properly drive a motorbike before I drove one in another country. The look in my friend's eyes told me she had felt the same way. It would have been a good day to die.