Airport immigration lines aren’t the place for nervous fidgeting. So I stood still, hyper-aware of every unconscious movement. I wasn’t hiding anything, not this time. But my heart pounded anyway. My internal voice screamed: Just leave! But that wasn’t an option. My trip was over, I was basically home. Customs and immigration were non-negotiable. As I approached the kiosk with the stoic-looking officer framed behind plexiglass, I braced for the inevitable: endless questions, hours of delay, and a thorough search. And it would be justified. Not for what I was carrying now, but because of what I’d carried once before.

Red Flags

I've crossed many borders with a Canadian passport in hand—a little blue book that, on paper, seems to open doors. But it wasn't always smooth. And it doesn’t always matter where you’re from. What matters is how you travel. I don't always take the usual route. I carry too much baggage—sometimes literal, often metaphorical. I challenge norms, do things differently, and show up in ways the system doesn't expect. Many times, I’ve done so with a patch of the Canadian flag stitched to my bag. But what I've come to learn about borders is that being different is the real red flag.

If you're different—by choice or circumstance—expect delays. Borders don't handle the uncommon well. If you are someone who likes to do things differently, as I do—it's how I live; different, rebellious, and questioning the status quo—you must prepare yourself for unexpected travel delays, glitches in plans, and hiccups in the unfolding of events when crossing borders. The result is a string of travel experiences that push the boundaries of my being. While cutting a unique path for oneself can lead to serendipitous and unpredictable positive moments, it's a two-sided coin, or more aptly, a double-edged sword—there is a balance of positive and negative outcomes. And over the years, I've encountered several instances of border delays prompted by extenuating circumstances that hinged entirely on being different. Whether by land or air, anywhere in the world, this holds true.

Up in Smoke

So, why the trepidation upon arriving home?

Years earlier, Canadian customs caught me with cannabis paraphernalia—a bong, beautifully crafted from a decorative bamboo cutting, that I’d used during travels in Vietnam. But here’s the kicker, I wasn’t flagged for inspection because anyone suspected I was carrying it. Had I been traveling with only my bag, I probably would have breezed through customs without issue. However, I was hauling two extra suitcases for my brother, who had been teaching English in South Korea and was flying home in a few weeks with even more bags. My luggage load stood out. And in a sea of light packers, standing out meant one thing: inspection. I was set apart, along with several other returning English teachers, who were similarly weighed down by baggage.

They searched my backpack first and, upon finding the bong, promptly detained me. My heart sank despite knowing that the body of the head shop essential wasn't anything to balk at without the bowl, which I had separated, tightly wrapped, and tucked away into a small compartment of my rucksack. The presence of the bong, however, still aromatic with the scent of burnt reefer, piqued the officer's interest. Like a drug-sniffing dog, he tore through my backpack until he found the redolent bowl. My attempts at claiming the item was a tobacco smoking apparatus failed after the officer sprayed the bowl with a curious solution and swabbed it to reveal a bright pink colour. "Shiiiiiiiiit," I thought as the officer called over a supervisor to confirm the results. I didn't need any confirmation, I knew what that meant; the vibrant colour screamed "you're fucked!" They arrested me before going through my brother's luggage, teasing open every lint ball and fold of tissue in search of contraband.

After four hours of search and thorough questioning, they confiscated the bong and let me go, flagging my file for future airport visits. For seven years, I'd be subject to a search every time I entered Canada. I was grateful that was the extent of it.1 Thankfully—although they failed to inform me at the time—my blacklisting was airport specific.

So, jumping back to where we started, nervously waiting in the customs and immigration line at a different airport from where I was detained years earlier, I unexpectedly breezed through the border without issue. I managed to contain my nervousness enough not to arouse suspicion or prompt a background check, and I went on my merry way.

Conformity is Key

I know what you're thinking: "You idiot! Who crosses a border with a used bong?" And honestly, you're right. In hindsight, I would've left it behind. I didn't even get to keep it anyway. But the 20-something me—operating with a not-yet-fully-formed prefrontal cortex—wanted it. And I probably would've gotten away with it, too, had I not stood out as one of a few overloaded passengers returning from Korea. Yes, I earned the arrest. However, the reason I was flagged in the first place wasn't for criminal behaviour, but for nonconformity. It wasn’t the bong that caused the trouble; it was deviating from the norm. I didn’t look like the average traveler, and that made me suspicious. The average airline passenger travels light, thanks to baggage fees and size restrictions, and I didn't. That was enough to get noticed.

Across a couple of decades and multiple borders, I've discovered it's not what you carry, but how you look doing it. A border is designed to process the familiar. Step outside the norm, and you're more likely to get stopped. So, how do you avoid that kind of scrutiny? Stay low-key. Blend in. Don't draw attention by behaving—or appearing—out of the ordinary. And while it pains me to say this—the rebel in me shudders at the thought—when it comes to crossing borders, conformity is key.

Lessons from the Fringe

But conformity isn't always an option. Sometimes your mere presence is what makes you stand out; who you are is so extraordinary that there's no avoiding the unwanted attention your uniqueness attracts. Several years after the bong incident, I was traveling southeast on a shoestring with a couple of lifelong friends, an acquaintance, and a handful of fellow travelers we'd met during our travels. We had spent several weeks exploring some rarely visited corners of Laos, including a motorbike trek of "The Loop," and were moving on to witness the dark past and beautiful present of neighbouring Cambodia. We heard about a newly opened border between the two countries, which, if crossed, would save us some transportation costs and significant travel time. We hired a private van at the Laotian border to shuttle our group from one country to the other. Not many people used the new border, the driver said, especially white foreigners.

We received our exit stamps, piled into the van, and began the short drive to the Cambodian border, navigating a dusty road through a sweltering and smoldering jungle. Fires burned all around—controlled burns, we were told. Although none were old enough to have experienced the tropical warfare of a bygone era, we all felt as if we had fallen into a 1970s time warp; fresh recruits to fill the fallen ranks at the thin red line. The driver stopped unexpectedly and informed us in broken English that he wasn't permitted to drive any further; we'd have to walk the remaining few hundred meters into Cambodia.

With packs on our backs, our feet kicked up red dust as we made our way into our own heart of darkness. The smell of smoke filled the air as clouds of it billowed across the road, obscuring our visibility to a few meters. Tips of palms peeked through the plumes. Unseen insects hissed and whirred in the haze. After several minutes on foot, a tripod of automatic rifles, capped with a jaunty soldier's helmet, appeared through the smoke; then another; then a roofline of a hut shrouded by palm fronds. We had arrived at the border, which was no more than a military outpost on the far fringe of a previously war-torn country.

We approached the hut and saw several shirtless infantry soldiers, caked with dust, playing mahjong around a low table. They caught sight of us and stared in disbelief at the farang. After a few moments, one turned his head toward the hut and called out in Khmer. A man in a tan collared shirt with black lapels appeared in the doorway and continued staring before stepping out to meet us.

It was 3:30 in the afternoon. The officer informed us that the border would close at 5 pm, with the added caveat that he wouldn't have time to process all our passports today unless we paid an ‘additional fee.’ Of course. We expressed our disapproval and insisted he had enough time to stamp us through. "You are welcome to stay the night and wait for morning," he said in rough English, motioning with an open palm, as if ushering us to a nonexistent accommodation. We looked around at the lush yet uninhabitable surroundings. He was indifferent to our decision to cross at an unused border and was insistent on taking advantage of us. We were vulnerable; he knew it, and so did we. Reluctantly, we paid the ‘fee’—the tax of doing things differently. The officer processed us swiftly, allowing us to enter Cambodia to find some real lodgings for the night.

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Borderline Behavior

Borders and the passports we use to cross them are interesting concepts. Many countries, such as Canada, have visa waivers and reciprocity agreements with other nations to facilitate easy access. However, as I've experienced, these aren’t always upheld, especially when crossing in unconventional ways. Nevertheless, the little blue book we clutched in our hands did its job. Perhaps ironically, the privilege of our Canadian passport also targeted us for extortion. But, the nature of holding a Canadian passport—being from a wealthy, developed nation—also ensured we could pay the ‘extra fee’ quite easily, even as budget backpackers.

While instances like these are frustrating, reflecting on them has broadened my perspective. They’ve allowed me to empathize with citizens of nations who are subjected to border hassles simply because the passport they hold originates from a country that the world deems different. Their presence at the border is viewed as unusual, and they are subjected to rigorous scrutiny as a result.

"This person is different. Prepare the gauntlet for the next contender!"

— me, quoting an imaginary border official

You are painted with a wide brush: "You are X, therefore you must do Y to enter our country.” We were easy targets. Vulnerable because we deviated from the norm. Once again, the difference came at a cost. No matter how you slice it, assumptions are made, prejudices projected, and narratives spun, often to the detriment of the passport holder.

Mislabeled in Mexico

Years later, I faced a similar challenge when moving from Canada to Belize. I wrote about it extensively in my piece On the Road in Mexico, so I don't want to rehash it too much here. The story describes my experience driving a shuttle bus loaded with belongings. I had flown to Belize with my wife and kids to get them settled, returned to Canada to tie up loose ends, and then drove the bus with my dogs and belongings south for the permanent move. I researched the trip extensively, and there is, and still is, a lot of information online about road trips in and through Mexico. It seemed commonplace and straightforward, until it wasn't.

What was supposed to be a smooth move turned into an epic transcontinental odyssey involving Mennonites, Spanish-speaking customs brokers, days of delays, bureaucratic hurdles, misclassification, and the revelation that cartels openly regulate the Mexican border (not to mention extortion by corrupt Mexican cops and a handful of close-call car accidents). I found myself in a world I never knew existed: one in which Mad Max would have felt right at home. All my research on a fairly regular road trip route failed to uncover the word' Transmigrante'. Even after conducting some ex post facto research and knowing what to Google, little information came up. But then again, it turned out that I wasn't the typical North American migrant transiting through Mexico.

While I held a Canadian passport, it failed to shield me from border officials labeling something I wasn't, which completely changed my travel plans, adding days, extra costs, and stress. Convention should have revealed that I was not what they claimed I was. However, I was doing something that the average Canadian never does, and it had unforeseen consequences. I'd be willing to bet that I was, and still am, the only Canadian Transmigrante.

When plastered with a label at a border, no matter how inaccurate it may be, you are left with only two choices.

1. Turn around and reevaluate your plan, or,

2. Accept the label, push forward, and play the game as an unwitting participant.

You must quickly learn the rules of a game you never knew you'd have to play. I chose the latter of the two as the former just wasn't an option.2

If you ever find yourself in a tricky situation, like I was, you’ll need determination and bold action to succeed. You’ll need patience and equanimity to move through the immigration gauntlet with improvised bureaucratic acrobatics. Your passport may help, defining the level of effort needed for success or indicating where along the line of obstacles you must start; some will begin closer to the finish line, while others will start discouragingly far from it. When deemed "other" at a border, stay open to the flow of events, follow your intuition, and recognize help when it comes, especially from unexpected places—it will go a long way in ensuring your atypical attempt to cross a border is successful.

Doing Things Differently

By no means am I a globetrotter, but I've traveled enough to learn that sometimes, it's not the passport that's scrutinized, it's the way you carry it. At borders, being different is a real red flag, justifiably or not. While my passport has often protected me, I've had just enough resistance to understand what it feels like to be filtered through suspicion; to be seen as "other" or mislabeled. Those moments were challenging, but they fostered a new perspective.

Despite some poignant moments, most of my travel experiences have been stress-free, thanks to my Canadian passport. However, I now understand that for many, this isn't the case. They must apply for numerous visas, deal with intense questioning, or worse, on a regular basis, and jump through increasingly smaller hoops just to enjoy the opportunities that are easily granted to others.

Yet, the privilege of owning a passport and thereby traveling, experiencing other cultures, and gaining life experiences abroad, even when challenging or frustrating, outweighs any downsides to doing things out of the ordinary. Ultimately, my passport allows me to travel authentically, which is a privilege I cherish deeply.

I still travel differently—two energetic boys ensure that! And while that difference has cost me, it’s also given me perspective.

Throughout my travels, I've gotten to glimpse the reverse side of the coin—and feel the other edge of the sword. I wouldn't trade those moments for anything. They've taught me that while my passport often opens doors, it's how I move through them that decides whether I'm welcomed… or watched.

If you enjoy my writing, you might also like Belize Foreigner Blog, the Lili Art Blog, or my award-receiving book Home in Good Hands. If you'd like to support this Substack and help me keep creating stories and essays about life abroad, consider subscribing, sharing, or making a small donation. And to those who already have—thank you. Your support means the world.

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I never imagined a street fight was in our schedule when we started the day—or any day during our time in Thailand and Southeast Asia. However, it wasn't the first time I encountered foreign fists: several years earlier, while visiting a nightclub in Hanoi, Vietnam, I received a direct and unexpected punch to the jaw immediately upon opening a door on my way to the water closet. Thankfully, my brother, a seasoned traveler, was there to intervene and restrain me, catching me with the fellow by the collar and a fully cocked fist. He grabbed me by the shoulder, pulling me away from the short, drunken Vietnamese man and back through the doorway where the drunkard had launched his surprise attack. We immediately left the bar, but not before my brother described to me the location of the off-duty Vietnamese police—waiting at the end of the hall to arrest me for assaulting the poor lush in a clever but not-so-subtle extortion ploy.

But my brother wasn't here this time, and I didn't sense anything was cooking up. Even with my additional years of experience, I noticed no signs of fleecing or shadiness. This situation was completely different—we were dealing with a madman.

Abroad But Tethered

We arrived in the area days earlier in search of the fabled full moon party, and perhaps ourselves, on the other side of the world. As the inheritors of a planet with an uncertain future, we subtly understood that the world our boomer parents were reluctantly handing over was not as they promised. Having finished university the previous May and saving every penny to travel South East Asia ‘on a shoestring’—just as my trusty Lonely Planet guide outlined—we wanted to add meaningful experiences to our lives before stepping headlong into the modern working society which would surely draw us into oblivion. It was an attempt to defer adulthood through travel abroad, delaying the inevitable magnetic pull of ‘real life,’ with all its anchors, responsibilities, and seriousness. It wasn’t a gap year—although, looking back, I wish I had gone for much longer—but a gap nonetheless, a purposeful void in the progression of our future structured and planned lives.

We all had our things to do after our sojourn abroad, and our immediate travel engagement failed to deter the presence of future plans from lingering in the background and dictating the duration of travel. Jamie, one half of a pair of close friends and a small subsection of a larger group of pals, acquaintances, and recently met travelers with whom I had spent the better part of eight weeks traveling South East Asia, had a pending film school interview tugging at him to return. Jeff, the second of the pair, had plans to enroll in an HR course at a local college. I had less established prospects—work odd jobs for whoever would pay me before starting full-time in a Red Seal carpentry program the coming fall; it was late February of 2007.

Beach Bound and Busted

We landed at Koh Phangan pier, where desperate guesthouse wranglers waited to mob arriving backpackers and goad them into tuk-tuks to take them to an affiliated accommodation, but not before conveniently stopping at their cousin's store in hopes they'll buy something. There were many choices in places to stay, and what appeared to be a simple decision had an unfortunate outcome for one of our group members: a Brazillian backpacker, barely 19 years old, whom Jamie and Jeff met while visiting Vietnam, and had agreed could join them in neighbouring Thailand. (Such was the backpacker's way: you met like-minded individuals on your travels, and if everyone got along, you would spend time together until something changed, for better or worse.) This kid, trying to be like Leonardo Decaprio after watching The Beach one too many times, thought Thailand was the same place it was in the ‘90s. I suppose he had it coming, as he routinely ignored our advice that Thailand was not the place to smoke weed in public nonchalantly. The government had cracked down on it in recent years, and you could easily find yourself as an unlucky guest at the Bangkok Hilton for possession.

So, when the guesthouse wrangler tried to convince us to stay at his place because “we could smoke weed on the beach,” he failed to entice me. I didn't care for it. I knew Thailand wasn't the destination for such things. There was a time and a place, and Thailand wasn’t it. Plus, I had just spent most of the previous month smoking more weed than I care to admit but free from the possibility of being locked up for it.

Johnny Law-less

Back then, when you wanted to dance openly with Mary-Jane, you went to Cambodia. While Jamie and Jeff had toured Nam, Al and I extended our stay in Cam, spending over a week of debauchery in Sihanoukville, now known as Preah Sihanouk. At that time, it was a sleepy beach town with a handful of guesthouses and a boutique hotel on the Gulf of Thailand. There was also a small town with shops, bars, and restaurants. You could say it was quaint, in a drink-and-smoke-your-face-off-for-days-on-end-with-a-handful-of-multinational-backpackers kind of way. It was also pretty lawless. The town swarmed with working women and watchful pimps come sundown. There was a restaurant where live poisonous snakes were terrariumed inside glass-topped tables so you could watch them writhe at crotch level while you ate. You could do anything your little misdemeanor heart desired. Purchase Percocet from the local pharmacy without a prescription? Check. Roll and smoke joints on the beach, at your guesthouse, and in the bars? Check. Buy weed from the cop? Check.

During our week in Sihanoukville, we purchased marijuana from a local fella we met on the beach the first day there. A few days passed, and we were out again, so we scheduled a meeting with our guy to replenish the stash. He asked us to meet him at a store up the road from our beachfront guesthouse. We arrived and started the predetermined transaction. As the dealer handed us the bag of greens, Al noticed a police moto parked out front of the store in a line of motorbikes. We stopped in our tracks, midreach for the goods, stomachs sinking. An immense “oh shit” moment descended upon me, with the thought “I wonder what Cambodian prison is like?” bouncing between my ears. We frantically looked around, glimpsing the eyes of our guy, who didn't seem the least bit phased. Al, the brave soul he was and who fit right in this place, asked a group of men sitting in chairs up against the store's wall whose bike it was. A middle-aged man wearing a tan short-sleeved button-up shirt, with green lapels and black paints, reclining on two legs of his chair, put up his hand as if taking attendance. “Are you okay with this?” Al asked, trying to stay calm. The man flashed an expression of indifference, shrugged his shoulders, and returned to his conversation with the other wallside men.

We breathed a quiet sigh of relief. The dealer passed off the contraband (although it clearly wasn't deemed such). We paid up to fulfill our side of the deal but only had a high denomination bill. Our guy didn't have change for it, so he passed the money to the first man in the row along the wall. We watched as the note made its way from hand to hand into that of the police officer, who pulled out a massive wad of cash and cut us change. He placed our bill into the fold before returning the softball-sized knot to his pocket. No one flinched except Al and I, who could barely keep our eyeballs in their sockets. We played it cool, though; we thanked our guy, the cop, and their fellow onlookers and headed back to the beach to enjoy our score, minds blown and laughing the whole way. (This may not seem like a big deal, but this was long before the age of legalized marijuana and retail weed in North America; you could get in a lot of trouble for possession of even minor amounts—and friends of mine experienced this part of the Canadian legal system during high school—not to mention as a traveler in a foreign land.)

Serious Siam

Worn out from the day of travel and confronted by the paradox of choice, we decided to stay at the wrangler’s place, as it seemed as good a place as any to rest for the night. We misjudged. Later that evening, the police arrested our unsuspecting Brazilian friend on the guesthouse’s beach for smoking a joint. The cops just happened to be patrolling the beach in the dark as our Brazillian friend took advantage of the wrangler's proposed smoking amenity. What a coincidence! They took his passport, threw him into jail, and told him he needed to pay 10,000 USD to see the light of day. The jail was where some of my fellow scooter riders were headed on the day of the melee: to visit the poor kid in jail, give him his backpack, and help him contact his family back in Brazil to bail him out. Ten grand was a lot of money for the shoestring travelers. I roamed for over two months on 3,500 Canadian Dollars, which included my flight. Ten grand was not the kind of money he or we had.

Despite his not heeding our advice, we were pissed. The guesthouse’s extortion setup was abhorrent. It's one thing to get ripped off by a tuk-tuk driver or tricked into paying an inflated price for some tourist tchotchke hawked from a street market, but this type of scam fucked with people's lives. We vehemently expressed our disapproval to the guesthouse owner, who claimed they had nothing to do with it. Before leaving the following morning, we let others know about the dangers of staying there.

Procuring Transport

We moved down the beach to find another guesthouse that suited our needs and settled in. We wanted to get around quickly, and having spent considerable time traveling in Laos on 60cc bikes, we were comfortable doing so again. We found someone willing to rent some near our new accommodation and eagerly jumped on them to explore the island. Dave, who had just arrived from England to join us in Thailand, had no prior experience on one and immediately over-revved the throttle, skidding the bike with him on it across the street and into the adjacent ditch.

We couldn’t help but laugh; we’d all done the same at some point while in Southeast Asia. All of us bailed at least once while driving the Loop in Lao. I went down hard with my bike when a water truck, dampening the road to keep the dust down, turned the 6” of red silt on the road into 3” of mud. The road had a slight bend to the left, and as I tried to make the turn, I fishtailed and lost control, falling into the sludge with my bike, backpack, and confidence. It was a tricky situation: you needed speed to balance the bike, but too much in the slick mud or dust (depending on how recently the water truck had been by), and you lost control. By the end of that motorbike trip in Lao, we all had the brand of the adventurous: a nasty little burn on our lower-right calf from the hot exhaust pipe.

Dave was okay, though, just mildly shaken up and thoroughly embarrassed. Surprisingly, the guy who rented the scooters to us didn't take them back but instead helped him retrieve them from the ditch, brushed the dirt from his shirt, and gave him a quick tutorial via charades. I don't recall what we did the rest of the day, but I remember navigating obstructions in the road by the thatched roof bar on the way back to our guesthouse. We stopped and parked our bikes to remove a large tree branch and rocks from the road. We thought it was weird but didn't dwell on it too long as it posed no safety concern—the road was pretty open, and you could see the debris from a considerable distance.

Mauy Thai with a Madman

The following morning, we were on the bikes again, rounding the corner towards the thatched roof bar, when we noticed more rubbish on the road. We zigzagged through the maze of debris, dodging the road rubble and barely throttling down. We stopped at the T-shaped intersection across from the bar, planning to turn left onto the busy road.

Jamie was slightly in front of me to my left as we waited to merge into the traffic flow. We both heard a loud ping emanate from my bike. “Did it stall?” Jamie asked, looking over his right shoulder at me. The bikes we rented in SEA weren't troubleless machines and would frequently stall out, making unusual metallic rattling noises. “No,” I replied, revving the engine while in neutral. As the engine RPMs ramped up, I almost didn't hear the man who suddenly appeared beside me yell, “TOO FAST!” He paired the scream with a haymaker to the side of my face. I was blind-sided and taken off guard by the sucker punch.

“What the hell was happening?” I thought as the punch sent my sunglasses flying from my face onto the road. My body lurched to the right, following the momentum of my head. (I want to point out that I have a martial arts background, and back then, I trained in various disciplines and was in great physical shape, which contributed to me not getting knocked out cold.) Despite being vulnerable and off balance, I managed to stay on my feet, with the moto still underneath me. Apparently, everyone knows Muy Thai in Thailand, and the assailant, seeing that I was still standing, launched a fresh attack, throwing a waist-high roundhouse kick. I caught his leg through a stroke of luck (and a bit of martial skill). He forcefully pulled it back, but I managed to keep hold of his ankle as his calf slipped from my grip. I found myself in an awkward position: scooter between my legs, leaning hard to the right with my right hand on the handlebars and the ankle of a crazed aggressor in my left—no position for a counterattack.

In this hectic moment, I saw a sharp-tip, bone-handled slingshot in his right hand. However, I didn't have the time to process what that meant. It's incredible how fast and slow life can move simultaneously.

Luckily, being on one leg put him off balance enough that it kept his wild, swinging fist and pointed weapon out of range and provided me enough time to move with the rightward momentum. With a slight push of his ankle up and into him, I one-leg-hopped to my right—my left leg was suspended off the ground, propped up by the moped’s seat—dropping the scooter between him and me to create space and add an obstacle, just in case he continued with his attack.

He stumbled backward, dropping the slingshot. Seeing the bike on the ground and the additional few feet I put between us, he turned his sights onto Jamie, who, in the chaos of the moment, propped his scooter onto its kickstand and dismounted. The tall, wiry attacker was pissed and screamed in Thai what I only imagine was vitriol. He pointed a trembling hand at me before quickly closing the distance on Jamie, who got his hands up in a boxing-style ready position before receiving the man's wild hands. There was a flurry of fists; the dude was like a windmill in a hurricane and had a significant reach advantage. Jamie made a valiant and skillful effort to defend himself, but a wild punch snuck through and tagged him on the chin. His head lashed backward, but he stayed on his feet.

At this point, both Al and I had come to Jamie's aid. Al is a big guy, and his presence, combined with the fact that we survived the surprise attack relatively unscathed, made the attacker realize we outnumbered him considerably and slowed his advance. There was a brief pause in his action, but he was frantic, duking up and shuffling his feet, confused about his next target.

We kept our distance and, with arms and hands extended, tried to talk him down. He ceased his attack on us but didn't go away. Some local women, hearing the commotion streetside, emerged from a modest structure next to the obstructions in the road. Anger on their faces, they waived arms with displeasure, gesturing him to leave. I didn't understand what they said, but I sensed they knew him and didn't like him. There was a strong impression that this wasn't the first incident of its kind, and the women had had enough.

The man paced widely, yelling at the woman in a shrill voice. Bending down, he grabbed a large stone from the roadside and launched it at the two women. Thankfully, it fell short of them, but it had the right trajectory and was enough to deter the women from their attempts to help. The fear of being bludgeoned by stones forced them to seek refuge in the doorway of their home. He picked up another, holding it above his head, ready to hurl it at the women. We deplorred his actions, motioning for him to put down the large rock through futile pantomime. He threw the stone our way instead, but the sheer weight ensured he didn’t get it too far. It shattered onto the asphalt, sending pieces skidding into the road at our feet.

The madman retreated to his motorbike, which he had left on its kickstand in the middle of the road, as impulsively as he launched his attack. He mounted it. Before peeling away, he screamed at us in Thai, followed by an enthusiastic middle finger.

Dazed and Confused in “The Land of Smiles”

Those who witnessed the encounter looked blankly at one another, unsure of what had happened or what to do next. We thanked the women as they reemerged from hiding. They nodded to us and urged us to be on our way with a low, open hand motioning to the intersection. Jeff collected my sunglasses from the ground as I picked up my bike from its side. Righting it, I pushed it across the street—it had stalled out for real after I purposely toppled it. Our group communed out front of the tiki bar directly across from the intersection, taking stock of everyone and my bike. Everyone was ok, and luckily, there wasn't any noticeable damage to my scooter—like I said, the rental bikes weren't exactly in tip-top shape.

Still feeling the adrenaline buzz, we ordered a round of beer to cool our nerves. But the middle-aged Caucasian bartender advised against it, suggesting, in his Australian drawl, that we should put a move on. “That bloke ain’t right,” he said. “He's the one putting things in the road. He's obsessed with the traffic on the street.” He continued, “He’s probably gone home to grab a gun to finish you off.” The bar owner had watched the brawl with his patrons and appeared familiar with the fellow we had just altercated with. Heeding his advice, we decided to forego the much-needed suds.

I looked urgently at Jamie, but my wide-eyed glare didn’t reach him—he took no convincing and was already heading back to his bike before he could notice my expression. Before kick-starting the engine, he rubbed his jaw to soothe the sting from the haymaker he took moments earlier. I felt myself luckier than he—a bit of a shiner was forming, but my sunglasses absorbed the brunt of the sucker punch.

As his bike revved up, I urgently moved to mine, and Jeff, Dave, and Al got on theirs. Kick-starting like pros, we sped off pell-mell onto the windy, palm tree-dotted coastal road, kicking up dust from the shoulder in our wake. Dave and Jeff parted, tasked with dropping off the jailed Brazilian's belongings.

The expanse of the Pacific Ocean to my left struck me with its beauty and vastness. Mid-morning light shimmered off the rippling waves, its omnipresence a reminder of our world's unknown nature. Each reflection on the crests branded images of the novel spirit of travel and a life abroad onto my mind. How many unknown creatures live just beyond the waves? How many different forms of life? Endless diversity, untold ways of existing; unfathomable lived realities; the possibilities for discovery and reflection were (and still are) endless.

Before I continue, I don’t want to lose sight of a thread I pulled at earlier: the “ping” I heard on the bike. I mentioned a slingshot but didn't elaborate. It turned out that the nut job shot at me while I stopped at the intersection to turn left. Why he aimed at me, I’ll never know. Regardless, I am thankful he missed me and hit the bike. I also don't know what he slung at me, but it came in hard enough for Jamie and I to hear it over the traffic and motor noise and to feel it reverberate through the bike. The thought of what damage it could have done to my head, face, neck, or even a fleshy calf or thigh makes me shutter. It would have been a very different trip if that had happened.

Thrashed and Road Rashed

I drove full throttle down the road, reflecting on the unfolding events. There was no way to have anticipated them; a change in our morning timing may have avoided the interaction, but that’s not certain. Lost in thought, I failed to notice that the others were no longer behind me. Glancing backward with a quick turn of my head after some time, I realized I was alone. I slowed down and timed a break in traffic to U-turn to go back to search for the others. Where are they? I wondered. Has something happened to them? Did the madman catch up to them and dispense more violence as the Aussie bartender had suggested? I cranked the throttle and rewound my way along the road. Rounding the first corner of an S-shaped curve, I saw the others. They had pulled over to the side of the road: three bikes propped up on their kickstands, and a fourth tipped on its side, sputtering smoke from the tailpipe, five feet from a large rock face. As I approached, I saw Al grimacing on the ground. Seeking respite on the remnants of a former majestic cliff face terraformed to make way for the road, He rested his back on a small sloped piece of rock at the foot of the machine-carved stone. Al, in his hast, had drifted onto the soft shoulder of the s-turn, lost control, and bailed. According to the others, Al slid across the gravel road before stopping at the base of the rock face. And there he lay, road-rashed arms, legs, and waist, dazed from a bump on his unhelmeted head. He was lucky to be in that state; it could have been much worse.

We helped Al to his feet and then onto his moto. Slowing our roll considerably, we found our way into town to get Al some medical care. Al and Jamie went into a pharmacy to get some first aid supplies. I procured a table at a patio bar, ordered a couple of rounds of highly anticipated beer, and waited for the others. We spent the remainder of the day patching up Al and drinking our nerves away before heading back to our guesthouse on the beach.

He Found Us!

Jeff stopped me the next morning while going from my room to the communal area where the guesthouse owner served food. He was visibly rattled. “Dude, is that him?” he said to me as he pointed a shaky finger down to the open atrium—the guest rooms were on a second floor that surrounded the atrium and accessed by a narrow balcony walkway lined with a railing. I followed the imaginary line from his pointing hand and landed on a man below. A sense of fear struck me. Momentarily rendered motionless, I felt like a rat in a glue trap. I held my breath while I looked him over: shoulder-length dark brown hair, a plethora of upper body tattoos, aviator sunglasses, cutoff jean shorts, a tank top, and a silver Buddhist idol dangling from a chain around his neck—the spitting image of the marauder we fought with the day before. As I looked down at the man from my perch, the thought, “He found us!” echoed in my head, followed by, “And he's here to finish us off. The Aussie bartender's warning has come true!”

A Ragtag Band Ready for an Ambush

We quietly rushed back to our rooms and gathered the others to warn them of the potential danger awaiting us. Al and Jamie crept along the balcony to catch a glimpse for themselves. They agreed: it had to be him. We were unaware of anyone else staying at the guest house except for a quiet Chinese couple on vacation. Had he tracked us down? I looked over the balcony again: the man sat motionless, not engaging with anything. No music, no book, nothing to occupy him (now, this was before everyone had cellphones, tablets, or laptop computers, mind you). He just sat staring out to sea as if waiting for someone or something to happen. Was it us? Was he waiting for us?

We corralled back in one of the two rooms our group occupied. We began to devise a plan. The madman didn't know that we knew he was there, which gave us a tactical advantage. He may have been planning to get the jump on us, but we could now counterambush. We decided that we would confront him head-on, closing in quickly before he would have time to pull a weapon, which, after the slingshot and the down-under bartender’s warning, he indeed had. We prepared ourselves to engage in a potentially violent altercation. We needed protection and began stuffing our daypacks with towels and clothes and dawning them on our chests as body armor. We grabbed all potential weapons we could find. I had been toting around a long-bladed machete in a bamboo sheath I purchased in a Laotian market and naturally armed myself with it. The others pulled out their pocket knives—we all concealed carried one while traveling. Al grabbed the lid of a garbage can to use as a shield. Dave, who had only come to hang out on the beach and was wholly unprepared to do battle, grabbed a broom and began thrusting into the air in practice. No doubt we looked like a ragtag band of ronin from an old Japanese samurai film, dawning a smattering of impromptu weapons and armor. Desperate in the face of an impending battle, we began to get into a formation. Al and I were in the front, as I had the longest-range weapon, and he had “the shield.” We decided the others would stay close behind us like a miniature Roman Phalanx prepared to steamroll our enemy if we had to. We would descend the stairs as quickly and quietly as possible, then rush to surround the man in the chair who had so savagely attacked us the day before.

As we psyched ourselves up in our room for the impending action, I peeked out the door to see if our target was still waiting. The man hadn’t moved. As I looked at him, wondering how the next moments would unfold, a wave of doubt washed over me. What if we were wrong? What if he wasn’t the man from yesterday? As the thoughts circled my mind, the female owner of the guest house walked by on her housekeeping rounds, and it dawned on me that we should ask her if the man in the chair was a guest there—this way, we could confirm our suspicion: if he had just arrived or wasn’t staying here, we could be more confident that he was who we thought he was. I returned my blade to the sheath and removed the makeshift body armor backpack. I told the others I wanted to confirm his identity before we acted. The others, jittery from the ramp-up of adrenaline, agreed. When the woman returned on her rounds, Jeff and I exited the room and quietly hailed her. With broken English and descriptive hands, we asked if the man in the chair below had been here long.

“No,” she said but added that he had arrived two days before and was staying in one of the cabins that flanked the main building where our rooms were. We reiterated that it was indeed the day before last he had arrived, and she confirmed. Although we hadn’t seen him, he had been there before the altercation the day prior, which meant he wasn’t our attacker; our attacker was a local man and most likely wouldn’t stay at a guesthouse. Breathing a sigh of relief, we returned to the room to tell the others. We all laughed hard from the belly at how ridiculous we looked in our hodge-podge combat gear. We joked about how the man would have reacted after we swarmed him while he sat quietly, taking in the peaceful morning view. The humor calmed our mood and helped to flush the epinephrine from our systems. We descended the stairs, not with fear or aggression, but with levity and peace. We glanced at the man in the chair, who, upon closer look, only resembled the man from the day before in attire. We nodded at him, chucking to ourselves, knowing he had no idea what we had planned for him.

Looking Back

That guesthouse on the beach in Koh Phangan was the final place where my friends and I were together while traveling in Southeast Asia. Shortly after the events described in this story, Jamie and I headed home—beginning a long chain of events that has led me to Belize, where I now type these words—Dave returned to England, and Jeff and Al parted ways, opting for solo travel in other countries in the region.

When I reflect on this story and others I have written about in A Foreign Perspective, I like to parse out some meaning from them. Every life experience can teach us something if we are open to receiving and willing to incorporate the lesson. When I think back, this event was a valuable lesson in taking informed action (or inaction in this case, a type of action nonetheless), which is particularly essential for young men—like we were in this story—who are biologically prone to follow impulses and whims. Even as (supposedly mature) adults, we must detach ourselves from the moment when experiencing stressful situations. By taking some time to breathe deeply and clear our minds to think differently, we can ensure the facts are straight and our understanding of the current moment is as we perceive it to be or, more importantly, is not. By doing so, we make better decisions and prevent ourselves from jumping into any sort of effort or conclusion that could negatively affect our lives.

Taking the opportunity to clarify the situation by briefly removing the filter of self-defense and the intensity of adrenaline ensured that we didn't end up ignorant assholes—after all, we were essentially acting on the bias that all Thai men in beach communities looked alike. It also ensured that we didn’t resort to intimidation, aggression, and violence, and potentially inflicting injury on an innocent man enjoying a staycation.

Stories like this, which ultimately end with everyone in good health and sound mind, make traveling and life abroad exciting. Now I realize that not all stories end well, and perhaps I would have a different opinion if someone got seriously injured. I am not ignorant of the fact that travel and living somewhere foreign to you has its dangers (my heart goes out to the families of the victims of methanol poisoning in Vang Vieng, Laos, in November 2024—I visited there on the same trip to SEA that this story took place).

Despite the fear and stress of events described above, they build character, independence, and confidence—all great things for life. Forced into challenging situations, my travel companions and I had to rely on our intuition and each other to remain calm and pull through. No formal schooling can ever educate you on what to do in that kind of situation—except for, maybe, martial arts, law enforcement, or military training—it's a trial by fire. As scary as some travel experiences are, they are highly valuable because they provide helpful, real-world knowledge. Even though we were scared shitless at times and Jamie, Al and I sustained minor injuries, I wouldn't change a thing.

Looking Forward

I am now a father of two young boys. While I don't anticipate they will be traveling on their own any time soon, retelling my travel stories from my younger years allows me to consider a new perspective: what will it be like when my kids head off to travel alone? Any sane parent would undoubtedly want to protect their child from some of the travel experiences I’ve had, just for the sheer unknown nature they arise from. My boys are toddlers, and keeping them safe is my priority. I don’t expect this to change, even when they are in their 40s, as I am now. However, I can’t help but feel that, when the time comes, I will be doing them a disservice by attempting to shield them from the unknown. After all, that is a key characteristic that makes travel and living abroad exciting.

As I write these travel tales, I discover that many of my most memorable stories feature the unknown as a prominent theme. It's peculiar how, with time, fear-ridden and adrenaline-filled moments morph into fond memories and enticing stories that provide an inner rush that sparks a desire to experience something like them again. If I deny my boys the opportunity to have similar adventures, will I hinder their life experience? While I would never want anything bad to ever happen to them, at home or abroad, I anticipate I will need to suspend my inherent desire to keep them safe so that they will have the chance to learn and grow as autonomous and sovereign individuals.

The beauty and allure of traveling and experiencing foreign places lies in its unknown nature. It's a void we cannot see through; you can only step into it to discover what it has in store. The act of entering this void sparks simultaneous fear and excitement. Being adventurous takes bravery. When it comes to our kids, the ones we love and care for, we must encourage an intrepid spirit and nurture courage. We, too, must release our fear of the unknown and trust in them, just as we trust in ourselves when we inevitably face the void.

—

Safe and Happy Travels Y’all!

If you enjoy my writing, you might also like Belize Foreigner Blog, the Lili Art Blog, or my award-receiving book Home in Good Hands. If you'd like to support this Substack and help me keep creating stories and essays about life abroad, consider subscribing, sharing, or making a small donation. And to those who already have—thank you. Your support means the world.

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Are there any remote places anymore? Places where few travel to but are actually amazing? A hidden gem. Perhaps marred by past social unrest or war but filled with generous, kind people,  remarkable beauty and novel experiences. A place where you can stretch money like elastic bands; where on dollars a day you get accommodation, three square meals and more beer than you care to drink; where you can travel for months and live like a king—well, as kingly as you can while backpacking through one of the poorest countries in the world.*

In my early twenties, I traveled to Laos, as part of a larger trip to South East Asia, and experienced the joy of immersing myself in a culture that rarely saw foreigners. On the road, we were a quite a sight. Locals stopped for pictures with "the falang." We didn’t see others like us for days at a time, and it was nice. Do people still have these experiences?

This was before the ultra-connectivity of our modern society**; before everyone and their dog had TikTok or a travel vlog; before you could see the far reaches of our world from a handheld screen while sitting on the toilet. Knowing a place (apart from physically being there) involved books and word of mouth. I first heard of Laos as a backpacker destination from my brother who taught English in South Korea. But, the country drew me in after reading a brief article in a small travel magazine my mother stuffed in my stocking the Christmas before my trip to SEA (yes, I still received a stuffed stocking in my early twenties, ha ha). The article was about an obscure motorbike trek called “The Loop”—which evidently is not so unknown anymore. 

With social media and influencer culture so prominent now, ‌most travel related content errs to the side of opulence and luxury. Glam shots on private islands and tours of pricey accommodations in well known and expensive destinations fill our social feeds. Have we lost the novelty of feeling we’ve discovered a place? What happened to the excitement of being in a unique location? Why do most people choose to bypass the remote and difficult-to-reach yet distinctive place?  

Do people still know the thrill of miming their way onto public buses, uncertain that you will actually make it to your destination, or the time it will take to get there? And do these buses still travel with goats on the roof, with hooves clumping at every turn? Do they still drive with chickens in baskets, which slide back and forth under the seats as the driver traverses switch backed mountain roads? Do travelers still experience the exhilaration of life as a local in a foreign place? Are there people who love the punch of unfamiliar smells in a street market? And the pure culture shock of seeing a ramshackle bamboo hut that houses a family of eight and a seventy-two inch plasma TV (which you can clearly see through the gaps in the siding)? Do people still seek places that elicit trepidation, only to realize their consternation comes from their ignorance and fear of the unknown?

Despite my going on about discovery, I realize that no one actually discovers anything. People have inhabited most places on this earth for centuries, if not millennia. The idea of "discovering" is a vestige of colonialist thought. However you choose to describe it, there is an undeniable excitement when you venture into a less trodden place; exploring where few others have set foot; wandering as an outsider in a lesser known corner of our planet. 

Saying the name of a place that very few know (beyond those who live there) holds a special place in my heart. Yet, there is an irony to this: the novelty of a place is short-lived. The unknown becomes the known; the places along The Loop are quite‌ popular now.  

This type of travel was formative for me, as a young man trying to grasp the coattails of adulthood. After my four years of postsecondary education, I was ready (so I was told) to enter the workforce, but it didn’t feel right. I didn’t feel ready. I didn’t want to be ready. So I opted to save my pennies and travel. Reminiscing on my travels nearly twenty years later brings forth a regretful nostalgia: I should have traveled more.

In the preceding decades, the demands of adulthood grew, and I look back at those escapades in foreign lands with jealous envy. I took my freedom for granted. I overlooked the carefree nature of an open itinerary and the value of a peripatetic life in the far-flung. I failed to recognize the potential of extended travel and the self-discovery that accompanies novel immersive cultural experiences. 

I moved abroad in recent years—now living in Central America—to reconnect to my deep-seated wanderlust. But it's different now: the responsibilities of parenthood silo travel into structured and costly endeavors. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the ability to live abroad and travel (and to have a loving family). It's a privilege that many cannot realize, for many reasons. Yet, I crave the freedom only that type of travel provides. 

So, are there still places where young adventurers can venture into the unknown? Where the intrepid traveler can cut their teeth? Somewhere to explore and slow the inevitable entry (or avoid it all together) into the modern, inside-the-box living? Have we explored all corners of our world? Does the novel place cease to exist?

*I am referring to Laos, one of three countries I travelled on $3500 Canadian dollars, which included my flights! Can you still do this today?

**We had cell phones, but didn’t bring them with us because there weren’t plans for overseas travel yet.

If you enjoy my writing, you might also like Belize Foreigner Blog, the Lili Art Blog, or my award-receiving book Home in Good Hands. If you'd like to support this Substack and help me keep creating stories and essays about life abroad, consider subscribing, sharing, or making a small donation. And to those who already have—thank you. Your support means the world.

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I recently wrote a post about the intricacies of shipping items during a move abroad. While outlining how people send their items, I found myself reminiscing about my road trip to Belize –nearly three years ago– from Canada with a load full of belongings to import. It was an eye-opening yet profound experience I’ve meant to write about for some time. 

The trip was simultaneously stressful and exciting, highlighted by an unexpected delay at the Texas-Mexico border that completely blindsided my travel buddy and me. There was also a lingering pressure to get to Belize, where my youngest son, eleven weeks old at the time, was seriously ill with a bacterial infection and in a Belizean hospital under rudimentary care, and my wife Lili’s steadfast and watchful eye. With no way to get to them without clearing this massive, unforeseen customs hurdle, I was stranded with my worries and thoughts among two dogs, a shuttle bus chock-a-block full of personal effects, and a travel partner with a finite amount of time to accompany me on this journey. 

If you are wondering why I was driving a bus, I encourage the reader to click the link above for the answer.

Sitting at my computer typing and reminiscing, I reflected on why I hadn’t written this story yet. After all, it's an interesting one containing Mexican cartels, a serendipitous turn of events, suspenseful and thought-provoking moments, and grit —common themes I attempt to portray in my other Substack articles.

Over the last few years, I have made several attempts to get this story down “onto paper,” but to no avail. I kept finding myself lost in a sea of seemingly important details that, once written out, were boring. The chain of events was so intricate that I felt the need to shine a light on them all, only to discover the story was convoluted, long-winded, and unengaging. 

However, I’ve had enough time away from the event to take a more objective look at the most essential aspects. I have also grown as a writer and now have the ability and confidence to portray all the details in an alluring way.

A Give and Take

Ultimately, I want to reader to take something away from this story amongst entertainment. For those looking for an exciting read, the following contains love, perseverance, determination, resilience, emotional strength, cultural awareness, and, depending on your spiritual bent, destiny, or fate.

From a practical standpoint, I hope that the reader who wants to make the same journey as the one I'm about to describe will get some critical information on what to expect, which will help them avoid costly delays. 

One more thing before we get into it: I have refrained from using real names throughout this piece. This story contains sensitive subject matter that the people involved may not want to be associated with in such a public setting. Also, I only briefly met some people in this story, speaking to them over the phone and via text. As a result, I didn’t obtain their information and no longer have a way to ask permission to use their names. In light of this, I've opted to use pseudonyms. 

Entering the Land of the Free

The trip down south from the Greater Toronto Area was smooth sailing and uneventful, except for one exception: our crossing at the Windsor-Detroit border. Little did I know that this event was a harbinger for the trip: easy driving, troublesome border crossings, and a sprinkling of poignant moments.

I had entered into the US by land, without issue, before, but being so loaded down, the border officials took a different approach with us. Thinking we would just cruise through, I was surprised when I was asked to pull the bus over and proceed into a small squat building to the right side of the road. I was already a little unnerved as the unflinching officer in wrap-around sports sunglasses told me to pull the fully loaded bus into the parking area. Once parked, he further instructed me to “act like a man” and “leave my purse,” motioning with his nose to the dossier I grabbed containing all my relevant and important documents for the trip and the move abroad. 

I had a sinking feeling: they soften you up with intimidation and emasculation before you enter the nearly standing-room-only building, but for what reason? Upon entering, they strategically divided us up. They sent B, my long-time friend and travel buddy, to an adjacent room, out of sight of each other. Devices were forbidden, so you are left only with your thoughts, the sights and smells of the room, and the nervous energy of everyone around you. As I stood there attempting to gain my bearings, I saw this split-up tactic repeated on families with tweens, elderly couples, and husbands and wives. You were only reunited upon questioning.

Enter Interrogation to Exit

In this hot and stuffy room, a panel of officers behind slightly elevated kiosks —which forces you to look up at them— interrogates everyone in attendance in a seemingly random and disorganized manner. Their sporadic line of questioning is bizarre and irrelevant but also stress-inducing. They call you up, and your selected officer, seated next to the passport you handed over to the ultra-masculine, sunglassed man, asks you a few random questions through a glass panel. “Where did you go to elementary school?” and “What did you study in college?” they ask, slightly muffled by the pane so that you must awkwardly lean an ear forward to hear. After you respond, the high-seated officers send you back to your seat, provided you are lucky enough to snag one. 

My nervousness grew, and my mind began to spiral. “What happens if I get caught in a lie?” I thought.” If I get denied entry, I’m screwed!” I hadn’t exactly been honest. I hadn’t made any official claims about moving abroad. My license still had my old address: a house I no longer owned, having closed on the sale less than two weeks prior. I took a deep breath… but not so deep as to make it obvious that I was doing so. After all, I could feel the unseen eyes peeping at me, watching my every move, and there was no need to draw any unwanted attention. 

United We Stand, Divided We Leave

It is an unnerving experience. Yet, eye-opening and humbling. All races, genders, and creeds were corralled and tightly packed into this building —it must have violated some occupancy capacity. We were all here under the same pretense: probably guilty of some yet-to-be-determined crime or infraction. I was placed shoulder to shoulder with Black, Central, and East Asian, West and Native Indians, and Hispanics. We were all one in our nervousness, sharing furtive glances, fleeting nods, and feigned, brief smiles in an attempt to comfort one another. 

A world within itself, all members shared the same unsettling experience: needing to prove to the US border authorities that you hadn't done anything wrong and that they should give your passport back and let you go. As a Caucasian male, it gave me a glimpse, albeit brief, into a world that many others experience daily because of their skin colour, gender, cultural background, or systems of belief. I was grateful that this wasn't a regular part of my life, and I felt deeply for those for whom it was.  

After a few rounds of interrogation spanning nearly three hours, the experience ended as abruptly as it began. Virtually mid-answer, we were handed back our passports and told we could leave. We left with urgency and gratefulness, trying not to make contact with the jealous and longing eyes of those who entered along with us.

The trip through the US was easy and uneventful. We drove seven to eight hours a day, leaving early in the morning and arriving at our destination mid-afternoon with enough time to rest, exercise the dogs, and find somewhere to eat. We stopped in Indianapolis on night one, Little Rock, Arkansas, on night two, and the outskirts of Victoria, Texas, on night three, several hours from the Mexican border. We were so confident in our schedule and timing that we were caught completely unawares when we hit the border at Brownsville-Matamoros in the late morning of our fourth day on the road.

Trying to Crossing the Rio Grand

“The Rio Grande is more than just a river. It is a line between worlds, between cultures, between dreams.”–  Charles Bowden, author and journalist.

After a quick bathroom break for us and the dogs and a visit with a money exchange to swap some dollars for our toll route pesos, we paid our small stipend to exit the US at a lift gate entering the bridge. Navigating curbs and barriers not designed for a vehicle of our size —we would later find out that larger vehicles like mine aren’t allowed to cross the BV-M border, although this wasn't the reason for the yet realized delay— we rolled onto the bridge. 

Not knowing the hardship about to befall us, we excitedly looked over the bridge parapet at the waters below. A new leg of our journey was beginning, but it wouldn’t be in the way we had anticipated.

As we approached a set of booths on the road median, an arm extended from a window, motioning for us to stop. We complied and shelled out another small fee before the gate separating us from the road ahead lifted. Rolling through, armed guards waved us forward, and in traffic control style, directed us to a parking area with straight, circling arms. 

I parked, and guards appeared along both sides of the bus. They said something in Spanish. Thankfully, B understood— after spending several years working abroad in Costa Rica.

We need to get off,” he said, “You need to go in that building,” pointing to a set of doors diagonal to our front right bumper. “I'll take the dogs,” he continued as I grabbed my ‘purse’ of critical information. For anyone looking to make this trip, it's essential to have your vehicle ownership (you must own it, not lease it) and any other relative information about you, your family, and your pets handy. You will need it.

I entered the building and approached the immigration desk. I pantomimed through the conversation, which ended in both B and I getting our visitor permits— seven days: more than enough time for our three days of planned travel. This would come back to bite me.

After immigration, I moved to an adjacent window for the temporary vehicle permit. I already had my insurance but had issues completing the permit process online. It quickly became apparent that something was amiss. The officer behind the booth exited his station and proceeded outside to discuss something at length with his counterparts.

Fuck, We’re Stuck

He returned with another officer who could speak English and explained to me as best he could that we couldn't cross here and needed to go to another border. I didn't understand and continued to mime through the conversation, relentlessly feeling up an imaginary wall, hoping to find the top to look over into assumed clarity. It was no use. There was no convincing them. I left frustrated and confused; the word ‘Transmigrante’ but a gossamer fluttering from a draft in the wall of my understanding. 

I returned to the bus, thinking the border officers told me we were too big and needed to cross at a different border rated for vehicles our size. This request seemed simple enough, albeit annoying, and posed only a mild hiccup. We crossed back over the Rio Grande bridge, shelling out another set of fees, and made our way 45 minutes North-West to the Los Indios border crossing.

We reached the new border around 2 pm. I paid the tolls at this Rio Grande Bridge and again crossed into the Mexican no-mans land between the two nations. All I had known was behind me, and in front of me was a new life, new experiences, and a new understanding of the realities of our world. 

Along the right-hand side of the road was a meandering line of vehicles —pickup trucks, cars towing cars, and tractor trailers, all loaded to the tits— that veered to the right, through a guarded gate and into a parking area where more vehicles arranged themselves in hodge podge lines. It was hot as hell, and B and I reciprocated a glance that said, “Glad that's not us.” Little did we know that it soon would be.

The Mexican Government Doesn’t Care

We continued straight along the road, and then men with automatic weapons flagged us to pull over into a parking area, similar to the previous border. B exited the bus with the dogs again, and I headed into yet another immigration building. I won't bore you with repetitive details: the outcome was the same as our first attempt, but I understood our predicament this time —the Mexican government was denying our entry. Based on our vehicle and its contents, we were Transmigrante, and as such, we needed a customs broker to provide us with the necessary paperwork to pass our “goods for sale” through their country. From what I gleaned from the conversation, there was a broker on site, but since it was already 2 pm and they closed at 5 pm, there was no way I would make it through the epic line of vehicles before the end of the day. The best I could do was try again tomorrow. I tried to explain that the bus contents were all personal items and not for sale, but they couldn't care less. I was transiting through as a Transmigrante, and I needed to act like one.

So, What is a Transmigrante?

For those who don’t know, which is pretty much everyone I talk to about this, a Transmigrante is the small demographic of Central Americans (mostly men) that purchase used items in the US and drive them through Mexico to their home counties for resale or upcycling. They haul almost anything, from wrecked vehicles and automobile parts to electronics, clothing, and used appliances.

Apart from my skin colour, native language, and intention for my items (meaning, not for sale), no other distinguishing characteristics separated us from the definition of a Transmigrante. Now, I think those are significant; however, as I said, the Mexican government didn’t care. We looked exactly like one, driving an old shuttle bus with household items rammed from floor to ceiling and from front to back. We had to follow the path of the Transmigrante through Mexico.

And that's what the queue of vehicles we saw earlier was —fellow Transmigrante looking to pass through Mexico to their home countries in Central America. It was an eye-opening experience for me. Not only had I never heard of such a thing, but to find out I was one was dumbfounding. 

Comin’ Up Sin Nada

I researched this trip extensively and perused endless Facebook feeds and Google searches in my investigation. I never came across the term nor read any account of a North American being deemed one. All my research pointed to fellow Americans and Canadians moving south with a vehicle or trailer full of stuff, just cruising through the border as any old tourist would. That was not the case for me! 

Even after doing a retroactive search months later —I was determined to find out how I overlooked such a significant detail— I still couldn’t find much information. All I could dig up was some US government website references and a couple of news articles from small-town Texas publications. I even searched again while writing this two-and-a-half years later and still couldn’t find much. Facebook revealed a handful of Transmigrante Groups and the odd reference to their unique way of packing goods but nothing about a non-Central American becoming one. 

I returned to the bus defeated yet again. With my head spinning, B took the wheel so I could figure out what our next move was. We crossed back over the Rio Grande into Texas for the second time, shelling out another set of fees for a total of eight that day. I found us a place to crash for the night in Harlingen, the closest major area with hotels accepting dogs as guests. 

Once settled at our accommodation, I got to Googling customs brokers and sent an email to the American one I had hired to handle our customs entry in Belize. That was an immediate dead end, as he, unfortunately, only had contacts in Texas ports, not land borders. I was on my own.

By this time, it was 5 pm on May 26, and no customs brokers were answering the phone, except one who promptly told me, “Tomorrow is Memorial Day, and most brokers will be closed until Monday for the long weekend, even the ones at the border.” I maintained my efforts, undeterred by the impending holiday. I began calling Spanish-speaking brokers, but since I didn't speak the language, I got nowhere with them. Miming is essentially impossible over the phone. I was even hung up on several times. 

My frustration grew. “Aren’t we in the US?” I exclaimed to B, “An English-speaking nation, and they can’t speak it?.” It was ignorant and hypocritical: I was entering Mexico and couldn’t speak Spanish after all. So, it appeared that the local population of Spanish brokers was not interested in conversing with a non-fluent gringo. As the day wore on, the sinking feeling that I was no closer to finding a customs broker came crashing in.

Palm to a Face Full of BBQ with a Side of Bread

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuck,” I thought. “We’re stranded for at least three days,” I told B, trying to hold back my frustration. That frustration soon turned to fear, as the next evening, I received a troubling text from my wife: Dash, our youngest and only eleven weeks old, had a sustained high fever that wouldn't break. She was taking him to a private hospital in Belmopan for medical care, which required a two-and-a-half hour drive through dark and winding, unfamiliar mountain roads. I felt gutted. And hopeless. My family needed me. But I was stuck in Texas, classified as something I was not, while America partied. I'd never felt so powerless. I was at the whim of the unknown. I had been on a similar precipice before when leaving my first marriage and with the birth of my first son. I had become somewhat of a veteran of the unfamiliar. Nevertheless, I didn’t like it or cared to face this abyss again. 

During the debacle that unfolded for Lili while getting Dash the care he needed, a local police officer tasked a young boy to get some bread dough from a local bakery. The officer advised my wife to wrap the dough balls around Dash’s tiny feet: some sort of old-timey remedy for drawing out fever. You may think this sounds like bullshit, but my wife swears it contained his fever during the drive north to Belmopan. When they arrived at the hospital, the dough was baked.

B and I spent the weekend exercising the dogs, researching the next steps, making phone calls (in vain), and eating Texas BBQ, anything to keep my mind from wandering too far into catastrophe. Amidst the stress of the situation, a funny thing happened. While looking for things to do in the area, I came across Alamo, Texas, and thought, “No way, The Alamo is close by?! We might as well take in some history while stuck here.” Google Maps said it wasn't more than an hour away, so B and I hopped on the bus and headed to the Alamo… well, not exactly. We ended up in a random town next to the highway, indistinguishable from any other town, named Alamo. Not The Alamo. Just Alamo

, and certainly not the site of Davy Crockett's 1834 standoff with the Mexican Army. The Alamo is in San Antonio, 250 miles north-north northwest of where we were staying in Harlingen. *Face to palm* Perhaps this error indicated where my mind was at —distracted. We stopped at a BBQ place on our way back and called it a day. 

I cannot sit idle, especially amid an ordeal, so once we were back at the hotel  I resumed making calls and managed to get through to several brokers. It was Saturday, and they were busy coming off the Friday holiday, telling me they couldn’t get to my paperwork until later in the week or early the following. No bueno, I needed to get into Mexico asap. 

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A Glimmer of Hope in the Dark Night of the Soul

“Trust that all is for the best. For we carry our fate with us—and it carries us.” —Marcus Aurelius, Stoic Philosopher and Emperor of Rome, 161 to 180 AD

That evening was more troubling news from Lili. Dash was in rough shape: his blood work showed his C-reactive protein (CRP) levels were highly elevated, a sign of a serious bacterial infection ravaging his little body. Typical levels are 1-10 mg/L, but Dash’s were over 100 mg/L. Lili was beside herself, and I was scared shitless. I tried to keep it together, stay positive, and not let her know how terrified I was. I needed to focus and get us out of Texas and back on the road. As horrible of a call as it was, there was a silver lining: Lili reminded me of someone who could help us get through Mexico. 

A Knight in Shinning Plaid 

Rewind about a month. Lili and I are at our lot in Placencia, waiting to meet the man who will deliver our prefabricated home to its site across from the beach. He was a Mennonite (of the more liberal persuasion) named Eric and had a unique business delivering homes for prefab builders countrywide. We wanted to meet him to ensure there wouldn't be any issues accessing the property on delivery day. If you are interested in this process, check out this blog post. 

He agreed to meet us on a Saturday and brought his wife, who had a sister in the area, along. They were a lovely couple in the standard cultural garb: he in a hat, jeans, and a plaid shirt, and she in a printed full-length dress. We got to chatting, and during the conversation, we fell into the topic of my drive from Canada to Belize, which I was undertaking in the coming weeks. Eric informed me that he had a brother-in-law, Billy, who had made the trip several times and could assist me with driving through Mexico. I could pay for his flight to Texas, and he would drive with me through to Belize. Eric explained that Billy had a lot of experience with this trip, having transported vehicles and ATVs, and even had a couple of run-ins with the cartels. Since he paid a ransom the first time, the cartels let him go the second time around —an honest mistake apparently — as once you've paid a ransom, you are not to be touched again. Apparently, the cartels have some sort of honour system, so I'm sure it didn't end well for the poor fellow who decided to pick up Billy that second time. 

Since I had B coming along already and had crossed my Ts and dotted my Is —so I thought— I didn't think much of the offer but to say thank you and file it away in the part of my brain that doesn’t take shit seriously. Had I known the trouble we would run into, I would have immediately taken him up on the offer. 

So, that interaction with Eric a month earlier is how I found myself texting Billy on the morning of our third day stuck in Texas, asking him to help me get through the Mexican border.

Cosmic Puppet Master

Now, this is where things get a bit surreal. The preceding chain of events is beyond serendipitous and makes an agnostic writer like myself reexamine a belief in a higher power. A grand puppet master must have been tugging at strings behind the curtain of my perceived reality. 

Moments of Perfect Timing 

I waited around impatiently for the better part of two hours, fixated on my phone like a junkie waiting for his dealer to call. When the screen lit up with a notification, I immediately grabbed it. It was Billy. Contained in his brief message, which read, “Call this number, he can help you,” was the contact info of someone named Humberto. I texted Billy an appreciative thank you, added Humberto to my contact list, and immediately called him. It rang several times and connected with a voice on the other end, “Hola.” “Hola,” I responded and told him my name, my predicament, and who gave me his number. 

Humberto responded at length, in Spanish, none of which I understood. After he finished, I said one of the few Spanish phrases I learned for the trip, “No hablo español.” There was silence before he said something quickly, and then all I could hear were muffled voices. I waited for what seemed like minutes when suddenly, an English-speaking man was on the other end of the line. He said his name was David that he was just crossing the border into Mexico and would call me back on my number (which I gave him) once he had crossed through in about thirty minutes. With an emphatic thank you, I hung up. 

I wasn’t sure what had just happened. Had Billy given me the name of a Mexican border official? Billy knew I didn’t speak Spanish, so how would he help me if we couldn't understand each other? I decided to set those thoughts aside and be grateful that he had handed the phone over to David, a seemingly random passerby, who offered to help me. 

About an hour and a half passed before I began to feel like an idiot for not getting David’s number in return for mine. Feeling abandoned by a man I didn’t even know, I felt the air leaking from the tires of hope. Back to the drawing board, I thought, as I frantically scanned my email for responses from brokers and rehashed Google searches, looking for contacts I may have missed.

My phone rang. It was David! David was a Belizean transmigrant, and he was on his way home with a used vehicle and other items for resale. After a brief conversation in which he explained the processes and provided me essential tips, like claiming that you will return your vehicle to its country of origin to save the costly duties on it, he sent me screenshots of all the paperwork I would need. He also gave me the contact information of the Spanish-speaking customs broker he used, which he emphasized as a necessity. The relief was indescribable, yet I knew this was only part of a greater effort to get what I needed. I thanked David profusely. His generosity and compassion were startling. He didn’t know me and certainly didn’t owe this foreigner anything, but he went out of his way to help a random gringo stranded in an unfamiliar state with a lone wife and sick baby more than 1300 miles away.

After hanging up with David, I immediately called the customs broker he recommended. They were Spanish-speaking, and I struggled to explain my situation. In broken English, the woman on the other end of the call told me she would call me back and hung up. I had an uneasy feeling. Why did they need to call me back? I was also a bit suspicious as I was pretty sure I had called this broker in my previous attempts to get a hold of one. I had essentially called every broker in south-eastern Texas and couldn't shake the feeling that my only solid lead was attempting to shrug me off. 

I couldn't lose this opportunity. I had to get them to process my paperwork; they were my only chance to get out of Texas. I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and wait one hour for them to return the call. It was 1 pm, and Google said they closed at five. By two, they hadn't touched base, so I decided to be unignorable. Their office was forty-five minutes away, close to Alamo. They won't be able to ignore me in person, I thought.

B waited in the bus while I gathered my documents to take into the small flat-roofed building in a commercial/industrial area on the edge of some random highway-side town. I caught a glimpse of a tractor-trailer and other heavy equipment in the yard down a driveway to the left of the building as I entered through the heavily tinted glass doors. There were three women behind desks. I introduced myself as the one they had spoken to on the phone nearly two hours ago. They laughed amongst each other, sharing eye roll glances. My suspicions were correct: they did not intend to call me back. But now I was face to face with them and wouldn't take no for an answer. 

Another Mennonite Saviour

I engaged in my regular pantomime in place of my lacking Spanish. It was a struggle. The women could understand me, but they didn't have the English-speaking skills to communicate effectively.

Then, a bearded, tanned Caucasian man emerged from a dark lounge adjacent to the office the women and I were in. He had overheard our conversation and struck up one with me. The tractor-trailer I saw in the back turned out to be his. The machinery he was hauling had been denied entry into Mexico because he wasn't the owner. He had been stuck in Texas for longer than I had, while the Belizean owner found his way to Texas to claim ownership before it could pass through. He wasn't a Belizean Mennonite, as I was familiar with, but a Mexican one who spoke fluent Spanish and English. As he and the women and I engaged in a conversational ménage à trois, he translated for me, relaying all the details I failed to grasp due to the language gap. Without him, I don't know if the ladies would have completed my paperwork in time, as it was five minutes to five pm when I left, and the previous conversation with the women was speckled with claims of “we may not be able to finish this today.”

Despite my lack of Spanish, I still understood a reference to Billy in their discussions. How they knew that I knew Billy was beyond me. After all, I called Humberto, who passed me off to David. I asked them how they knew Billy, and they smirked. I didn't need to understand Spanish to read their faces: every gringo that came through their office led back to Billy.

Before I left, and after shelling out 1,000 USD, the women gave me an 8.5 x 11 manila envelope containing three copies of the paperwork, a ‘Transmigrante International’ bumper sticker and $87, which was cut from the thousand I gave them. One of the women directed me to place the sticker on my front bumper and to give the money to Humberto. “Humberto?” I exclaimed, “I know Humberto.” The woman nodded, smiled dismissively —knowing I did not— and shooed me out the door. 

Third Time's a Charm: Crossing the Rio Grande Again

“‘...the end of Texas, the end of America, we don’t know no more.’” —Neal Cassedy, in On the Road, by Jack Kerouac

We queued up in a long line of beat-up cars and trucks just before the Rio Grande bright and early the following day. The sun was rising, and it was getting hot. The line of vehicles began to creep forward. We crossed the bridge once again, praying it would be our last. There were men on the road directing traffic. A scrappy-looking middle-aged man dressed in a military-style camo bucket hat, a long-sleeved dry-fit shirt, and a crossing guard pinny flagged us down and directed us to pull over. 

Walking around the bus's passenger side, he motioned to me to open the side door. He stepped on board and spurted out a quick sentence in Spanish. As you can guess, I had no idea what he said, but luckily, B did and replied that we only spoke a little Spanish. “Why are you in Mexico if you can't speak Spanish?” the man said in fluent English with a thick Spanish accent. 

I was relieved he could speak English, but his presence made me uneasy. He exuded an authority, which I found confusing. He bore no official uniform or crest, but it was clear that our entrance into Mexico hinged on his approval. I told him we were just passing through on our way to Belize. Ignoring my previous response, he questioned, “Where did you get that sticker?” referring to the ‘Transmigrante America’ sticker I stuck to the driver-side front bumper earlier that morning. “The customs broker,” I replied. He demanded I call them, pointing to the melamine folder with the customs broker’s number stamped on it. I was flustered but complied. I didn't understand what was going on. The phone rang several times, and then one of the Spanish-speaking women answered. “Hola, this is Simon. I was in your office yesterday…” the man snatched the phone from my hand before I could finish. He launched into a fast-paced Spanish conversation with the woman on the other end. I looked at B. B looked back. We said nothing but telepathically agreed to hold our breath. 

Is it Hot in Here, Or is it Just Me?

The temperature on the bus began to rise. It was still early in the morning, but the open asphalt road radiated the heat from the previous day. The dogs panted heavily. I was surprised by their resilience with the long days of travel on the stuffy bus that didn't have AC. It was hot as hell, and we couldn't open many windows because of the tight pack of belongings inside. 

We were sweating our balls off in no man’s land as the man spoke to the customs broker. We were no longer in the US, but not really in Mexico yet. It wasn't my first time being in such a place —I traveled to Southeast Asia in my early twenties and experienced a similar place between Thailand and Laos. No matter where in the world, it's the same feeling: a strange sense of being neither here nor there. And these places always contain shady characters. We waited. B tried to glean something from the conversation but struggled with its speed.

The conversation between our new passenger and the customs broker ended. He returned my phone and gestured for me to speak into it. The woman on the other end said, “Give him the money,” in a thick Spanish accent. “I thought it was for Humberto?” I replied. “Just give it to him,” she said dismissively and hung up. I reached into the envelope she'd given me and pulled out the small fold of US dollars. I handed it to him, and he placed it in his shorts pocket without counting it, apparently taking advice from Kenny Rodgers. Yet, I got the impression he knew the amount already. This was routine. He motioned toward the paperwork with an impatient wave of the hand. I passed it to him. He rustled through the papers, looking up at me and then at the contents of the bus, examining it for continuity. He said something to a man who had materialized outside the driver-side door —very sneaky, sir. He took one of the three copies, handed the other two back, and told me to open my door. The second man plucked the papers from my hands, looked at them, and cranked his head ninety degrees while looking at the door frame. He confirmed the VIN and returned the papers with a nod to his partner on the bus. “You can go,” the man on the bus said as he stepped off. He motioned down the road with an outstretched arm and a slight bend at the waist. 

I closed the doors and the gravity of the situation hit me. These men weren't any sort of border officials. I had just dealt with a cartel man. I looked at B and said, “What the fuck did we get ourselves into.”

So, Who is Humberto?

I learned that day that Humberto isn't a real person: it's a code name for these cartel dudes on this stretch of road. And there are lots of them, too. They take possession of a list of all the belongings a Transmigrante carries, the value, and even the VIN on their vehicles. If they wanted to roll me or anyone else down the road, they would know who and what to look for and how much it's worth. Our saving grace was the sticker on the front bumper, which signaled to the cartel spotters that we paid our dues and were cleared to pass. Institutionalized corruption at its finest. All in a day's work, just across the Rio Grande.

I should correct myself; our saving grace was not the sticker but David. Billy had provided me the phone number of a Humberto—not the same man I had on the bus that day as he spoke English, thankfully. Yet, fate would have it that David, an English-speaking Belizean with a heart of gold, would just so happen to be there when I called the cartel man.  

Ingrained Unscrupulousness

At the time, I wasn't clear on the whole situation. I didn't have time to consider it either; we still had 1300 miles to cover. But after taking some time to process what happened, I recognized a level of deep-seated corruption in broad daylight and literally under the watchful eye of both the US and Mexican governments, and it shocked me. I was naive for sure, but this experience revealed that such things are an accepted fact of life along the border and that of the Transmigrante. I’d witnessed corruption during my travels over the years, mostly drug-dealing local cops and extortion-prone police officers, but nothing at this level. 

It makes you wonder how the US government's complacency lends to the proliferation of such things. It also makes you realize how embedded seemingly civilized governments are with organized crime, both north and south of the US border. There is no way that US border officials are clean-handed in all of it, given how closely they work beside this culture and industry. Otherwise, either nation would have stopped the dues collecting a long time ago. Because that's what my 85 dollars was: dues, an unofficial toll, a bribe collected by a cartel. Call it what you want, but the Transmigrante must pay it to enter Mexico. I can only imagine the untold millions it produces each year. 

On the Road Again

We were moving again, and It was a relief, but we weren't clear yet. We still needed to get through the official Mexican customs. We pulled out of the rusted, jumbled queue and headed down the road. Armed guards directed us away from the regular border crossing towards a large fenced-in parking lot where hundreds of vehicles would soon be packed in like sardines in the hot, unobstructed sun. We found a place towards the front of one of the many forming rows. We turned the engine off and waited—vehicles packed in around us. Monstrosities of diesel and garbage hemmed us in on all sides. Tractor trailers hauled wrecked dump trucks; in their dump bodies were smashed-up pickups with old appliances in their beds and tattered items falling out of the cab, like some post-apocalyptic turducken. Cars towed others, with nothing but a rope as a tether and a sign cautioning “in tow.” All the “goods” surrounding us were heading south to be repurposed, resold, or upcycled.

It was a mind-blowing experience. I had no idea such an enterprise existed nor that a class of our modern society lives this way, participating in a trucking industry straight out of Mad Max. It's an industry pegged to a real-life caricature of the saying, “One man's trash is another man's treasure.” It's also a daunting reminder of how much trash we in North America produce. And a harsh glimpse into the realities of life outside of a developed nation. It also made me question what “developed” truly is. —from what I can tell, the distinguishing feature is a national wealth high enough that its citizens can purchase throw-away products manufactured in lower-income countries and then leave the waste management to those same countries. It's the privilege to play ignorant of the waste we produce. I digress. 

Ain't No Time Like Wasted Time

The lines slowly moved forward as cohorts of vehicles made their way to a depot through a gate up ahead. We assembled with the other vehicles inside the fence line when it was our turn. All the drivers got out and queued to speak with an American customs official. I didn't understand, wasn't I in Mexico? I thought. Why was I back to dealing with US border officials? 

When I finally approached and handed the officer my paperwork, he looked at me and said, “You don't need to be here; this is customs brokerage. You have your manifest and valuation already. You can go straight down that road.” He motioned with his hand to that same road we drove down after paying off Humberto, except we didn't need to enter the sizzling parking lot with the other vehicles. We could have continued down and around the steamy asphalt clearing. 

“So, I didn't need to be in that line?” I asked him, pointing to the area we had just spent four hours in, surrounded by heaps of hot metal and rubber. “Nope,” he replied, calling out “next” as he reached his hand past me to grasp the paperwork of the next anxious Transmigrante in line. 

I took deep breaths as I made my way back to the bus, attempting to calm myself down and forget about the four fucking hours we just wasted sweating in the hot Mexican —or American, I didn't even know what country I was in at this point— sun, while my youngest was laid up in a Belizean hospital with my beyond worried wife. I jumped back on the bus and continued to another depot, where the real Mexican customs officials were. 

Duck Duck Go

We pulled into another queue and waited for a customs officer to arrive. They didn't. Time ticked by. There was no rhyme or reason for how they processed the vehicles. Someone would pull up and almost immediately see an officer while others sat parked for hours. Most customs officials had a trail of Transmigrantes following them, like a string of ducklings attentively following their mother while waiving their paperwork like Wall Street brokers on the trading floor, in a desperate attempt to get their attention. 

I restored to the same tactic and eventually cornered one trying to deke behind a tractor-trailer to lose his tail. I popped out in front of him with my papers in one hand and an outstretched arm blocking his path. I directed him to our bus two rows over. He leafed through the manifest while quickly looking at the contents inside the bus. He scribbled something on one of the remaining copies and advised me to proceed to a building flanking the yard. I bounced between a few kiosks within the building, paying fees, and then moved outside the yard to the immigration building. They looked at my passport and handed it back immediately. I didn't question it and hurried back to the bus, forgetting that our passports had been stamped with a seven-day visa four days prior. 

Belize-Bound and Down

We fired up the engine and maneuvered the bus through gaps in the surrounding vehicles, inching our way past the metal monstrosities. After a quick pass through fumigation, we were once again Belize-bound. We pulled over briefly to let the dogs out for a pee. It was 2 pm, and they had been patiently cooped up on the hot bus since 5 am. 

We were ecstatic and relieved to be on the road in Mexico, but we still had a solid six hours to our night stay in Tampico.

We arrived in the city after dark, bleary-eyed and road-weary from the fifteen-hour day. I called Lili immediately. Dash's situation had worsened: there was now blood in his vomit and diarrhea. Her shaky voice subtly told me she was trying to keep it together. Feeling inspired by the serendipitous events, the good fortune, and the kindness of strangers, I told her I knew everything would be okay. “The universe didn’t just put me through the wringer so that Dash could die in a simplistic Belizean hospital while I was still over a thousand miles away,” I said. “The way things unfolded in the last 24 hours was proof that things were moving in the right direction.” It wasn't his time. That wasn't our story, and I knew it to be true. After I hung up, B and I grabbed some food but I wasn't hungry. We called it a night, crashed hard on our beds, and were on the Mexican road again at sunrise. 

On the Road in Mexico, at Last

The rest of the trip went relatively smooth, apart from several near collisions on some rough and potted highways dodging cows and construction equipment, B sideswiping the side view mirror off of a Ford F150 while maneuvering the tight streets of Villahermosa and a brief extortion by local Mexican police in a small city I don't remember the name of when we detoured off the highway to procure some toll booth pesos. These events alone would provide most people enough to tell a captivating story, but they are just a side note in this one: one of the many “hiccups” along our 3,275-mile journey from Canada.

On the Mend

Thankfully, Dash's condition began to improve after that night. However, the hospital bill racked up. Unfortunately, my family's one month of travel insurance —which started when we all flew into Belize on April 30— lapsed while I was dealing with the distractions of becoming a Transmigrante. It was a hefty medical bill for a young family moving continents. Nevertheless, I would have paid ten times more if we had to.

The experience pretty well traumatized my wife, who was already reeling from two NICU births in which our first nearly died of MAS a year and a half prior. I have mostly glossed over her part of the story, a troubling ordeal further marked by a pertinent look into the harsh realities of the Belizean healthcare system. Yet, she is an incredibly strong, determined, and resilient woman. Her awareness, unconditional love, and grace in accepting life's hardships have enabled her to pull through and handle everything constructively. She is an inspiration and the love of my life. I am so grateful to know her and share a life with such a striking woman. (She is also a talented artist currently making waves in the contemporary art scene.) She often writes about her own life experiences and has plans, amongst the demands of her craft and family duties, to write a memoir: I don’t doubt that her experience with Dash will make it into her annals.  

Close, But No Cigar

We made it through Mexico in three days, arriving in Chetumal in the early afternoon of the third day. Chetumal is in Quintana Roo, a free province in South Eastern Mexico that shares a border with Belize's northernmost city of Corozal. It was Saturday, and I was anxious and excited to get through and see my family. Dash was on the mend, but Lili was hesitant to leave the hospital, as bacterial infections can flare up unexpectedly. With me so close, she opted to stay. We decided I would get her on my way south to our final destination, Placencia, a small but lively tourist destination along the sprawling Belizean coast. 

Upon settling into a dog-friendly hotel, I contacted my customs broker to let them know I would be at the border in the morning. “Great!” They replied, “We will meet you on Monday. Tomorrow is Sunday and customs at the border are closed.” 

You have to be shitting me! I thought, another damn delay. The frustration welled up and I wanted to scream. But I kept it together. After all, I had so much to be grateful for: we arrived safely at the Belizean border, emotionally, tattered and exhausted, but physically well. Dash bounced back, Lili was happy, the dogs were well, and my trusty travel buddy B was in good spirits, as he had been for the duration of the trip. 

A Silent Partner

I think this is an appropriate time to say a few things about B: a dear friend and the only one out of twelve who answered my call to accompany me on this trip. Initially, I planned to go alone, but pressure from my mother and wife led me to email family members and friends asking if they would be willing to come with me on the odd chance. A long-time friend (from way back in elementary school), he was also a steadfast fixture of this story. His running slogan, “It's all part of the experience,” uttered thrice daily, was a calming reminder of how we cannot control the happenstances in life. One must accept them calmly, take decisive action, and push through to a solution. If all else fails, try to enjoy the experience, or at the very least, get something constructive from it. These words settled my worries, relieved pressure, and helped me to think clearly. 

Although primarily a silent character in this story, he was anything but. B proved invaluable: splitting the time behind the wheel, taking on the emotional burden alongside me, assisting with the dogs at borders, and translating basic Spanish so we could make some sense when almost everything didn’t. He also provided many opportunities for a laugh, which we desperately needed throughout the journey. I would also like to mention that he chose this trip as his vacation, giving up his annual two weeks of leisure to join me. Looking back, I see no other friend I would have rather had by my side.

More Unfortunate News

We hung out in Chetumal for the remainder of the weekend. On Sunday, B received the unfortunate news that his airline had canceled his flight and bumped him onto another one a day earlier, cutting even more time from his already depleted trip. B was supposed to have six days in Placencia. By the end of our journey, he only had one. 

First thing Monday morning, we crossed into Belize, but not before the Mexican border officials detoured me through a gamma ray detection protocol. Apparently, they were suspicious I was trafficking guns, drugs, or enriched uranium. The scan was one thing, but the real bugger was it happened after waiting in a massive queue for nearly two hours, and after was promptly placed at the back of the line. All the while, B and the dogs, who weren't allowed to be on the bus with me throughout this process, stood sweltering in the hot sun. 

Roshambo’d

We were almost clear of Mexico, but the country had one last kick in the cojones for me. Remember back in Brownsville when they stamped our passports with a seven-day visa before this debacle began? Well, it took us eight days to get through after all the delays, so I was charged a fine for both B and me for illegally staying longer than our visa allowed. At this point, I was fine throwing money at my problems to make them disappear. 

As Slow As Belizean Molasses

The customs process in Belize, albeit slow, was smooth. After four hours and a slick hand from all the “palm greasing,” we headed south to Belmopan to see Lili and Dash. It was late by the time we arrived at the hospital, and wasn’t safe for us to traverse the dark mountainous roads leading south. I got a room for B and the dogs at a resort on the city outskirts, and I stayed with Lili and Dash at the hospital for one last night. In the morning, we collected B and the dogs and traversed the windy roads to Placencia. 

We pulled up to our rental home and rushed in to see our son Jack, who had spent most of the last week with our friend Jess, who had accompanied us to assist while I was away. Dash went down for a nap, and we headed to the beach to spend time with our oldest. 

We had made it, all was well, and we were grateful for it. It was a whirlwind week-and-a-half. We had nearly 3300 miles under our belts, had overcome unexpected challenges, and encountered helpful strangers. 

Before this trip started, I was most concerned with mechanical issues slowing us down. But the trusty bus kept on trucking with no problems. When I reached out to the dude we purchased it from and told him we made it to our destination without issue (mechanical that is), he responded with surprise, claiming, “I didn’t think you’d make it.” Right, thanks man. 

A Word to the Wise

If you're looking for information on moving south through Mexico with personal belongings, you've come to the right place. Yet, my experience was certainly the exception, not the rule. I doubt many North Americans migrating south have had to jump through the hoops I did. Nevertheless, I hope this story informed you and will lead you to consider hiring a customs broker to assist with getting through Mexico before your journey starts. Given what could happen if you're unaware, going the extra mile and spending the extra money on their services will save you time, money, and headaches—especially if you, too, are deemed a rare gringo Transmigrante.

If you enjoy my writing, you might also like Belize Foreigner Blog, the Lili Art Blog, or my award-receiving book Home in Good Hands. If you'd like to support this Substack and help me keep creating stories and essays about life abroad, consider subscribing, sharing, or making a small donation. And to those who already have—thank you. Your support means the world.

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Post Script

I mentioned how hot it was on the bus several times throughout the story, and if you are wondering what I meant: it was hot enough to completely melt a bag of chocolate-covered almonds into a solid block!

Our society emphasizes achieving and accomplishing goals. We are encouraged to constantly act and do, driving our lives forward to glean lessons from the momentum. Yet, all the action makes us forget that the things that don't happen in our lives change us equally as the things that do. 

With such a focus on doing, we often resent the things we don't achieve, fail to do, or don't happen to us. It is a limited way of thinking, and we can benefit from a shift in perspective. We gain from recognizing that opportunities for growth exist in all aspects of life, even the less obvious ones. Though recognizing them can be challenging, such moments are blessings in disguise. They are gifts that shape our lives and influence us in profound ways. 

Let me explain this point of view by sharing a personal experience.

A Snake, an Egg, and a Shaman

On a recent trip to Lake Bacalar in Mexico, my family and I had the pleasure of meeting a lovely group of people, including a resident shaman. In exchange for my wife's artistic abilities—she painted a craggy piece of driftwood into a beautiful snake for the shaman's water altar—he offered a traditional ceremony, which we gratefully accepted.

During the ceremonial proceedings, between prayers and smudging, you pick an egg from a clutch the shaman placed on the altar at the beginning of the rite. The egg is rubbed on the body, imbuing it with your essence. Through transference, your energy imprints itself onto the yoke. All the while, the shaman bears witness to your egg-influencing energy and provides a predictive reading. He then cracks the egg into a glass of water, revealing the yoke and using it to confirm or deny his claims. 

I never could have anticipated the outcome of the ceremony. The shaman's prediction and Lili's egg flipped our perspective on life upside down, changing us forever. 

Ceremonial Proceedings 

Our boys went first. The shaman had little to say about them, as they were only two and three. Their yokes were clean, stable, and symmetrical, a sign of purity, representing youth and innocence.

Then, it was my wife Lili's turn, and the shaman stunned us with the news that she was pregnant with a girl. He cracked her egg into the glass of water as he'd done for the boys, and to our dismay, the yoke revealed a defined bump. The shaman pointed to it, “see, baby,” he said through the interpreter. We were stunned. I was in a daze as the shaman finished with Lili and moved on to me. The contents of my reading and egg don't have much context to this story, so I will skip it. If you want to know what the shaman said about me, write “Tell me more!” in the comments.

After the ceremony, we had a lot to process. We knew that Mother Nature would prove the shaman right or wrong in a matter of weeks. However, Lili had long held the vision of a baby girl coming into our lives, and we couldn't help but think, “Was she finally coming to be with us? Another baby? Really?” The news rocked us to the core. “What will we do if we are pregnant again?” we ask each other.

Reevaluation

We couldn't get the shaman's predictions off our minds, so we began to make a ‘what if’ plan. We were happy about adding a new member to our family. After the previous two NICU experiences with our boys, we resolved not to have more children, so we were fond of the possibility of an unexpected pregnancy. The prospect led us to reevaluate our current way of life, which we both agreed wasn't serving us in the ways we planned. We moved to Belize in search of simplicity but hadn't found it near the beach. We realized our priorities had changed. We wanted some acreage for the kids and dogs to roam, be self-sufficient, grow our food, and be closer to better services. We hadn't pulled the trigger for the same reason so many don't change their lives: the work. We had taken on a lot in recent years: two babies, a four-story home renovation, an international move, a home built from scratch, and a shuttle bus camper conversion. The thought of another move was daunting. Yet, we were willing to change if something significant called for it- like a baby. We resolved to make yet another shift in life. 

Mother Nature's Verdict

As Mother Nature would have it, the baby was not to be, but not before throwing us for another loop: Lili was five days late, which had never happened before. The whole time, we waited with bated breath. We grieved the loss, but only for a moment. Attachment to outcomes can be detrimental to one’s contentment, and my wife and I have been working to release it. Perhaps the universe was testing our progress. 

After holding space to feel the feelings, we could evaluate what this situation was trying to show us: there is positivity, even at the heart of disappointment. If you remain open and choose to see them, there are lessons in all things. Even though there wouldn't be a pregnancy, the event shook up life as if there was. Through the shaman, we realized our desire for change, to move into alignment with our current desires, and to live authentically.

A Symbol of Rebirth

When I think back to how events unfolded, Lili's painted snake becomes a glaring harbinger, especially in the context of Maya culture, the backdrop to this story. Her snake was at the forefront of the ceremonial proceedings, an event that sparked change in our lives. Snakes are revered by the Maya and seen as vehicles for celestial bodies, like the sun and stars, to move through the heavens. The serpentine process of shedding skin symbolizes rebirth and renewal—a fitting symbology for this story. Despite not having a baby come into our lives, we still experienced a birth: the birth of an idea, the birth of change.

Opportunities and Lessons: A Conscious Choice

Change lies within the most unexpected places. It can come from successes, failures, or, as in this case, neither. Significant change doesn't always need to spring from some sort of action. The things that don't happen can prompt considerable shifts in perspective that influence our life path, just as the things that do happen. 

On a practical level, nothing happened to us. Our situation stayed the same. A baby wasn't in the picture before or after the ceremony. We could have returned to the status quo, but we chose to look for the lesson and accept that the universe was attempting to speak to us through the events in our lives. With the shaman as a conduit for the message, the universe asked us to look critically at our lives and align ourselves with our desires and purpose. Moments like this are everywhere and happen to everyone all the time. It's just a matter of consciously tuning into them. It's a choice. Do you choose to look for the lessons? We did and realized that our current way of life didn't align with our desires. “Why did it take a baby to move ourselves toward what we want?” we asked ourselves. It didn't; that was just some imaginary constraint we placed on ourselves. We decide to remove the constraint. When we returned from Mexico, we immediately put our house up for sale and began to plan a new chapter.

Moments for Change

This situation revealed that every moment contains an opportunity for change. Within every occurrence, a lesson. We don't always need to be doing to learn. There is value in the things that don't happen. They are opportunities for growth and positive life change.

Next time something doesn't go your way, look for the lesson. The universe communicates in subtle ways. What's it saying to you? Here’s an example: Say you are looking for work but haven't landed a job. You could get down on yourself about it, or, adopting a new mindset, you could choose to see that the universe is allowing you to work on a passion project, one that could lead to better things. What you may need is best represented in not receiving that job. Better things are waiting for you on the other side of seeming disappointment. The perceived letdown is an opportunity to authentically align with your true nature.

If we shift our perspective and open our minds to the possibility that everything happens for us in some way, shape, or form, so-called failings are just another step in the right direction. They are necessary to find peace and contentment in our lives, as ironic as that may sound. With a change in perspective, we learn to appreciate everything life teaches us. 

When things don’t go as planned—like not getting the job—it’s an opportunity to take control and release the victim mentality. Think, “Things happen for me, not to me.” Using this language and way of thinking allows you to take accountability for yourself and exert your power over how your life unfolds.

The shaman didn't lie to us, although you could easily see it that way. The only thing the shaman did was prompt us to reconsider what we were doing with our lives. We could have been mad or upset, but instead, we found appreciation for the change in perspective he provided. 

While writing this, I remembered the lyrics from the song Dissecting the Bird by John Craigie. Towards the middle of the song, he sings:

So when the candle flickers, when the days get dark

They call them first-world problems, but they still break your heart

The universe feels like it's against you

Just take a minute to realize all it took to make you

Your parents had to meet, as random as that was

And hang out long enough, at least, to make some love

And make a baby, and give it your name

And all your ancestors had to do the same exponentially backwards to the start of life

So much had to happen, just exactly right

Sparks had to catch, oceans had to freeze

Billions of cells had to survive endless disease

Civilizations had to crumble, wars had to be fought

Bad presidents had to get elected, good presidents had to get shot

People had to leave, hearts had to get broken

People had to die, just so your eyes could open

The universe is not against you

The universe is not against you, it went through a lot

Just to give you a chance, it must've wanted you pretty bad

No pressure though, no pressure though

The universe went through a lot, but no pressure, bro

You don't gotta be perfect; you don't gotta be a saint

Just don't waste it; this was not a mistake

And I don't think the shaman made a mistake. Yes, he was wrong about the baby, but he was right about a change coming for us. That is why he tasked Lili with painting the snake. He got her to create the change. The universe worked through him to nudge us closer to alignment with our authentic selves by shifting our perspective. It's a valuable tool that prompts a different approach to ‘problems,’ encouraging you to look at situations differently. With this new perspective, we realized we didn't need a life-altering experience, like a pregnancy, to make a life change. We have the power to choose and control what happens in our lives.

So, if you feel stuck or upset at not achieving that thing, just ask yourself, “What is the universe trying to tell me?” It's probably telling you that, whatever that thing might be, it's not for you and that something else is. By not getting that thing, you will gain something with better alignment. With this reframed outlook, nothing can go wrong for you. Everything happens as it should, so there is no need to brood over perceived losses because there aren't any. There are only opportunities to reevaluate your desires and grasp what you value most.

Do you agree? Did this resonate with you? Do you have a similar event in your life? Has something that did not happen positively changed your life? I would love to hear your story, feedback, or perspective. 

If you enjoyed and found value in this read, please like and subscribe to receive more like it. If someone in your life could use a little shift in perspective, please share this with them.

If you enjoy my writing, you might also like Belize Foreigner Blog, the Lili Art Blog, or my award-receiving book Home in Good Hands. If you'd like to support this Substack and help me keep creating stories and essays about life abroad, consider subscribing, sharing, or making a small donation. And to those who already have—thank you. Your support means the world.

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