Paradise, Eh?

In Canada, the bugs want your blood. In Thailand, they want your life.

Apr 14, 2026

As a Canadian, I know my insect bites. Songs have been written about the black flies that drove early explorers to madness. Then there's the horse fly and its smaller cousin, the deer fly; beasts that tear out a chunk of flesh. If you're dumb enough to simply slap them, they'll flip you off while they go back for seconds.

Sure, Canada has mosquitoes, but they are big, loud, and comparatively slow - and Canadians have DEET. A spring gathering in the Great White North is a smound of slaps, curses, citronella, Muskol and barbecue.

By comparison, I thought Thailand would be a walk in the park.

The Silent Assassins

I was wrong. The nighttime mosquitoes here are medium-sized and remarkably quiet. The daytime tiger mosquitoes are evil little buggers that carry Chikungunya, Malaria, and Dengue; they’ve come and gone with nary a sting before you even notice.

While I’d love to slather myself in Muskol, high-percentage DEET is strangely considered "too dangerous" here - even for a population subject to annual outbreaks. Instead, the local repellents will melt plastic but do little to deter a mosquito. The version of Citonella sold here is useless. Fogging is too expensive, so the usual remedy is burning anything that creates a massive amount of smoke.

If you do get bitten, the local remedy is Topoxy, a high-potency corticosteroid that carries risks of skin atrophy and acneiform lesions.

I'd rather risk the Muskol, but then again as a toddler, I ate paint chips with lead, cavorted in an asbestos lined attic and played on park swings and jungle gyms that would snap a limb in a heartbeat.

Then there are the "100 legs" - Thai red dragon centipede - whose bite will lay you out for weeks. Or the Asian giant hornet, whose venom causes organ failure and death. One hit me in the chest while I was riding a motorcycle in western Indonesia. By the time I caught the last ferry and flew to Jakarta for treatment, my chest was covered in blisters and my airway was constricting.

That got my attention.

Escape to Penang

A few years later, while living on Koh Samui, a sharp flash of pain hit my knuckles as I was loading groceries onto my scooter. Then a jab in my ankle. Random, intense shots of pain continued to hit my joints as I merged into traffic.

By the time I got home, a fever was setting in. I collapsed into bed for four days of delirium and agony. Dehydrated and desperate, I tried to leave for the hospital, but as I leaned down to lock my door, I passed out - smacking my forehead on a teak table and my skull on the concrete.

I woke up in a pool of blood.

The hospital "confirmed" via Google Translate that I just had a stomach infection, prescribed antibiotics and hooked me up to an intravenous drip for a few hours. It wasn't until I reached a wellness clinic for an intravenous vitamin cocktail that I heard the truth: a Chikungunya outbreak was tearing through the island.

I was to move to Penang, Malaysia at the end of the month and was lucky enough to be able to occupy my condo the next day. Because I was barely able to walk or use my hands, the trip was grueling. The day after I arrived, the staff at Gleneagles Hospital had me diagnosed and treated within a couple of hours.

The Latest Skirmish

Last Friday, I was writing by the pool when my forearm started to become super-itchy. By 6:00 PM, my blood pressure had plummeted. By 11:00 PM, my heart was in arrhythmia. I woke up the next morning with a cherry-red arm that was hot and burning with pain. I have no idea what bit me - maybe a spider.

The diagnosis this time? Cellulitis. I’m currently on a regimen of antibiotics and steroid cream, relieved it didn't progress to necrosis or a blood infection.

Living on the edge of a palm forest in rural Thailand is breathtaking, but it comes with a price.

So, what’s eating you?

Work with me 1:1

As we become more comfortable with our new sober lives, we begin to expand by taking on new challenges and experiences with real purpose. The more we embrace personal and professional challenges, the more complex life becomes.

I call that the Expansion Paradox.

We discover that the tools that got us sober aren’t designed to support aggressive sober life expansion. We need something that will survive pressure - something that will fire before we have time to negotiate with ourselves. Something that would work on an ordinary Tuesday - and on the day everything went sideways. If you’re experiencing the Expansion Paradox, perhaps I can help. Please visit this page for more details.

Or send me a message on Substack -

and we can set up a video call to figure out if the Seventy Framework’s a fit.

Seventy exists for people who have rebuilt their lives and discovered that success creates its own form of pressure.

If your map no longer matches your territory, you’re not broken. You may just be ready for something steadier

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