How I Ended Up in a Tour Group (Against My Religion)
I am a solo traveller. This is not a personality quirk; it's identity-level branding. I pick my pace, my bed times, my breakfast timing. I do not do group tours. I certainly do not do group tours full of strangers.
And yet, here I am, telling you about the most chaotic, ridiculous, perfect week I've had in Southeast Asia—all because my friend Maya sent me a screenshot at 2am saying: "I'm going to Thailand. You're coming. I've booked us on some mad stuff. You're welcome."
Maya is the kind of person who laughs loudly in quiet restaurants and has never met a stranger. I am the kind of person who brings my own teabags to hostels. We balance each other like a seesaw made of spite.
The night before we left, she called me. "By the way, I booked us on these adventures with this tour company. I found four different experiences we're doing together, but—" she paused, and I could hear the grin in her voice, "—I didn't book them all with the same group. We're meeting different people for each one."
I made a sound like a cat caught in a blender.
"It'll be fun," she promised. "Trust me."
I did not trust her. But I went anyway.
Day One: The Market, The Floating Bits, and a Woman Named Gail
We met Gail—American, sixties, divorced three times by her own count—at the Bangkok hotel lobby at 6am. She was wearing a sun hat the size of an umbrella and carrying a backpack covered in pins from every country she'd visited. It looked like a fabric map of regret.
"You girls ready for the Private Tour to Railway Market, Floating Market And Ayutthaya?" Private Tour to Railway Market, Floating Market And Ayutthaya she asked, not waiting for an answer. "I've been to both markets before, but I'm excited to see them again. Apparently there's a train that—"
"—comes through the market and everyone collapses their stalls," I finished. I'd read the description seventeen times, because I am that person.
The Maeklong Railway Market is the sort of thing you have to see twice: once in disbelief, once to confirm you didn't imagine it. We arrived with twenty minutes to spare before the train. Vendors were stacking fruit, folding cloth, arranging watches and knock-off handbags with the practiced efficiency of people who do this six times a day. Then the bells started ringing, and it was like watching a living organism collapse in on itself. Canvas roofs rolled up. Tables folded. Fruit crates slid away. The train came through—inches from where people had been selling mangoes thirty seconds earlier—and then everyone just... put it all back.
"That's Thailand in a nutshell," Gail said, shaking her head in admiration. "Just pure 'whatever happens, happens' energy."
The floating market was slower, more atmospheric. We hired a small longtail boat and pushed through the waterways—actually, our boatman pushed us through with a pole while we sat like royalty eating fresh mango pancakes off a woman's paddle boat. Maya got syrup all over herself. Gail took approximately eight hundred photos. I drank tea and tried not to admit I was having fun.
By the time we reached Ayutthaya, we were comparing phone numbers and making jokes about which of us was the responsible one. (It's none of us. We've since confirmed this.)
Day Two: Four Experiences, One Day, Significant Regret
Chiang Mai. New group: a Swiss couple, a Australian bloke named Dave who'd just quit his job, and a Thai-German woman called Lin who spoke six languages and made us all feel illiterate.
The 4 in 1 Elephants Long Neck Rafting and Sticky Waterfall Tour 4 in 1 Elephants Long Neck Rafting and Sticky Waterfall Tour was the kind of day that leaves you confused about which bits actually happened.
The waterfall part was genuine magic. Sticky Waterfall (honest name) has this limestone surface that feels like walking on stone—genuinely grippy, almost warm. We scrambled up it like idiots, slipping and laughing, grabbing onto Lin whenever she offered her hand because she had the confidence of someone who has never feared falling. At the top, the view was so stupid-good I almost got emotional, then checked myself because Dave was already doing the emotional thing and someone needed to maintain standards.
The elephant sanctuary bit was quieter. We didn't ride them; we walked with them, watched them bathe, fed them fresh banana stalks. Our guide was careful about the details—how the animals here were retired from logging, how sanctuary-run actually means something when someone's looking. It's the sort of experience that makes you think about your choices, which is never fun but sometimes necessary.
The Karen hill tribe village visit was trickier ethically, and honestly, I'm still unsure how to feel about it. We met villagers, drank tea, bought handmade goods. It didn't feel exploitative, but tourism never feels exploitative until you think about it for more than five seconds. I bought a small woven bag from a woman with laugh lines and a missing molar, and I still don't know if I did something good or something that just felt good to do.
By evening, the five of us were absolutely wrecked. Dave suggested we skip dinner. Lin, who weighed approximately ninety pounds, suggested we find the best night market in Chiang Mai and eat until we achieved enlightenment. Lin won. (She usually does.)
Day Three: Phang Nga Bay and the Speedboat Confidence Breakdown
Phang Nga Bay. Maya had booked us on the Private James Bond Island Speedboat Adventure Tour w/ Canoeing Private James Bond Island Speedboat Adventure Tour w/ Canoeing, and assembled yet another cast of characters: a retired teacher from Canada, a German photographer couple, and a Thai university student named Niran who was doing this as a summer job and seemed faintly bemused by our collective chaos.
The speedboat cut through the water so aggressively I thought my organs would rearrange. But also—I'm not going to pretend: it was exhilarating. The limestone karsts came up so suddenly and so enormously that you forgot they weren't moving toward you, that you were the ones hurtling forward. James Bond Island itself is exactly as absurd in person as it looks in photos, and there were seventeen other tour boats there, so the magic was somewhat diluted by humanity and phone cameras, but I got it. I understood why it mattered.
The sea caves were better. We switched to canoes—Maya and I tandem, because of course—and paddled into these dark limestone hollows that felt properly ancient. The water was so clear you could see the rocks below, and it made you feel like you were floating in air, which sounds nice and was actually mildly terrifying. Maya nearly capsized us twice because she was craning her neck to get a photo of a bird.
"Why would you risk the canoe for a bird?" I hissed.
"It's a rare one!" she hissed back.
"You don't know anything about birds!"
"That's what makes it rare to me!"
Niran, paddling nearby, was actively trying not to laugh.
Day Four: The Treasure Hunt That Nearly Destroyed Me
Koh Tao. A full day treasure hunt.
I want to be clear: I don't usually like puzzles. I don't like adventure sports marketed as "fun" when they're actually terrifying. And I definitely don't like being part of a team, especially when that team is full of people's random mates and awkward acquaintances.
And yet.
The Full Day Treasure Hunt on Koh Tao Full Day Treasure Hunt on Koh Tao was structured enough to feel like a game and weird enough to feel like actual chaos. Our guide, Pim, gave us a riddle at a beach bar. It took us twenty minutes and three arguments about whether one of the words was even English. Then we found the first clue hidden under a rock. Then another riddle. Then we were snorkelling through coral gardens looking for a message in a bottle.
Our team this time included a retired couple, a woman travelling alone (me, but now with friends), Maya (obviously), and three other randoms who are now in our WhatsApp group. By the time we reached the fourth beach, we'd developed inside jokes, argued about riddle interpretation like our lives depended on it, and created a ranking system of beaches by "snack availability" (critical for motivation).
We didn't win. We came second. But we laughed so hard at one of the clues that a woman at a nearby beach asked if we were okay. We weren't. We were delirious from sun and purpose.
Day Five: The Cooking Class, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Strangers
Back to Samui, our final day. Just Maya and me and a couple from New Zealand, because we'd already done the market tour in Bangkok and this felt like the right bookend.
The Cooking Class by Samui Native Instructor Geng and O Family Cooking Class by Samui Native Instructor Geng and O Family was held in Geng and O's home kitchen—the sort of kitchen that looks too small to contain all the things we would make, but somehow did.
We started at the market, learning to select spices, negotiate prices, understand what makes a chilli worth buying. Geng, who'd been born on Samui and had never left, moved through the market like he was conducting an orchestra. Every vendor greeted him. He teased them. They teased back. He picked up a tamarind paste and explained, without being asked, why this particular vendor's was better than the one two stalls over. It was the kind of knowledge that only comes from actual love.
In the kitchen, O—Geng's wife—walked us through curry paste from scratch: grinding chillis and garlic and galangal in a mortar and pestle, teaching us to recognize when the texture was right, not by measuring but by feeling. We made enough meals to feed everyone three times over. The New Zealand couple kept asking questions. Maya and I mostly watched and absorbed, the way you do when you've learned that sometimes the best part of travel is just sitting still with people and letting things happen.
We ate everything we made. It tasted like redemption and humility.
The Last Night
Maya and I sat on the beach at sunset—separate from the groups, finally alone, but not in the way we'd started. We were full of people. We had phone numbers in our phones. We had stories that belonged to other people, and other people had stories that belonged to us.
"You hate me," Maya said, checking her phone for the group chat that was still active, still producing jokes.
"I hate you," I confirmed.
"Best week ever though?"
"Absolutely worst. Definitely best."
And that's the thing about group travel that I didn't expect: it's not about the tours or the destinations or even the efficiency of seeing four things in one day. It's about the moment when a stranger becomes someone who knows your laugh, your opinions on breakfast food, your particular brand of anxiety. It's about doing ridiculous things together and coming out the other side bonded by shared terror and mango pancakes.
I still prefer solo travel. I still bring my own teabags. But I'm now the person who books weird group adventures and hopes the chaos works out.
Maya was right. I'm still processing my feelings about this.
