The first time I took a real vacation from work for more than one or two days was in November 2009, when I went to Chicago for a long five-day-weekend with two girlfriends to celebrate Thanksgiving. My then-boss asked me what I was planning to do in Chicago, and I said one of the activities I was most looking forward to was visiting the famous Art Institute. He was eleven years older than me, a very jaded and cynical native Brooklynite who thought and cared little of the world outside of New York City. “Why do you have to go there to see the paintings?” he asked me as he rolled his eyes. “You can just Google Image it.” He half meant it as a joke to tease me, but I know he half meant it, as well.

Yes, I can Google Image it. He can, too. But I don’t think that’s enough, especially with things with such immensity as the Tian Ta Buddha in Hong Kong. We took the Ngong Ping cable car trip to the area of the famous big Buddha, and when we arrived and walked all the way up those grueling stairs, even with my ribs aching from my lingering whooping cough effects, I really felt in awe. Like many sites, the photos on Google or anywhere on the web do this place no justice. The Buddha was far bigger than I even imagined it to be, and it looked so regal and grand sitting atop its own hill in the midst of the endless Hong Kong greenery that caught me off guard. And I never thought much of any Buddha’s facial expression until I looked at this one’s — he actually seems extremely content, like he’s at peace with the world despite all the insane events that continue to happen. At least one of us has genuine hope for the future.

I haven’t talked to my parents over the phone in over a week. It’s mainly because I was scared for them to hear my voice; this is the worst I’ve ever heard my own voice, and it often hurt just to speak given how heavily coated with phlegm my vocal chords were. I didn’t want to scare them into thinking I was dying, so I just emailed my dad to let him know I was a bit under the weather and would call when I felt better and could speak. I guess this didn’t go over so well with my mom, who freaked out and thought I was dying. I eventually revealed to them that I contracted whooping cough, so of course, dad printed out Web MD articles about the most extreme cases of whooping cough, where people have broken ribs, gotten brain damage, and had to suffer from extremely violent coughing for over 100 days, and I’m sure this added to my mom’s paranoia. The important thing, I thought, was that I caught it before the 3-week mark (that’s when my doctor said you would be doomed to violent coughing for three months because it would have reached maturity in your body and at that point be indestructible), so my antibiotics would work and help cure me by Christmas day. I thought they would be happy about this, but my mom freaked out even more.

“I know who is responsible for you getting this, but I’m not going to say,” she said in her accusing tone. That’s her nice way of saying she blames Chris. “You traveled and got this in that country.” No, not really. It’s not Australia’s fault. Everyone’s immunized from it here. Colds in New York don’t just magically become whooping cough in the Southern Hemisphere. I picked it up in New York. She wouldn’t hear it, though, and insisted she was right and “has wisdom,” and that she didn’t want to hear my lies and excuses. “And why didn’t he bother calling me when he knew you were sick and I was worrying? There’s absolutely no respect here.”

You can never really win with irrationality and paranoia.

After a couple days of antiobiotics, I am slowly regaining my desire to eat, and not just plain food. I didn’t realize before researching Tasmania what a foodie mecca it is, as it is famous for its great variety of fish, high quality oysters, leatherwood honey (among other varieties), all things dairy, particularly cheese and milk, and endless different fruit orchards. We had Tasmanian oysters last night just with a drizzle of lemon, and they were by far some of the creamiest and sweetest ones I’ve ever had. We tried trevalley fish, which is a local type of white fish, and its flesh was very firm and meaty — perfect for a good searing or being coated in batter or breadcrumbs for fish and chips. We had them in both preparations and were stunned by how satisfying it was. In just one day, we visited a honey farm (and saw all the honey bees at work, along with a great education on the different roles of bees. Who would have thought that the youngest bees of the hive actually act as real “under takers,” sweeping out any and all dead bodies to keep the hive clean!); a salmon and ginseng farm (tried hot smoked salmon for the first time, as usually smoked salmon back home is raw smoked, and even had a salad dressing with ginseng spice in it, which we ended up purchasing because of how unique it was); a raspberry farm (I was ignorant of the fact that there are many varieties of raspberries, and not just due to color); an ice cream factory, and a whisky (yes, they spell it without the “e” here) distillery (wow, is hard liquor expensive in Australia!). I lamented at the end of the day that we only have less than a day left here before returning to Melbourne and realized that you could easily spend weeks exploring Tasmania (or Tassie, as everyone colloquially calls it) and still not get through everything. And that was after everyone told us how “small” Tassie was! There are wine trails, endless foodie tour routes you can take, and of course, lots of hiking with incredible bays and scenic trails you can take by car or by foot.

This is the closest we have come to Antarctica or the bottom of the earth, and who knew how overwhelming from a food perspective it would all be?

After a day of antiobiotics, I still couldn’t sleep through the night and had to wake up for my coughing fits. But when I finally did wake up fully in the morning, I found that I actually did feel different. Today, for the first time in about five days, I actually could feel that I had a throat. It’s been blocked for what felt like eternity, and now, when I swallow or clear my throat, it actually feels slightly cleared! There’s no thick coating of phlegm there this morning. I still can’t speak properly, as every time I try to speak, it hurts a little unless I increase my pitch, and it comes out sounding like I am croaking or short of breath. It’s been weird to hear my own voice like this and feel myself being challenged to breathe when I speak. But I can already feel that there is light at the end of this dark tunnel.

Despite violently coughing and vomiting up food and phlegm, there was no way in hell I was going to cancel this long weekend trip we planned to Tasmania. I could rephrase that again as, there was no way in hell that Chris would have cancelled this trip, too. Being a native Australian, he has been very embarrassed to share with others that he still hadn’t visited Tasmania, but would use the excuse of taking me to finally see it himself. This trip was happening regardless of how sick I was.

Well, we arrived. Then on the very short car ride from the airport to our hotel, Chris had to stop the car so I could vomit up more phlegm. I felt like I was going to pop out all the veins in my face at that point, so we found the nearest doctor and made an appointment. I could barely speak at that point, so every word out of my mouth took effort. At the doctor’s office, after a thorough (and croaking) discussion of my timeline of symptoms, checking my vitals, and the doctor just happening to be there at a time when I had another coughing and vomiting fit (well, she heard through the thin walls since I did this in the bathroom and not in her lap), she determined that I had contracted whooping cough and would need to immediately start a course of antibiotics specific to this highly contagious respiratory disease. I wasn’t sure if I was in heaven or in hell — in heaven because finally, someone had given me a diagnosis that made sense that would rid me of the violent fits that had been exhausting my entire body, or in hell because… who gets whooping cough, especially at my age? And also, who would have given to this to me… back in New York?!

The other amazing thing is that I’d never had to visit a doctor during any of my international travels until today, so I’d never personally been exposed to medical practices outside of the U.S. Who would have thought my first visit would be here in Tasmania, with a doctor so casual that she didn’t even tell me her last name when introducing herself and only gave her first name? She listened and was extremely patient. I can’t even remember the last time I had a doctor who had given me that much time and shown so much compassion towards me. It’s as though every time I described another symptom in the week and a half timeline, it felt like she was feeling the pain, too. She gave me her phone number and said to ring her office at any time, and let the receptionist know she specifically said she’d fit me in any day I needed to see her in the next week if needed. I was so touched and grateful. “No worries,” she responded and smiled.

And don’t even get me started on the cost. I have no traveler’s insurance, no extra insurance I paid for through my own insurance plan, yet the cost of my visit was so affordable, and the price of my antibiotics prescription so low that I know for certain that every single American back home is being screwed, some even being pushed into debt and bankruptcy because of the senseless cost of healthcare there. If I were a foreigner visiting the U.S. with the same situation, I’d be terrified to know how much my visit would have cost.. and the cost of my prescription medication. Anyone who defends the American healthcare system has zero perspective on the rest of the world and the “true cost” of healthcare. Health is a right, not a privilege. Without health, you don’t have a life.