The Money Got Me the Ticket. Sober Friends Are Getting Me Ready.

This is part 2 of a three-part story: the fund that paid for it, the prep you're reading now, and the trip itself.

A few weeks ago I was showing off my October plans, and instead of "that sounds amazing," a couple of my friends asked the same quieter question: okay, but have you failproofed it?

If you read The Dream Vacation Fund, you know how I got here. I got sober, stopped pouring money into nights I couldn't remember, and turned that into a plane ticket. Saving the money turned out to be the easy part.

Here's the other thing that story now says out loud: I drank on that trip. Nearly a year sober going in, and it broke on the flight, of all places, before I ever landed. Then a few nights out there. That first trip was a let's-do-it. I planned the money carefully and the staying-steady part hardly at all. I've been sober since I got home in February, and the months since are the best proof I've got: heads down, building this site and the app, a new job, mornings I get to keep. My name is on all of this now. And the honest reason I built the app was never just to help other people plan sober trips. It was so I'd have the system I winged last time. I'm my own first user. I want this trip 100%. Not mostly.

Where I'm going

In November I'm going from Bangkok to Luang Prabang the slow way: overnight train to Chiang Mai, up to the border, then two days on a Mekong slow boat with a night in Pak Beng before the river finally drops me in Luang Prabang. The whole reason is the library there and their Library Boats, getting books out to kids along the water. I want to see it and help in person instead of from a keyboard in Florida.

It's four or five days of mostly moving, a lot of it with no signal and no schedule I control. Part of me loves that. And part of me knows that "part of me loves that" is exactly the thing to keep an eye on. New country, long stretches alone, far from anything that resembles a routine. So under all the excitement there's an honest question: am I taking on too much?

So I asked the people who'd know

Here's something true about me: I didn't take the formal recovery route myself. I don't have a path with a name. But a lot of the people I trust most did. Friends who've been at this a lot longer and a lot more seriously than I have. When I've got a question about staying steady, they're who I call.

So I called them. I asked all of them the same thing: if you were me, days on a river, no signal, what would you actually worry about?

Their answers weren't dramatic, which is why they landed:

Don't isolate. Not because being alone is dangerous, but because choosing to be alone when you're low is the move that comes right before trouble.

Have people you can actually reach, in more than one time zone. "I'll just text someone" doesn't work at 2 a.m. in Pak Beng if your someone is asleep in Florida.

Decide what you'll do when it goes sideways before it goes sideways.

And the one that stung a little: don't romanticize "I can handle anything." That thought is usually talking right before something goes wrong. And it happens to be my voice.

What I'm actually putting in place

So here's what's going in the notebook before I fly.

A short list of people, ranked by who's awake when, so someone's always reachable.

The first few nights booked instead of winged: Bangkok & Chiang Mai

A simple "bad night" plan. The first three things I do if I'm struggling, decided now, so I don't have to think my way there in the moment.

Something to fill the long quiet hours on the boat, because boredom is its own kind of risk.

A plan for the long flight itself, decided now, because a flight is where it went wrong last time. It gets its own list.

And the money stays protected. That's the whole reason any of this exists.

None of it is complicated. It's just boring on purpose.

What I'm not going to do

Here's the other half, and it matters just as much.

I'm not going to turn this trip into a bubble. I'm not going to dodge every place that serves a drink (that's most of Southeast Asia, and it'd mean seeing none of it). I'm not going to spend five days on a river thinking about not drinking.

Getting sober was never about getting smaller. It was about getting the mornings and the memory and the money back, and going somewhere with them.

Then go find out

So that's where I am. I fly in November. It was going to be October, and honestly, this prep is part of why it moved. A month of margin beats a rushed departure. The list is made, the people are lined up, and the plan is boring by design. Now I go find out.

To the friends who've done the real work of getting and staying sober, and then picked up the phone when I called: thank you. You're the reason I felt ready to book it.

I'll tell you how the river treats me from the other side.

The Mekong Trip · A Three-Part Story

Part 1 · The HowThe Dream Vacation FundThe money story that started it

Part 2 · The NowSober Friends Are Getting Me ReadyYou're reading this one

Part 3 · The PlanBangkok to Luang Prabang the Slow WayNext: the route, day by day