“I can’t breathe. I can’t stop coughing. I have to get out of here asap.”

That was 7:00pm. I had phoned Evelind while wearing my pajamas and facemask. The next day, Evelind and Michael drove me to Chiang Mai.

I had to leave Warm Heart. My cough for the past month suddenly got worse. Months of inhaling poisonous, toxic air had wreaked such damage that I was gasping and couldn’t breathe.

Burning season.

I didn’t know that I would be living in the thick of active, burning crops. I didn’t recognize the near fatal symptoms. The only protection proffered was to wear a PM2.5 mask—which I did—even while sleeping. I wore it so relentlessly that I ended up with a secondary wound—abrasions on my neck. What I needed was a full hazmat suit with gas mask. What I needed was to evacuate out of there.

My skin hurt—outside and inside, as if I soaked in chili juice head-to-toe. Or I had drank and rinsed in undiluted bleach. I suffered stinging eyes and migraine-like splitting headaches. My throat and lungs felt and still feel charred and scarred. I came to Warm Heart with healthy lungs. Unfortunately, I left with a lung pathology; with cough, and lesions in my throat and chest. Red capillary veins appeared on my cheeks, a result of asphyxiation. The veins are still present on my face.

The poisonous type

On my 2nd-to-last night, while I was showering, a snake emerged from underneath the tap. I nearly touched it because at the very moment it was uncoiling, I had turned on the water. I noticed something bulging and moving. Long and thin, black with white stripes—it slithered along the exposed PVC pipe and disappeared into a hole in the corner of the bathroom. I immediately texted my colleagues who agreed it was the poisonous type. Thank God this time I was not lathered in soap and shampoo, and able to make a quick escape.

The snake was the least of my problems.

The signs were pointing: the cooks trying to kill me with deep fried egg yolks and fatty meat (clearly not understanding “low cholesterol please”); the Warm Heart dog—who it turns out—is not domesticated and bites (he bit a volunteer who tried to pet him), in combination with the poisonous environment—it was time to go.

Thus my intention to volunteer for one year came to an abrupt and unceremonious end.