Travelling for many months is a long and winding road: You deliberate at the forks and savour the turns, cross and re-cross paths with fellow wanderers and (sometimes when you least expect it) come out at spectacular views. And, more often than you'd like, as the road thrusts you this way and that, you scramble for your anti-nauseants.

But sometimes (even though you're abroad, and how lucky of you to be gone for so long) you just want that road—that path to diversity and culture—to lead to a beach.

True, you're technically relaxing for 7 months, but every grain of sand is gold when you've spent the past several days either scraping your feet around soiled city streets (for a lack of Malaysian sidewalks,) with heat from idling cars supplementing the muggy thirty-something degree temperatures. When your favourite sight at your last stop—Georgetown, in Penang—was old oceanfront Chinese clan houses, hovering on hodge-podge pavement stilts over a sea of mud, flopping fish, and rats. (And truly, you thought this was cool.)

You're ready to bow down and kiss the foot of every palm tree when getting there means having to ride a hot old minibus, with the driver taking his sweet time on the straight parts and somehow managing to throw you around every bend. When the only pain worse than not having taken a Gravol is knowing that you have one in the bag at your feet, but that leaning over and rifling around for it would make your urge to vomit far greater than it will ever get by you just sitting, facing forward, trying to sleep and waiting it out. When you are jerked back into nauseous consciousness to find the driver pulling over at a road-side veggie stand to pick up a quick bag of groceries.

You're so desperate you could drink in the waves when, after he's tucked his sack of onions and potatoes under the seat, the driver calls out to a lone woman on the street and, following a brief back and forth, invites her along for the ride, even though, technically, the bus is full. When you realize that you are sitting right near the sliding door, and if anyone's (mild) comfort is at stake, it's yours. When the driver invites you to pick up your bags off the ledge in front of you, and to place them in a tower on your sweaty lap, so that the woman may sit directly across from you on said ledge that was already too close to make room for your knees, before you had to turn your whole body sideways and intertwine your legs with hers to make enough room. (She banged her head on the way in, just like you did. During the ride, she'll periodically scratch at your knee, thinking it's her own.)

You'd give your spleen (even your right kidney) for a hammock when you're sitting so close to the fat, bleached-haired tourist next to you that you can feel his curly leg hairs brushing up and down and all over your calf, until eventually your skin just glues together and his leg slides sweatily over yours. When you still haven't popped your Gravol, and are now sitting sideways, and feeling worse by second, and the women starts yapping, and your neighbour begins breathing heavily (a hot and sour smell) as he attempts to dig a package out of his bag. When he opens it and out wafts the sweet rancour of an overheated yeast bun. When, between coughs, he chomps into it, and when he's done, takes out prawn flavoured chips, which he devours just the same.

Soon you're ready to abandon the whole getaway plan if you don't see signs of a beach, and out of the corner of your eye (glory of all glories) you spy a boat. But when you get closer (at your driver's preferred speed of 40km/hour) you realize that one side of it is missing, and that it's actually shipwrecked on what is very much a hill. (You'll see several more of these mirages, followed by a sign that points you towards the town you left over an hour ago—and it looks to be right around the corner.)

But, when the minibus finally ignores sidewalks and barriers, and drives onto the dock (but not off the edge of the dock) and when you peel yourself away from your fellow passengers and escape into the hot midday air—when you find yourself a nice little spot of pavement and brush aside the garbage and wait for the cargo boat to drop you (and the big bottles of beer Chang you can't wait to get your hands on as soon as your nausea passes) off on the Ko Muk pier, it all makes sense again.

Soon a motorbike side-cart will drop you off at your quaint forest “resort” and set you up (why yes, you may carry my sweaty bag for me) in a lovely fan room near an impossibly tall German couple and a family of monkeys. You won't mind that before it gets cool at night your room will be unbearably hot, or that a little ways down from your cabin door lies a massive squashed fruit—the local, putridly-smelling “durian,” your consistent nemesis on this trip. You'll prance by it without a second whiff, just to get to the emerald waters and golden sand beach.

At sunset, you'll feast on steamed fish and curried squid in a family-run cliffside restaurant overlooking the bay. You''ll laugh at how you're pretty much the only couple here that's not middle aged and not on a pricey package tour, and the beach is so empty and water so warm that how did you even find this place? You'll head back through the pitch-black woods with the dim blue light of an Casio watch guiding you and your beer buzz mixing with that of the cicadas. Eventually they'll get so loud that you won't hear each other talk, or hear yourself think, but that will be fine, because you won't need to do either.

In the morning (after your first full night's sleep in weeks) you'll forget your urban side and find new favourite things: An ocean kayak near limestone cliffs and an Emerald Cave that leads to a hidden beach oasis without the rocks. (You'll know of the oasis from brochures rather than from seeing it firsthand because, let's face it, you won't have booked a package tour and you'll chicken out when the cave goes pitch black with only the sound off deep (deep) waters splashing up against the cliffs to guide you.) A grove of rubber trees because, sort of like sap, rubber is extracted from trees and fresh sheets of rubber dry like car mats in the sun. A twelve-pack of beach mutts, beagles and bloodhounds, whose sad eyes and distinguished noses you'll find magnificently out of place nestled in the sand.

And further in town, past cute two-table shacks serving cheap Pad Thai, and signposts signaling the Tsunami Evacuation route (which seems to be somewhere towards higher ground), you'll find an elementary school in session with boys and girls running around in crisp white shirts, pressed shorts and identical haircuts (crew cuts for the boys and short bobs for the girls) because today at school is Haircut Day. (The shoulders of their shirts will still be coated with a scattering of tiny hair-ends before the breeze blows them away.)

Later, you'll recline on the beach and practice handstands in the water (yes, you still do those) and not give a second thought to the petty process of getting there. You weren't really sick of travelling—you just needed a vacation.