My Bikini Tie and Mai Tais
Fun fact about me. I have a viral video featuring a bikini malfunction, caused by an adorable puppy. It currently has 8.6 million views on my YouTube channel. This will be my first written public statement on the whole experience, the highs and lows, and how it changed me as a person.
Let’s back way up. One late summer evening in San Francisco, my boyfriend and I were sitting on my couch drinking a beer, and lazily strumming our guitars. Somehow we started chatting about Thailand, and how fun it would be to backpack through the country with our guitar for a couple months.
In classic Kendra and Mark fashion we opened up my computer, looked at each other with a crazy grin, and immediately booked 2 one way tickets to Thailand.
We sublet our apartments, quit our jobs, and packed our belongings into one backpack and one guitar case. That sounds so insane now that I think about it but hey, it was 2014 and we had just started officially dating a few months before.
Next thing you know we were troll-aping through Thailand, filming music videos, and booking small shows along the way to pay for our room and board.
After a brief time in Bangkok we decided to head to the beaches. We selected a random bus that had a beautiful destination photo on it and hopped right on in. When we arrived on the small island we selected a tiny little wooden TP on a white sand beach, as our home for the next week.
We decided that our project for that location would be recording a live version of Part of Your World from the Little Mermaid, and film a goofy video to go with it. Duh.
There was this very fluffy puppy that lived at the boutique we were staying at, and it was always getting up to no good. One time it stole my sunglasses for an entire afternoon, but it was cute so I let him get away with it.
While we were shooting one of the scenes to our mermaid video, I decided to take a little water break and relax on the sand in my bathing suit. I sat down cross legged and took a big sip of water and closed my eyes, soaking in the rays.
Suddenly I felt a tug on my bikini string, I tried to turn around but couldn't see where the pull was coming from. The tug became stronger, and I grabbed my little lady lumps with both hands so as to keep my top in place.
Scrambling up to my knees I swiveled around to see the little fluffy white puppy shaking his head vigorously, my bikini string between his teeth.
I let out a squeal, and so began the dance between boobies and puppy. It was straight out of a coppertone advertisement.
Mark heard my scream and came running over. When he saw me and the puppy spinning in circles in the sand locked in our epic battle, he burst into laughter. Being the prince charming he is, he instantly started filming with my phone camera.
It was a pretty hilarious situation to be in, on the one hand I didn't really care if the puppy won, as you may have read in a previous blog post, I’m not shy about my boobs.
But this was Thailand, and I didn’t want to be culturally insensitive. Plus I really hate losing, so I tightened my grip on my breasticles and tried to outmaneuver the silly pup.
At this point I was all giggles and disbelief. Mark was laughing so much he could barely breathe behind the camera.
But dude! The little devil would not let up! He was quite determined and eventually I crumpled down onto the sand, at which point he somehow got BOTH bikini strings in his greedy little mouth.
As the puppy tried to crawl on top of me and grab on to the top itself, I knew I was going to lose.
The girlies would be freed from my rainbow striped bikini top that I had bought at Ross for $3 dollars, in a matter of seconds. The pup’s little claws hurt on my bare stomach and I let out a whimper, to which Mark finally put the phone down and came to my rescue.
Mark scooped up the rascal, giving the fur on his head a ruffle that seemed more like a congratulatory handshake to me, and sent him on his scampering way down the beach to terrorize the next guest.
We laughed as I collected myself, and then Mark showed me the video.
I had to admit it was pretty hilarious, so after checking that I miraculously did not have any nip slips, I posted it on my facebook wall so my friends and family could have a laugh. I then signed off of the slow wifi, and we continued filming our music video.
The next day I signed back on to hundreds of likes, comments, and shares on my facebook. Wow I thought, 10,000 views is a lot for such a silly video. Then I saw the emails from marketing companies wanting to buy the video from me. The offers were pretty low, but I had about $500 dollars in my bank account at this point and for sure could have used the money.
One company said they would split any revenue with my 50/50, so I agreed. I figured maybe I’d make a couple hundred bucks off of it, which goes a long way in Thailand. I uploaded it to my personal YouTube channel, logged off wifi, and thought nothing more of it. Mark and I didn’t check our phones or email for another 10 days.
During that time, completely unbeknown to us, two unbelievable things were beginning to happen.
One, our silly puppy video was going completely viral.
Two, Mark and I were coming down with Dengue Fever.
What is Dengue Fever you ask? Honestly, you don’t wanna know the details, it is freakin terrible.
Also known as ‘Break Bone Fever’, you basically get bit by an infected mosquito, get a scary high fever, accompanied by headaches, vomiting, muscle and joint pains, and a terrifying skin rash. It can be deadly.
Obviously we survived, but here is how the nightmare went.
Mark came down with the fever first.
We were prepared for food poisoning, hangovers, and sunburns, but there was nothing helpful in our small backpack for this. Mark was getting weaker and weaker by the hour and eventually couldn't even leave our bed.
I had enough basic training to know to keep him as hydrated as possible, put ice towels on his head, and give him the pain killers I had with us.
But when I went to replace the ice towel, it was boiling hot, and Mark seemed to be getting more and more delirious.
The wifi had gone out on our section of the island, so I went and asked the owner of our bungalow if there was a hospital or doctor nearby, there was not. She said there was a small drug store on the other side of the Island but that was it.
So I started my trek to the drug store, which really was more like a hut. Through basically a round of elaborate charades, I was able to explain to the guy that I needed something for a fever. He gave me some pills and a big jar of tiger balm. Apparently tiger balm fixes everything.
When I got back to the hut I gave Mark the acetaminophen, and forced him to drink more coconut water. I was scared, he was so weak I had to help him walk to use the restroom and I couldn't get him to eat anything.
The worst part was that every minute or so he would have pain and spasms in various parts of his body that would jolt him out of sleep. Despite all of this Mark managed to stay in good spirits, constantly apologizing that I had to take care of him.
I told myself I would make him as comfortable as possible that night, and if his fever didn’t break by the morning I would figure out how to get us evacuated to the bigger island.
I gave him some more medicine, and stayed up next to him singing lullabies, replacing the cold cloth, and when the muscle spasms woke him up, forcing him to drink more water.
Around sunrise I noticed the cloth was getting cooler and cooler. I let myself doze, and when the waves outside our hut woke me up a few hours later, Mark was sitting up reading a book.
I’d never felt so relieved. He was still weak, but we were sure the worst was over, and Mark wanted us to move on to our next destination.
We took a boat to the next island where we were to stay for the following week. The resort was even more remote than the previous one, with its own beautiful private beach, and only one restaurant on our side of the island.
As we checked into our second little hut I started feeling strange. But I shook it off thinking it was just the stress of Mark being sick finally hitting me.
Hours later I was deep in the hell that Mark had just gone through.
I’ve had fevers before, but this one was different. Every bone in my body felt like it was connected to a taser machine, and some sick bastard would wait until I was almost asleep and then select a part of my body to electrocute.
I realized Mark, bless his heart, must have been playing it tough. Even though he was still recovering himself, he took such good care of me. Now he was the one forcing me to swallow pills and drink water out of cold coconuts, and reading me stories and singing me songs. The cloth on my head was always cold, and he did a much better job at entertaining me and making me smile or laugh.
Eventually my fever broke as well, and we both managed to make it to the dining area to eat some food. We chatted excitedly about our next plans, anxious to put this whole fever thing behind us.
That night I woke up in a panic. The palms of my hands and feet were in searing pain.
It felt like fire ants were chewing their way through my skin, which was covered in a very faint red and white rash.
Mark tried washing my hands, looked for any signs of a bug bite and gave me an allergy pill. But it only got worse. I was hysterical, I thought I’d be in pain like that for the rest of my life. Mark tried to take me on a walk on the moonlit beach to calm me down, but the bottom of my feet were so tender and in so much pain that I could barely take a few steps. He carried me back inside and forced me to do yoga breathing until I calmed down.
The pain ebbed and flowed, but at some point I was able to fall asleep again.
I woke up in the morning to Mark staring at the palm of his hands, now also covered in the faint rash. What in the actual hell was going on.
At this point we both decided we needed help, and possibly a plane ride back home never to adventure again.
I dug out the tiger balm from my backpack and rubbed the solvent all over our hands and feet.
Wow, instant relief.
I started tearing up because it felt so soothing, and so we were able to sleep.
Once we felt well enough Mark said we had to make it to the water. I refused to walk, wincing at every step, so he carried me down to the shore, and we floated in the salt water for hours. It was such a surreal experience being in so much pain in one of the most beautiful places.
There was one worker at the resort that spoke english and we tracked him down, limping around in our socks.
We explained what was going on, to which he went into the back room and came out with yet another tub of tiger balm. Fair.
By standing on the table in the far end of the resort we were able to get one bar of wifi.
It worked just enough to google our symptoms, to which we instantly found out, we had Dengue Fever.
I had attempted sending a message to my parents right before we left the previous island, listing the symptoms that Mark had.
Now I could see it had gone through and my mom had responded back saying:
“I think it’s Dengue Fever, if you guys start throwing up get to a hospital immediately.”
I texted back quickly that we were alive and okay, and then the wifi cut out.
As we read the article on the tropical disease, we became less and less scared. Line by line we read the exact description of what we had been through. Apparently the bizarre rash and skin inflammation was a sign that the fever was on its way out of our bodies. There is a pivotal moment with Dengue after the fever breaks, where you can either start vomiting and potentially die, or you get a weird rash and live on for the next epic adventure.
Thankfully we were the latter.
Now that we knew we were on the mend we relaxed, and spent the next few days recovering in the sand and waves. We even shot a couple scenes for our next music video, looking a little like skeletons, but oh well.
Finally we felt strong enough to move on to our next destination, and headed back to civilization.
On the boat ride to the mainland I looked over at Mark. We hadn’t said the ‘I love you’s’ yet, but I knew in that moment as I thought back on how well we had cared for each other, and had kept our spirits up in the worst of times, that I was falling in love with him.
Little did I know we were about to go through another very unexpected experience together.
We made it to civilization and wifi a couple days later and dove into our phones. I know we’ve all said our phones are blowing up before, but my phone was fo realz blowing up. I had so many incoming text messages, emails, voicemails, instagrams, facebooks, and whatsapps that my phone started crashing.
I didn’t know where to start. I started panicking that something terrible had happened, when Mark looked up from his phone with the same confused face and said:
“My Dad just texted that a video of you is on the AOL homepage, and the front page of reddit.”
Sure enough, there I was, twirling around half naked on the beach, adorbs puppy in tow.
I clicked on my YouTube video, there were millions of views and hundreds of comments. At first I panicked, thinking that I had somehow done something wrong. Then I started reading all of the excited (albeit confused) messages from family and friends about how they had just seen me on Good Morning America, and CNN, and Barstool Sports, and I relaxed a little.
Mark and I spent the rest of the day sorting through all of the inquiries, and responding to the important ones. The video was all over the world.
I was feeling completely overwhelmed and also starting to feel embarrassed about millions of people seeing me so exposed.
I clicked on the video, and started scrolling through the comments.
Oh my god. They were brutal. Sure, for every scathing comment there were dozens of positive ones, but I zoned in on the scary ones and my heart sank.
Now, like everyone I’d had my battles with body image over the years, but to be honest I had pretty high self esteem at the time. I worked hard to maintain a physique based off of what I thought other people would find attractive, and considered myself in pretty good shape.
Up until this point no one had ever said anything hurtful or mean to me about my appearance, and I think I had let that fact go to my head a little bit. But boy was I knocked down a peg, (or 20), as I sat there on my bed in Thailand essentially reading the results of a poll on my physical appearance created by one million strangers.
In some comments I was declared anorexic. In other comments I was called all variants of the word fat. I had a mediocre body and ugly face. My teeth were too big. My ass was non existent.
Then they started attacking my art. I was a bad singer, my songwriting was terrible, and I basically had zero talent. There was a whole thread on how I had staged the entire video just to promote my crappy music.
And then it got weird. People were accusing me of animal abuse, and every religion said I was going to hell.
Finally after reading a comment that said:
“You are an untalented musician with average looks, just go shoot yourself in the head”
I shut my computer, slowly got into the shower. And sobbed.
But as I stood there in the water crying and trying to figure out if I was in fact a terrible singer, and how the hell one can be both too skinny and too fat, my tears began morphing into laughter.
I realized in that moment that I sort of felt more free than I ever had before. And that’s when I learned a really important lesson that I should have figured out a long time ago.
You just can’t please everyone. Some people will find you beautiful and others will find you unattractive. Some humans will love what you create and others will honestly hate it.
So why not just say screw it and work to please only yourself.
I can honestly say from that day on I’ve had a very different mindset when it comes to my music and my physical appearance. A much healthier one.
I write songs that sound good to ME, and that make ME feel something. If other people don’t like it, I could care less, what I love most about music is the process of creation. That is what fulfills me. Everything else is a bonus.
And as for my appearance; I started working out, eating, and styling myself in ways that I personally found most attractive, and that made ME feel good inside and out.
After the shower cry day I stopped reading the video comments. Any mean texts or emails that would sneak through I started to find hilarious. Some people sure do have a lot of time on their hands. Mark would sort through the comments occasionally, deleting or reporting anything that would be offensive or hurtful to someone.
I decided the viral video was actually a really great thing. Not only was I learning a lot about myself, but we did gain some loyal new fans of our music.
Even better we made a decent chunk of money off the royalties, that ended up paying for our entire 3 month trip.
I did all sorts of interviews via Skype for TV shows and blogs, and even was featured on a Japanese game show.
The viral video still haunts me to this day, but in a good way. A couple times over the years it has popped up on big screens behind me, and routinely makes appearances on reddit and barstool sports.
My friends love to whip it out for strangers at parties, and I have probably told this story a hundred times.
Anytime the video resurfaces I smile and remember my epic adventure in Thailand, and how I fell in love with my now husband, and also learned to better love myself.
So in honor of my viral beachy debut, I decided to collaborate on a Skinny Mai Tai recipe with my best bud Remington.
Let me tell you, if you find yourself in an unexpected situation and want to take the edge off, a couple of these will do the trick.
Bikini Puppy Girl Out.
P.S.
Invest in some tiger balm, that shit really does help everything.
Kendra and Remington’s Skinny Mai Tai Recipe
Ingredients:
Dark Cherries
Fresh Pineapple
Almond Extract
Monk Fruit (Can use Agave or Honey)
Fresh Lime Juice
Fresh Orange Juice
White Rum
Dark Rum
Mint for Garnish
Pit and quarter two dark cherries. In a shaker muddle cherries together with 2 slices of pineapple, ¼ teaspoon almond extract, and ¼ teaspoon monk fruit or sweetener of choice. Add in 1 oz fresh lime juice, 1 oz fresh orange juice, 1 oz white rum, and ice. Shake shake shake. Pour over ice through the strainer or straight into the glass. Add more ice if needed then float .5 oz dark rum on top. Garnish with fruit slices and mint. Serving for one. Double or triple recipe as needed.