Beyond the Bucket List: Thailand
The story isn't really about eating squirrel. It's about the ordinary moments that changed how I see travel.
by Lindsay Eldridge · Sun 12 Jul 2026
Note: I found these physical photos of our trip and couldn't resist snapping a photo of them with my phone to include them here. Physical photos!
A couple of nights ago, I was telling my daughter about an experience I had in a remote Thai village when I was in my early twenties.
I'd flown to Thailand to spend three months working for a company that led adventure and service-learning trips for high school students. We traveled throughout the country, taking students into villages where few, if any, people spoke English.
Some of our service projects were genuinely helpful. In one village, we drained the community's water tank, climbed inside, and scrubbed years of algae off the walls so they could refill it with clean rainwater. Others were a little less impactful, like teaching English for a day.
One of my favorite memories, though, happened before the first group of students even arrived.
The week before they landed, I traveled around Thailand with the Thai team, visiting each village we'd soon return to with the students. We'd meet with the village leaders and ask, "We'll be back next week. Is there anything your community would like help with?" Then we'd gather whatever supplies were needed before the trip began.
My co-leader's name was Koko. He spoke English and several Thai dialects and somehow seemed to know everyone. He handled the conversations with the village leaders and kept the entire program running. Looking back, I realize how unusual that week was. We drove into places I never could have found on my own. I couldn't communicate with most of the people we met, but I never once felt unsafe. They welcomed me into their routines and showed me a side of Thailand I'd never have experienced otherwise.
We woke up before sunrise to go to the markets and buy food to offer the monks. We'd stop along the side of the road for sticky rice and eat at tiny restaurants they loved. At the time, I was determined to prove I could handle spicy food. Eventually one of them laughed and said, "You can eat Thai hot." I remember feeling ridiculously proud.
I also mastered a handful of Thai phrases. One day, Koko patiently waited while I slowly hopped down a couple hundred stairs below a temple at a snail's pace, carefully saying the Thai word for each number as we descended.
I remember thinking that learning another language gives you permission to be a kindergartner again. You point. You stumble over words. You celebrate tiny victories, like counting to one hundred or ordering lunch correctly. It's humbling, and a ton of fun in my opinion. Below is a photo of Koko and Whitney, my friend who came to visit that summer after work was over.
A little later that summer, we took one of our adventure groups into a tiny mountain village. We stayed in simple cabins, spent evenings in a riverside sauna the villagers had built, and explored the river by hopping from boulder to boulder.
One night we sat down for dinner with our hosts. Everyone was gathered in a circle on the floor. When you're sitting in a circle on the floor in a remote village, sharing a meal someone prepared for you, there isn't really a menu. You eat what's offered.
I took a bite of something that immediately didn't sit right. As I chewed, I noticed it was incredibly crunchy in a way I'd never experienced before. I swallowed it and my body brought it right back up. That was mortifying, and I quietly swallowed it again. I wasn't about to embarrass our hosts.
After dinner, I leaned over to Koko and asked what I'd just eaten. He asked the family. "Squirrel," he said. "They used the bones, too". That explained the crunch.
My daughter could not believe this story. Honestly, I still can't either. It's funny how travel works. The bucket-list moments are often incredible, but twenty years later, it's the unexpected moments I remember most clearly. Somehow, a squirrel dinner became a reminder of an entire season of my life.
I loved that village so much that when my friend Whitney came to visit me in Thailand later, I took her back. I knew what we were doing, and where this group of Thai guides would take us and she definitely did not. It was so cool to see the whole adventure again through her eyes, homemade riverside sauna included.
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