Founder of We Care · Phuket, Thailand
“After many years living and working in Southeast Asia, I know how overwhelming a medical emergency abroad can be. My role is simple: when everything becomes confusing, I become your local point of contact.”
My connection to Southeast Asia goes back more than thirty years. Since 1992 I have travelled the region the way few people do. With a backpack. On a motorbike. Far from the usual tourist routes.
Those years gave me adventures, lifelong friendships and a real feel for these countries and the people in them. They also taught me how fast everything can change when something goes wrong a long way from home.
Backpack on, often on two wheels, usually off the main roads. I came to know Southeast Asia from its back lanes and small towns, not from a hotel lobby.
That kind of travel is a gift. It also puts you in places where help is far away, where you learn quickly how much one reliable person can matter.
I was on Koh Phi Phi when the tsunami struck. In a few minutes, everything was gone. I lost everything I had with me and found myself in the middle of the chaos, helping injured survivors however I could.
That day showed me how fast anyone can end up depending on the people around them, and how much it matters when someone simply stays, and helps.
Years later, on a solo trip to Panama, I became seriously ill. The hospital said dengue. I only got worse: fever above forty degrees, hard chills, weight falling off me. I was alone in a foreign country, and neither the doctors nor I had enough of each other’s language to really talk.
I was frightened and running out of options. By pure chance I met someone whose father spoke fluent Spanish, and together they helped me get a flight home. I collapsed during the stopover in Atlanta. I made it to Germany and straight into a tropical medicine clinic, where they finally found the cause. Not dengue. Malaria.
That is when I understood, from the inside, how much communication, local support and medical coordination matter when you are sick and far from home.
Later, a serious motorbike accident put me through six operations and more than four weeks in hospital. I left in a wheelchair, with a long recovery in front of me.
Once again I was the one who needed help. From doctors, nurses, family, friends, and complete strangers. I have not forgotten what that felt like.
More than thirty years of travel in Southeast Asia. Several medical emergencies. Disaster response. And firsthand knowledge of what travellers need when things go wrong far from home.
We Care was not dreamed up in a boardroom. It grew out of decades of travel, real emergencies, and one simple lesson: I have needed help myself, and I have been there when others needed it.
Today I am based in Thailand, the country I love most. When you contact We Care, you are not reaching a call centre. You are reaching someone who knows how overwhelming it is to be hurt, ill or stranded abroad, and how much it changes things to have one trusted person by your side.
If you or someone you love runs into trouble in Thailand or Southeast Asia, Daniel is one message away.
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