Dr. Calvin Sun - From the Emergency Room to 190+ Countries (American Influencer)

Dr. Calvin Sun Interview

He worked in emergency rooms during New York City’s COVID-19 crisis. He’s traveled to more than 190 countries. He’s survived cancer, written a memoir, and now — he’s running for public office. 

In this heartfelt conversation, Dr. Calvin Sun opens up about what it means to heal — as a doctor, a traveler, and a human being. From grief to leadership, from Antarctica to India, his journey shows how pain can turn into purpose.

Q. You’ve built your life between hospital emergency rooms and some of the most remote places on Earth. How has working on the medical frontlines shaped the way you travel—and the way you connect with people around the world?

Working in emergency rooms at 4 AM in the morning can feel just as remote, if not more so, than even the farthest corners of the Earth. The circumstances that bring people there every day and every night are often so distinctly hidden and separated from the daily lives we see beyond those hospital walls. They feel as uncanny and otherworldly as trying to imagine life in Nauru.

When doctors like us specialize in Emergency Medicine, we're signing up to see people at their most vulnerable. Where every day of our working life is everyone else’s worst days of their lives. It teaches you to listen hard, act fast, and connect without pretense. 

There’s no time for anything else. So when I travel, I carry that same mindset. I’m not interested in checking boxes or sightseeing just for the sake of it. I want to see people and communities as they are, sit with and witness their stories, and try to understand how they survive and thrive within systems far outside my own.

The ER renders you humble with feelings that often escape language. No matter what country or emergency room you’re in, people ultimately want the same things: dignity, connection, to be seen, and given a fighting chance. 

The emergency room has sadly become one of society’s last great equalizers. And having lived and worked in that space, especially through the worst of a pandemic, continues to guide the way I move through the world far beyond my hospital walls.

"They say you die twice: once when your heart stops, and again when the last person who remembers you is gone."

Q. Your memoir reads like a travelogue stitched with adrenaline and emotion. Was writing it a form of catharsis, legacy, rebellion—or something else entirely?

All of the above. Writing, to me, is a form of time travel. It’s how I communicate with a future version of myself reading back, while also reaching out to the person I used to be. 

They say you die twice: once when your heart stops, and again when the last person who remembers you is gone. But if you write, especially in a memoir or a book, there’s a hope that you might live beyond both deaths.

I started writing during the pandemic in case I didn’t make it out alive, even after just the first few shifts. At the time, none of us knew how it would unfold. I needed people to remember not just the healthcare workers who showed up, but what happened to us as a collective society living through our first pandemic. 

And when those who lived through it are also gone, maybe our words will remain as a testament to that spring in 2020, and what we endured together.

Since my father’s sudden death and through my first day of medical school, writing has been the only way I knew how to metabolize what I saw in the ER on a Monday, and then in the quiet moments on the road by Tuesday. It was catharsis after loss and trauma. 

It was legacy for my future kids, for strangers, for anyone who needed to know what we lived through. And it was rebellion, because I refused to let these moments be erased by time, politics, or bureaucracy.

Writing is also an act of defiance. A way to declare, to the world out there, that your existence meant something even when everything else feels meaningless. And to declare meaning in the face of meaninglessness? That, to me, is the most meaningful act we can do as human beings.

Q. You’ve traveled to over 190 countries. Is there a place that’s ever made you feel the same stillness—or chaos—as a night in emergency medicine?

Stillness - Antarctica. 

When I was a fourth-year medical student back in 2014, I had helped organize a group of 20 friends and strangers to go, and in exchange, I was given 2 free spots. And when you’re just there watching the arc of the sky above you, knowing it’s the same sky you see back home — that moment transforms you. You breathe the same air, but it hits, smells, and tastes different.

There’s something surreal about standing in the most remote corner of Earth while your everyday life continues without you back home and still knowing you’ll return to it in just a week. 

Then poof: you’re back, drinking your regular morning coffee or tea, scrolling through your photos or blog posts, and you pause to ask yourself, “Wait… I was there? That wasn’t a dream? I did that?” And the answer is: yes, you did.

Chaos: Outside my home of NYC? India. 

From Kanyakumari to Ladakh, India is constant movement, color, and contradiction. I live-blog every trip, by the way, which means I always write and post before the day ends. 

And now, reading those entries I wrote in India, I realize that every single day there uncovered a new story, a fresh encounter, a chance meeting with a twin flame, or an uncanny brush with kismet. The frequency of serendipity was relentless, like it always has been for me having been born, raised, and living in NYC.

So, given the premise of your question — stillness and chaos — Antarctica and India mirror the ER in their own ways. Antarctica feels like that 6:15 AM moment in the emergency room, when the chaos has passed, the adrenaline has worn off.

And you're alone with your thoughts outside the ambulance bay, breathing in the morning dew, watching the arc of the dawn above you, knowing it’s the same night sky you began your shift with, thinking of your patients’ final dispositions before the next team arrives.

India is the beginning of a shift: unpredictable, full of humanity, and demanding your full presence. You rely on intuition to navigate it, to stay safe, to help others, to feel everything as it unfolds. 

And like the ER, it rewards you with encounters that stay with you. By the time your head hits the pillow, you feel like you’ve earned the next day. No turning back. That’s fulfillment.

Both places showed me how thin the line is between yin and yang, between control and surrender — and how fully alive you feel when you live, work, and walk that thin middle line.

"From Kanyakumari to Ladakh, India is constant movement, color, and contradiction."

Q. Monsoon Diaries began with a simple idea: spontaneous, fearless travel. What moment made you realize it had evolved into a movement and not just a blog?

When complete strangers started showing up for trips, and kept coming back with more of their friends. The turning point was probably Iran, around 13 years ago, back in April 2012. That was the first time I realized people weren’t just following a travel blog; they were trusting me to guide them through countries the media had told them to fear.

So they were looking for more than another trip, something personally and even societally transformational. And they found each other through it. 

That was also that trip where my group first started calling themselves monsooners. I still remember hearing that word in the background. That moment hit different. It wasn’t just mine anymore. It had become ours.

Q. You lead trips for people who “hate group travel”—what’s your secret sauce for creating community among strangers who crave independence?

I put the trip out there: no marketing, no ad budget. Just a simple post, and leave it there. And I make it obvious that even if nobody signs up, I’m still going (because I have, and I will). 

It’s never been about the money. It never will be. And funny enough the less you do it for the money, the more people want to come and gladly pay to join you.

That’s because people are craving authenticity. They don’t want to pay for a prepackaged story; they want to write their own. So I let the trip do the choosing like a sorting hat: The trip chooses its people. 

And somewhere between “A weekend in Bulgaria,” “2 days in Isle of Man,” and “New Year’s in Nauru,” people begin to unravel during the trip, often subconsciously and indirectly, what unspeakable thread has connected them all.

Once they arrive to begin the adventure, I let people be themselves. I build the skeleton: the dates, the logistics, the loose itinerary, the spots we might eat at, even backup plans in case of weather or closures. 

But once the group enters the space, I leave them to co-create the rest. No flag-waving tour guides. No forced bonding. Just space to be vulnerable, to be brave, to be curious, to be real.

And every night, I write a blog post recapping the day so I myself and everyone feels seen. That live storytelling combined with the shared risk of showing up for something unknown, can build intimacy fast. The “group” soon becomes a byproduct of genuine individual growth.

That’s the secret: don’t manufacture connection. Instead, foster the environment that makes room for it.

"Transforming from a doctor into a patient teaches you how to brace for loss."

Q. In both medicine and travel, grief and healing are recurring themes. What’s a moment from your journeys that cracked you open emotionally, in ways a hospital never could?

The Dolomites. I had just been diagnosed with cancer and flown out there 7 days after my entire right kidney was removed during an unexpected radical nephrectomy. One night, I stood under an expanse of mountains and yet-unseen stars, and I thought about how short and cosmic our lives really are.

Transforming from a doctor into a patient teaches you how to brace for loss; regular travel outside your bubbles at home teaches you how to feel it. That moment cracked something open: grief, yes, but also a deeper acceptance of how much beauty there is, even in endings.

“Sometimes, simply declaring “I don’t know,” and still moving in the direction that feels right: that’s the bravest thing you can do.”

Q. From working on the frontlines during the pandemic to navigating border closures, your journey hasn’t been without resistance. What’s the hardest decision you’ve had to make?

Walking away a little more from emergency medicine, at least temporarily for now, after my cancer diagnosis. That job had been my identity for over a decade. But I realized I couldn’t be there for others if I wasn’t present for myself. 

What grounded me was the belief that healing doesn’t always mean fighting; sometimes it means yielding, listening, and letting others help. 

And now, as I’ve been asked to run for public office, I see that stepping back from the ER allowed me to step up in a different way: to fight upstream, where policy is written and the future of our patients is shaped.

The other hardest decision was becoming a doctor in the first place.

I gave up on medicine as a 19-year-old pre-med after my father died suddenly, 19 years ago. My mom had also just been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and all of a sudden, on June 10, 2006, I was alone. 

I walked away from medicine because I knew that’s what he had wanted—not necessarily what I wanted. After two years of college and another two after graduating, I worked odd jobs and bartended. 

But one day, I was confronted with a realization: giving up on medicine because of my father meant that my life was still tied to him; in other words, my destiny was still tethered to his absence. I was still “choosing" him by not choosing medicine.

A few weeks later, I lost a bet and ended up in Egypt within the week. I didn’t even care for travel at the time. It was just to prove to her (the person I lost the bet to) that I was a man of my word. That I’d always follow through. 

3 weeks later, I returned home, and something clicked. I came back loving travel. And I realized: I couldn’t have judged the concept without having done it in the first place. And maybe I couldn’t judge medicine without giving it one last shot.

Despite a sub-average GPA and MCAT score, I applied to over 25 medical schools thinking I’d get rejected everywhere. But then one school said yes. I opened the envelope that October day in 2009 and let out the longest curse word (out of surprise, not anger) I’ve ever said. 

And suddenly, I was juggling how to be both a medical student and a travel blogger with no financial safety net, hundreds of thousands in student debt, and no father or working mother to fall back on. But I didn’t want to give up either. I’m a man of my word, and I’ll always follow through.

For 7 years, I lived both doubting and reveling in uncertainty (depending on how well I was getting by in medical school and residency), never quite sure if I’d made the right choice. Until one day, as a 3rd-year resident, I woke up and realized: I did the right thing all along. 

Sometimes, it’s okay not to know in the moment. Sometimes, simply declaring “I don’t know,” and still moving in the direction that feels right: that’s the bravest thing you can do.

Over time, those little steps add up. And when you look back, you realize: thank you, future self. Thank you, past self. Thank you to everything above and within that got me here.

Let go, and you’re let go.

About Dr.Calvin Sun

Dr. Calvin Sun is a board-certified emergency physician, author, public speaker, and founder of The Monsoon Diaries, a global travel community and storytelling platform that has explored over 190 countries across all 7 continents.

A lifelong New Yorker, Calvin led emergency room teams across NYC during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, managing multiple ERs, overseeing frontline staff, and witnessing firsthand both the failures and the potential of our healthcare system.

His memoir, published by HarperCollins — The Monsoon Diaries: A Doctor’s Journey of Hope and Healing from the ER Frontlines to the Far Reaches of the World — chronicles a decade-long odyssey through medicine, loss, grief, and rediscovery. It’s a story about showing up: for strangers, for yourself, and for a world that often forgets what healing really takes.

He is currently a first-time candidate for Manhattan Borough President, driven by the belief that the same urgency, presence, context, circumstances, and foresight required to save a life at 4 AM in an ER should be applied to the policies that shape our neighborhoods. His work bridges the personal with the political, proving that healing — whether in medicine, community, or policy — starts with listening and acting before it’s too late.

Follow Dr.Calvin on Instagram

Interviewed By Irene Elina Eldhose

Dr. Calvin Sun’s journey reminds us that healing isn’t linear — it’s layered, defiant, and deeply human.

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