Soundtrack: river ferries / ceiling fan hum / distant temple bells / the hiss of street grills
🎧 Audio version read by me available below for paid subscribers
I almost didn’t go.
Paris to Bangkok felt like too big a leap — not just geographically, but psychologically. I’d been to enough European cities by then. I knew how to navigate cobblestone streets and metro systems and menus I couldn’t quite read, but could mostly figure out. Europe made sense to me. Or at least it pretended to.
But Southeast Asia? I didn’t know the language. I couldn’t read the script. I didn’t know the unwritten rules — how to greet people, how to negotiate prices, whether it was rude to point or touch or make eye contact.
I was afraid of looking stupid. Of being lost. Of sweating through my carefully curated wardrobe in the first hour.
But I bought the ticket anyway.
The heat hit me the second I stepped outside Suvarnabhumi Airport.
It wasn’t weather. It was architecture. It surrounded me, pressed into me, followed me indoors. I’d never experienced anything like it. The humidity was physical — a weight on my skin, in my lungs, between my clothes and my body.
Nothing I brought was right.
My jeans clung to my legs. My shirt was dark with sweat before I even reached the train. I was carrying a jacket — a jacket! — because Paris had been cool when I left and I thought I might need it. I didn’t. I kept it with me, tucked it under my arm while moving through airports, adding weight and heat every time I traveled. I wouldn’t wear it again until Hanoi in December. But I wasn’t leaving it behind.
By the time I got to my apartment in Bang Sue, I looked like I’d been swimming. My shirt was stuck to my back, sweat pooling at my collar. I went straight for the AC and didn’t leave until night.
That’s when I learned the heat doesn’t stop. At 9 p.m. I was sweating the same way I had at noon. The humidity doesn’t care what time it is.
