Bangkok

Return to Thailand

In Bangkok, life slows down. After the rushed and emotional week in Cambodia, a visit to Thailand feels like a breath of hot, fresh air.

Maybe not so fresh.

Maybe just different.

I’ve been here before, and so in Bangkok, there is no rush to see the tourist things or really do anything. Even in Hanoi, after a while, we skipped the sites and preferred to spend the days getting to know the alleyways of the Old Quarter. 

In Bangkok, in a new-to-us neighbourhood deemed “New Chinatown,” we do laundry and start the day off slow. My self-esteem is in the proverbial shitter and I don’t want to be perceived. On the roof of the bizarrely artsy hotel I want to read in peace but am instead subjected to the screeching giggles of a nearly pornographic photoshoot happening in all corners around the pool but not in it. I long, at times, for the creature comforts of home — two months away will do that to you — but I also dread the return, back to Toronto, its overpriced food, grey skies, and litter.

Bangkok has changed and that is alright. It’s nice to revisit. I would relocate here, but I’ve lived in Asia before and I know how difficult the time zone makes life. I still have work to finish in EST, even if my heart is aching in Indochina.

I walk down the sweltering streets and buy an iced green tea from a vendor for under a dollar, a drink which, at home, would render me five dollars poorer. Plus tax.

I just finished filing my corporate taxes for 2023 and I am flabbergasted.

I forgot what day of the week it was and so I am writing this on Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever it is instead of Sunday or Monday. I am thinking of writing these more “in the moment,” like sitting down every Monday to write them instead of pre-writing them during the week, making them more spontaneous in that way, but I am not sure that I can really commit to that, but maybe I should. I still write them because even when I don’t feel like writing, I get to an I have to so I can continue. I wanna feel like poetry again, and I want to not be embarrassed by my existence and my works.

I was working on an article about psychedelic cults but I got stuck for a while and had to ask for a deadline extension, which was generously granted and now I am finally feeling capable of it again. Funny how the flow comes and goes, and how, sometimes, I can just pick it up again, pick up the wave of creativity or words, hop on it just right and ride it until the end of a sentence, a paragraph, a post, before it dries out. I feel like I used to have more moments of being “in flow,” but perhaps this was before we all collectively experienced our brains drying out from TikTok overuse during the pandemic.

Source

This year, one of my goals is to do more “deep work.”

Admittely, the first quarter of the year has seen me not really doing that as I have, obviously, been travelling, and while I have done my best to, for the most part, stick to a routine of sorts, I am still away from any semblance of normalcy and have not really committed hours of working and writing time. But I will.

I confess my “mental health” has been in what one could call “tatters,” but I am working on it, beginning my meditation practice again, recommitting to the time with self (even if I don’t think I want it).

I came back to Bangkok before returning back home (yes, the return to Toronto is coming after all this time away — I miss the cats; it is inevitable) partially to find the string of routine again, somewhere loose in my luggage. I grasp onto it; it cuts me like fishing wire, but I hold tight like a rock climber; this time, I won’t let go. This time, I know where to tie it, where the grappling hook is.

In Bangkok I eat the best Mexican food I have ever had.

In Mexico I eat the best spaghetti.

Globalization has brought the world closer together. The internet has brought it further apart. I want to spend less time scrolling. We shouldn’t know this much about each other. The day passes in a blur as you watch pieces of everybody else’s day in quick succession. This person is smoking, this one just quit, this person is travelling, he’s moving, she’s got a new boyfriend, a new tattoo, this and and that. Pictures are not enough to encompass the weight of the travels and so I post less than before, but I still want to share, Instagram feels like my visual diary but I might make the profile private; I really don’t want to be seen and I keep losing followers and I don’t want any bad juju to find me through the internet. When I get home I will cleanse all my electronics; call me New Age but I find the smoke helps the energy clear.

But maybe not.

I co-opt what I need to.

Cambodia was heavy and I need to examine my time there and evaluate my feelings before I can talk about it properly on here. For now, know that I am burning up in Bangkok and am trying to regain focus. I gotta stop switching tabs!

-Sofie