So the story goes that I never visit the same place twice – not because I cannot stand to return, but that; in all of Earth’s endless vastness teeming with so much unknown and so much yet unexplored, it seems almost extravagant to go back to the same place twice. If I had all the time and all the money in the world, perhaps. But indeed, life is not quite so.

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When I first returned from my most recent trip to Thailand some weeks back, I paused, and I mused, and I slept, and I brooded; and I tossed and turned every other possible aspect I had that I could write this from. I was hesitating making Covid the angle of my thoughts here; because like everything else, one day it too shall pass, and when it does, it will very well take my words along with it. But the more I mulled over it, the more it became increasingly clear – pressing, even- that nothing would make more sense right now than to write this from the point of Covid. What is, after all, the point of tiptoeing around something so absolute that it has fundamentally changed the way we exist? Every child between the ages of 0-3 today understands mask-wearing as just something we do, like eating, or walking, or taking a shower; two years’ worth of graduating students missed the opportunity of exploring the option of a gap year. Weddings and milestone birthdays came and left without its due celebrations – in its place, funerals and trips to the hospitals; and now, in the weirdest twist of events, Instagram is tripping over themselves to be an insipid variant of Tiktok.

Covid isn’t an elephant in the room. It is the great behemoth of a mammoth that thawed itself out of exinction, trampled over everything we claimed confidence to know, and laid bare a fragility that reaffirmed just how inextricably linked we all are as a community.

And in knowing all this and accepting it to be true, how can I continue to write and tell stories here, pretending as if Covid never touched our lives?

Another story goes that I only ever travel alone. And this has stood true for most part – not because I hate people, but because I’m trying hard not to have people hate me. How do I put this? I never breakfast or lunch. I eat too much dinner. I stop at every turn and every corner for photos and then more photos. And some days I pack too many things onto the itinerary until it starts to suffocates – while others, I intentionally do nothing at all. I shy away from locals although I enjoy being around them and dream up conversations with them which I do not start; and I do not appreciate the nightlife at all, except from the perspective of an outsider looking in. There are also times when I will refuse transport and justify walking 30 minutes to get to the nearest train station, and others where I dig into the minibar because the convenience store located across the street is just too far away.

And to have someone so upclose with this whirlpool of thoughts and irrational decisions- for such an extended period of time- is equivalent to inviting someone in to witness me at my genuine maddest. Would you?

And yet as the start of this year came and brought along with it a quiet glimpse of accompanied travel, to a place I’ve already been to before – two things which I have spent my entire adult life neck-deep in conviction that I would never do- the first thing I thought to myself was, Why not?

Would I have been so eager to say yes had it been another country?

It’s hard to tell. Does it come anywhere close to carrying this same visceral energy?

Luckily, this time, my anguish wasn’t accompanied with an explicable dark cloud. This time, it was accompanied with a determination to make it count. And so dogged was I to not make the same mistakes as I did in Germany that I had absolutely nothing on the itinerary for Thailand, save for three things I knew I needed: time on the beach, time at the pool, and a trip to the shooting range.

And for the first time in a very long time, I could not even care less about what or how I was going to blog abut this when I returned. I consulted no listicles, read no guides, and I was deliberately careful not to shortlist photographic inspiration based on locations; searching, instead, for feelings in images that I could embed into my own. I was excruciatingly resolved in my abstinence from specificity, determined to make this an editorial expedition into – and only in the most abstract sense- an unchartered wilderness; and with it I was rewarded.

And I was rewarded richly.

For comparison, the Thailand that greeted me just six years earlier did so with wide-eyed innocence, an evolving, up-and-coming destination that corralled its historic sites in the centre and modernized around them. It was a laid-back metropolis that marched to the beat of its drum, holding in its hands the allure of an ‘Ultimate Southeast Asian Experience’; but was otherwise a dusty, maze-like display of shabby chic under its tint.

Six years later, this weathered strip greets me with the same evolving stance – only this time, it was illuminated by a stronger, more reflective light; smiling, but with just the tiniest glint of irreverranace in its gaze. It was same same, but different; somehow gaining a newfound confidence from making it through Covid and pulling off the impossible task of reinventing itself while very much staying the same.

This change is most conspicuous in Bangkok, the microcosm for Thailand’s mixed palette, where its previous urban idyll is now fast giving way to a more modish existence brought about by a company of new-age denizens. Organic grocers peek out from behind a backdrop of hole-in-the-wall food minimarts and food establishments. Giant luxury malls flourish against a scene of pushcart hawkers, squalid residences, and shady massage parlours. Even tuk-tuks no longer look like what we quite remember them to be, now that they have been remodelled to hold at least 2-3 times its original capacity.

And yet, despite this frenetic turn-of-the-decade development, Thailand’s spiritual heart remains unscathed, its daily existence at once traditional yet contemporary, arcadian yet notorious, formal, yet colloquial; and polite, yet radical. And it is this multifarious personality that makes it wholly unique: A country ripe with contradictions and looking like it’s lived a thousand lifetimes. A country that is becoming increasingly international, but underneath it all, still very much unmistakably, Thai.

It is true that I had a past experience to ease my closed-eyed comfort, a safe space to rest assured that even amidst all the ‘not knowing’, I knew; but it was all nonetheless my deepest fears made manifest. A fear not composed of anxiety but rather, something far sturdier than that. A fear that comes from the realization that, perhaps, there is worth in wandering forth with neither purpose nor plan,

And that there is still life to be lived, even- and especially– when you are lost.

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Enjoy post-covid Thailand. I know I did.