A day in the life of Thailand

Or, the simple beauty of seeing a country with "new" eyes

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Snapped taken through Hipstamatic on my first-ever day in Bangkok, back in 2013.

Dear NE-One

Early this month when I was packing up to return to Asia my mum asked, “so what’s Thailand actually like?” A simple question and one that, as a travel writer who’s visited the country a gazillion times over the past decade, I should have been able to answer in a heartbeat. Except – I couldn’t. I sat in stillness for a while, wondering how to capture, in a few sentences, the broad sweeps and intricate details that, to me, are Thailand. Then, the phone rang; conversation shifted.

I was mulling over my mum’s question again today during my early-morning walk through the streets of Ko Phangan, when I started to notice the everyday things that tend to fade when your eyes become familiar with a place. The astounding lengths of powerlines and cables that are draped and coiled between electricity poles; the elegant curves of the Thai script on fading signs; the defiant flowers growing in tin cans and broken buckets clustered beside doorways.

The things we notice and the way we experience a place change when familiarity sets in.