Journey 02 · 13.7563° N, 100.5018° E → 18.7883° N, 98.9853° E

Bangkok → Chiang Mai

Season: July, monsoon
Stories: Fourteen
Walked: 118 km
Nights: Twenty-one

I went north to get ahead of the rain and never managed it once. Eventually I stopped trying.

01
Wat Pho
15:10
34°C, 84%

Heat here is not a temperature, it is a room you walk into. A caretaker watched me stand still for a full minute inside it and then handed me a cup of water without being asked, the way you'd pass someone a towel.

— "slowly," he said, and meant everything

35mm · f/5.6 · 1/500
13.7465° N, 100.4927° E
Frame 07 of roll one

A vendor in a conical hat at first light — Pak Khlong Talat · 05:20

02
Pak Khlong Talat
05:20
27°C

She ties eighty garlands before the sun is up.

Jasmine, and her hands never look down. Eighty by six in the morning, sold by nine, and then she sleeps through the hot part of the day like a sensible person. She has done this for nineteen years and can still smell the flowers, she says, which she considers a small piece of luck.

the whole market smells like a promise

A man pushing a food cart along the street — Charoen Krung · 11:40

A cook working at a street stall — Charoen Krung · 12:05

03
Charoen Krung
11:40 → 12:05
33°C

His cart travels forty metres a day: out at eleven, back at eight. Same forty metres for twenty-six years. He knows which office building empties first, which one tips, and which one has a man who orders the same thing and has never once said what it is — he just holds up two fingers.

two fingers = pork, extra chilli, no coriander

04
Khlong Toei
04:15
26°C, rain coming

At four in the morning the market is louder than the city is at noon. Nobody is selling to anybody yet. It is all ice, argument and arithmetic — the day being negotiated into existence before the people who will eat it wake up.

05 · Overheard · Ayutthaya · 16:40

“The rain is not weather. It is a neighbour. You do not argue with it, you wait for it to finish talking.”

— Sunee, who sheltered me under her awning for fifty minutes

06
Moving image
Chao Phraya
06:55

00:15 · silent

A long boat on the river at dawn — The commuter boat costs sixteen baht and is the best seat in the city. Fifteen seconds of it: engine, brown water, temple, engine.

A gilded temple standing over water — Wat Ban Den · 07:30

07
Wat Ban Den
07:30
25°C, mist

I met a novice who practises English on tourists at dawn.

He is seventeen and wants to be a hotel manager, which he says is not a contradiction. His two questions, in order: do I have brothers, and is it true that in cold countries people apologise to each other in lifts. I said yes to both. He wrote it down.

he corrected my pronunciation of his own temple

08
Listen
Mae Rim
19:10

Rain on a tin roof, and underneath it the cicadas, who do not care. This is the sound I fell asleep to for eleven nights.

headphones, if you have them

09
Wat Phra Singh
10:20
31°C

You buy the gold leaf for twenty baht and press it on yourself. It is thinner than cigarette paper and it tears if you breathe wrongly. Everyone's square is crooked. Nobody straightens anybody else's.

a thousand crooked squares, all of them fine

A green and gold temple roof — Chiang Mai · 14:10

People crossing a bridge over water — Ping River · 17:45

10
Chiang Mai
14:10 → 17:45

There are three hundred temples in this city and the one everybody loves is the smallest, at the end of a lane, with a dog asleep in the doorway who has clearly been told he may stay.

11 · From the notebook

Local saying: "Mai pen rai." Never mind, it's nothing, let it go. Said about spilled coffee and about far larger things.
Interesting fact: Bangkok's full ceremonial name runs to 168 letters. Nobody uses it. Locals call the city Krung Thep — city of angels.
Hidden tip: Eat where the plastic stools are full of taxi drivers. They have tried everything on the street and are not sentimental.

A table of people eating outside in the evening — Chang Moi · 20:50 · 28°C

12
Chang Moi
20:50

A family of six made it a family of seven for one hour.

I sat at the wrong table by accident and was too slow to explain. By the time I understood, there was rice in front of me. The grandmother spoke no English and asked me nineteen questions anyway, all of them answered by her granddaughter with visible editing.

they refused the money twice, then laughed at me

13
Nimman lane 9
12:30 & 19:00
30°C

I ate khao soi at lunch, thought about it all afternoon, and went back at seven. She recognised me, said nothing, and gave me extra crispy noodles on top. That is the entire review.

sixty baht. best thing I ate all year.

14
Chiang Mai
05:40
Last frame

It was raining when I arrived and raining when I left, and somewhere in the middle I stopped calling it bad weather.

Journey completed

Twenty-one days, fourteen stories

Distance walked: 118 km
Frames exposed: 402
Iced coffees: 41
Hidden gems: 9
Soaked, times: 16

Favourite moment: Fifty minutes under a stranger's awning, waiting for the rain to finish talking.
Best food: Khao soi on Nimman lane 9, eaten twice in nine hours.

Next destination

Amsterdam

Nine days of rain

She ties eighty garlands before the sun is up.

the whole market smells like a promise

A family of six made it a family of seven for one hour.

they refused the money twice, then laughed at me