It had been almost six years since my last trip to Thailand, but it seemed neither a recent nor distant memory.
I had never previously considered those years as a distinct period of time, but now as I returned to Thailand I began to view it with a sense of spatial meaning. They had become more than just six years between a “last trip” and a “return trip”. Now the years formed a ‘period’ in my life defined by being and absence.Thailand was a country that I had known well and travelled to many times. During almost a decade I had gone back and forth between London and Bangkok, never really feeling part of one or the other. Always still in one when living in the other. A contagious cultural limbo, caught between two diametric worlds whilst simultaneously occupying neither. My university degree studying Thai language and literature had been completed in 1996, after which I had neither the desire nor the opportunity to leave one country exclusively for the other. Instead I saw the century out, continuing my shadowy existence in cultural limbo.
The last few years had seen me fuelling my travel addiction elsewhere. Thailand became all too familiar over the years and the need to broaden my travelling experience lead me to South America, Africa, South Asia and on countless trips over Europe. Not all the travel was fun but the experience was worth it. I’d met some good people along the way and the memories are still vivid and fresh, but South East Asia was beckoning me, I had to go back, and now I was finally returning, finally able to revisit a country I had once felt such a strong affinity to. Now I was ready to start over from where I had left off…
