Goodbye, BKK
On the MRT near the Erawan Shrine, there was a local man on a phone call, in the middle of the call, as he passed the shrine at a fast busy pace, he clamped the phone between his shoulder and ear, freed both hands to press them together in a wai, then picked up the phone again—all without breaking stride.
I saw someone on social media complained about how boring Bangkok city is. I thought about that man on the phone.
It's not always about how many big shopping malls there are or how delicious the food is.
I kept thinking about that pure gesture. That man wasn't asking for anything. He was simply honoring something larger than himself, even in the middle of an ordinary moment.
Not transactional. Not performative.
Wandering through the city, I saw people with genuine smiles. At ICONSIAM, I accidentally walked into a teenage drum competition and couldn't leave. A young boy took the stage with different types of percussion instruments and elevated the entire performance into something I'd never heard before. Drum fusion. Intriguing. Fresh.
Before I left for Thailand, I realized how miserable I'd become. Even sitting in a beautiful café in Sanlitun—supposedly the most vibrant area in Beijing—I felt nothing but emptiness. At the next table, a girl talked about depression and insomnia for the entire afternoon. She looked put-together, well-dressed, the kind of person who seemed to have everything figured out. But she sounded as miserable as I felt. Maybe I was too sensitive to that dark energy at the time. Or maybe it was just everywhere. When I returned from Bangkok, I decided to leave Beijing. I moved to Shanghai.
Moving to Shanghai as a newcomer, trying to build a new life there, felt completely different from being a tourist. All of a sudden, I could smell the city—a scent I'd never noticed before. It was like someone had offered me a mystery box, an Easter egg, and I'd opened it without expecting anything inside. I walked into a kind of wonderland, reborn. The city felt brand new, as if it had never experienced those dark times, all that trauma. Like it existed in a parallel universe. A hundred years in the future, maybe. Or just untouched.
I opened this box in my own way. Fortunately, unexpectedly, I met different people, heard interesting stories. It was like a game—at the beginning, the map is dark and small. Then as you gain experience, pass more levels, the whole map reveals itself.
If I'd stayed a tourist, I would never have experienced this. My map would have stayed dark and small.
I will never be the person I was in Beijing. I don't know if Bangkok changed me or if Shanghai did—maybe both, maybe neither. Maybe I simply couldn't stay that person any longer. That person who sat in beautiful cafés feeling nothing. Who traveled but never unlocked anything. Whose world stayed small. I'm someone else now. Reborn, maybe. And I can never return to Bangkok as who I was before.
Goodbye, Bangkok. Goodbye, Beijing. But somehow, I know I'll come back. Just not as who I was.