Dawn Punter

Only a few months after arriving back in Spain, we were off again.

Thirty-litre backpacks ready, minds already slipping back into travel mode. It felt like an itch I just had to scratch, despite promising myself I’d behave for at least a year.
We chose Bangkok as our first stop deliberately.
We’d been there before. It was familiar enough to steady us, and chaotic enough to make it clear we were properly on the road again. I already knew that I loved it, which felt reassuring, like slipping into my favourite pair of baggy tracksuit bottoms. The overwhelming heat, the intense and constant noise, the sense that life happens openly here, on pavements and riverbanks. Plastic tables pulled together at dusk, people sitting, chatting, eating. It felt like a sensible place to begin something deliberately unscripted. After Central America, this was to be easier. A more worn path, and definitely better food. Oh boy, the food. No dramatic weight loss here. In fact, I was to gain some on this delicious adventure.

Bangkok also offered something unexpectedly practical. Before I allowed myself to become immersed in the city, I booked an appointment at the University Hospital for Tropical Diseases. What could easily have been an anxious, administrative task turned out to be one of the most reassuring moments of the early journey, and not at all the gloomy medical ordeal I had imagined.
The initial consultation lasted fifteen minutes. For the equivalent of buying a couple of British coffees each, a doctor talked us through our proposed route, the real risks and the imagined ones, how to avoid parasites and stomach infections, when mosquito protection mattered and when it mattered less, and whether anti-malarials were actually necessary. We both had Japanese Encephalitis injections and were given antibiotics to carry for more remote stretches of the journey, just in case. After travelling with a troublesome parasitic friend in Nicaragua for six weeks on our previous trip, that was certainly not an experience I wanted to repeat. Ever again.

I was keen to be better prepared this time.
The total cost came to twelve pounds fifty each, at least a hundred pounds cheaper than in the UK. We left feeling completely looked after, informed rather than alarmed, and confident enough that we would return there again on future trips, which we did.
With that taken care of, I let Bangkok be Bangkok.

I ate freshly stir-fried meals balanced on plastic chairs pulled up to the kerb, drank beers in ramshackle bars spilling out onto the pavement, and wandered into glossy shopping malls that felt like cities within cities. I visited parks and temples, drifted along the river on boats that seemed to operate on optimism rather than schedules, and rode lifts high above the clouds to rooftop bars where the city glittered far below. And then there were the temples. This trip would eventually become six months of temples, and the phrase “I think I’m templed out” became a regular comment, usually said while standing in front of yet another perfectly beautiful temple. Bangkok had range, and I loved all of it.
There was something comforting about starting here. The city demanded attention, but not commitment. It allowed us to practise being travellers again without explanation. We could disappear into it, resurface when we chose, and move on without ceremony.
That sense of ease mattered more than I realised at the time. The fact that my sole possessions fitted into a small rucksack gave me a new kind of freedom. Plans were already shifting quietly in the background. Routes reconsidered, ideas taking shape. Like Central America, we had no transport or accommodation pre-booked beyond our first night in Bangkok. Everything was fluid and evolving. Something the previous Dawn, fond of colour-coded project plans and control, would have struggled with, but after our earlier seven-month journey I had grown to accept, and even love, the unknown. One day at a time.
When it came time to leave Bangkok, we chose to do so slowly. By train. We wanted to watch distance unfold rather than skip over it, even if that meant accepting delays, hard seats, and the occasional mystery timetable. The rhythm of stations, platforms, waiting rooms and windows framing changing landscapes felt like the right way to ease ourselves into what lay ahead.
I boarded knowing where we were going next, but not yet how far the rails would eventually carry us.
Bangkok had done its job. It had anchored us, prepared us, and reminded us why we had set out in the first place.