The Color & Chaos of Thailand
Inspiration from my Eastern Adventure 🇹🇭
It’s 4:15 in the morning, and I’m wide awake. I’ve been home from Thailand for about 5 days now (I think? I don’t really know what planet I’m on at this point, let alone the date), and along with the worst jet lag of my life, I’m still processing the extreme culture shock and overstimulation I experienced for the last two weeks.
Filled with spicy food, stunning views, and creative sparks, no travel I’ve done could have prepared me for the sensory overload of Thailand.
Every step you take, you’re confronted with new smells: sizzling street food, earthiness floating off the canals, incense wafting from open-air temples. A cacophony of sounds barrages your ears: gongs and monks chanting, shouting market vendors, EDM trickling down from the rooftop bars. As we zipped around in colorful tuk-tuks, we flew by multi-generational families passing us on motorbikes, billboards for “fantasy male-only” massage parlors, and countless 20-foot tall paintings of the current Thai monarchs. We traveled from city to jungle to beaches and back, and with each area came its own inundation of new experiences.
On our last night in Bangkok, watching the sun set over the Chao Phraya River and twirling spicy noodles on our forks, my friend Carly and I spent the entire dinner wondering how we could describe our trip to people back home. How could we convey the unexpected impact? The poinance of meeting elephants and emotional pressure point release from warrior massages. The juxtaposition of meditating with monks one minute to smoking blunts in the jungle with a tour guide named Spiderman the next.
I said that Thailand is where people go to either find themselves or lose themselves - and then felt very validated when that was the central theme of this past weekend’s White Lotus episode.
Finding beauty and big ideas in Thailand was easy, but processing and articulating them has been another story. After a week of reflection, though, I think I’ve been able to pinpoint what I really connected with and what takeaways I’m carrying with me.
Read on for ten things that inspired me most in Thailand…