When you’re trav­el­ling Thai­l­and, you’re bound to end up in Bangkok more than once. We tried to avoid this pos­sib­il­ity as much as pos­sible, espe­cially after basic­ally flee­ing when we exper­i­enced the city the first time (see Find­ing Bangkok). But after the second and then the third time, some­thing happened. Things changed. Bangkok changed. Did I change? Sud­denly, BKK became BLN, although none of it’s given attrac­tions or pos­sib­il­it­ies where any­where close to what Ber­lin resembled. And then, just like that, I figured what had changed: the city didn’t mat­ter any­more. The people mattered.

When you have a crew, a group of friends, who share the same state of mind, the same interests and have a sim­ilar view of how things should be going when you’re together, everything changes. Everything is at least 150% bet­ter than before. And although I was reluct­ant to give Bangkok a second chance, I just figured it was never about that. The city chose me, not vice versa. Like a mag­net it drew me in, after the first time, and then after the second time again.

Spend­ing your nights in local Thai clubs with local Thais, going on shop­ping ram­pages in malls and slid­ing down rails, abus­ing the arcades and shoot­ing a com­puter, get­ting wasted in pubs and bars unknown to people out­side of Khao San, hav­ing your feet des­troyed by pesty little spa fish, see­ing the art­work of expats on dis­play in gal­lery events, play­ing Con­nect Four with cheeky street cats who will gamble the shit out of your pock­ets, doing Secret Santa and read­ing crappy poems to each other, get­ting thrown out of fast food joints for bad beha­viour, bump­ing to Detroit Deep House in a club that never offi­cially exis­ted and that nobody had ever heard of, cel­eb­rat­ing the Kings Birth­day with fire­works bey­ond all ima­gin­a­tion in the best pos­sible spot of town found by chance, not by plan. Get­ting thrown right back into the city life is what will always hap­pen to me, but never when I’m alone. You need a crew. Whether it be in your cozy home in bit­terly cold Ber­lin, or in sweaty hot high sea­son Bangkok. It’s your friends who make it all worth­while. And it’s your friends, the people who are drawn to it just like you, who will decide for you whether it be a good or a bad exper­i­ence. With all that in total, I just want to say thank you to every­one who has shared these great and won­der­ful days with me. Thanks Rich, Em, Andy, Lex, Jules, Jess, Cath­rin, Padya, every­one. Cheers to the good times.