Same same, but different

Returning to a familiar terrain

A lone fisherman stands at the end of the jetty and casts out a line. There are no more boats arriving today. The Andaman is a pearlescent blue, rouged with dusk, and limestone cliffs rise from sea. The music of the water as it laps the white sand, again and again: this is the measure of time, alongside the darkening sky. I don’t have to worry about the clock drawing closer to night, wondering if I’ll get enough sleep. I can be generous with my time, slowing down with it, stretching out and enjoying its plasticity. 

We have the place to ourselves on this small, beautifully undeveloped island off the coast of Trang Province in the South of Thailand. There are no roads here, and the only way to traverse the island is along roughly hewn paths through dense jungle. The resort itself is expansive enough, sprawling across the beach and into the hillside, but it is old and forgotten, completely deserted. Apart from the hotel staff – who pass the time playing cards, reading, lying in the hammock or dozing beside a cool fan – we are the only people here. Our arrival by speedboat doubled up as a local produce delivery, stacked with eggs, vegetables and fish, so we know exactly what is available on the menu. We have it all to ourselves: the bar, the beach, the sea. It feels so very far from London.

When the rain comes, it pours: proper tropical rain arriving like a fury. Hard, thick drops slapping the concrete, echoing through the palm leaves, dissolving into the sand. Here, the rain sings, and the land hums in response – one of the oldest songs we know. It glistens on the coconuts – great bunches of them still green on the trees – washes through jungled hillsides, clings to the delicate leaves of the tamarind trees; a landscape painted in hallucinatory greens. It blows over as quickly as it begins, before the coast is once again scorched by the sun.

We have just arrived from Bangkok. The rain there is a different kind of song, one I found myself listening to intently from the balcony on one hot, thick night. Intense too, but forcefully urban, spilling down corrugated iron roofs and fibre-glass skyscrapers alike, gathering in dark puddles in the sois – those quiet alleys tucked away behind monstrous main roads that are perpetually roaring with traffic. Bangkok is my mother’s city, and the city I lived in until I was five. A place of constant development, perceptibly changed each time you return. My earliest memories are soaked in petrichor, and they return with the rain – scraps and fragments, imperfectly remembered, jumbled up in the wrong order. In one of these memories, it rains and rains, and the soi is flooded up to knee-level. A man in a yellow mac and rain hat helps my father carry me and my brother to the car, our feet dangling over the floodwaters. I remember the shock of bright yellow against the dark grey sky, and every time I see the sky brood like that over the city, it momentarily flashes yellow too – a raft carrying us back to safety.

Other memories come to me in snatches. My fourth birthday in the candlelit garden of a restaurant, and the owner gives me a little pot of tiger balm. My fifth birthday, receiving a huge glittery card and feeling smug about how old I am. Learning to read, learning to swim, learning to ride a bike. Dreaming of snow in England, some faraway land where it gets cold enough for such magic (supposedly). Early childhood memories are like a dream upon waking: their shape is known, but the details are always just out of reach. But certain smells open doors to this mythical terrain – in my case, 1990s Bangkok. Things I’ve forgotten have returned to me, like a box of treasured objects found in the darkest corner of the attic. Waiting for me on the other side of the world, just a 12-hour flight away. 

I’m still getting used to long-haul flights after the pandemic, out of step with the old rhythms of travel. I dulled my anxiety on the flight by listening to the tracks on Talking Heads’ Speaking in Tongues (1983) on repeat: funky, polyrhythmic, neurotic bursts of energy that struck a chord with my own state of mind. My tightly wound, over-stimulated city brain needed something to latch onto, unable to relax enough to even think about the destination. All that has melted away now, surmounted by the joy of being back again. I’ve hardly listened to any music, wanting my ears to be fully open to the sounds of the country I’ve missed so much. Rain and birdsong, the music of the language, even the ungodly Bangkok traffic (perverse, I know).

But the city is now behind us. Here we are in the south, where I had my first dip in the sea almost 30 years ago. Everything is soft and getting ready for the night. The sea – which, by daylight, comes alive with shades of turquoise, aquamarine and jade – is slowly being swallowed in dusk. On the table is a bottle of Chang beer and a packet of Lays crisps. There are no fine wines to be heard of here, nothing fancy in the slightest, but there is a fridge full of Thai beers. The cocktail menu lists refreshing, tropical drinks  – Mai Tais, Caipirinhas – but a bottle of Chang feels more appropriate. It is the sort of drink you don’t need to think about, just knock it back and relax. I spend all my working life writing about wines and spirits, but I don’t know the first thing about beer. What I do know, however, is how this particular bottle of beer makes me feel: as if I am slowing down time, sharing a special moment with someone experiencing these beautiful, complicated places for the very first time. A sense of the old and new coming together, in a country where I will always remember being at my very youngest and marvelling at the magic of it all. 

Speaking of magic, the sky lights up with a double rainbow, arching gloriously over the limestone cliffs and the sea. The few people in the bar – us and the staff – crane our heads out from under the straw roof to marvel at the sight, because no matter where you are in the world, everybody loves a rainbow. Two is a gift. We sip our beers and watch the rainbows fade into the dusky sky, listening to the waves kiss the shore. “Same same, but different,” goes the famous Thai catchphrase. That’s exactly what it feels like to be here, returning to a well-worn map with a slightly different perspective.