thailand: prelude

I will recount the last week of travels by day, to avoid, to as much a degree as possible, boring the reader. (Blogging, I’ve always thought, is an exercise in vanity, and even more so when waxing poetical about fundamentally self-indulgent excursions.)
I’d decided to travel to Thailand alone. ‘Decide’ is applied loosely; the logistics of the trip were too hinged on impulse, leaving no time to seek out (or request, really) a second opinion. The decision (or whatever) ended up being a very good thing. Here I was able to operate on my own terms. I’ve had the fortune of taking holidays with some very compatible companions – frugal, energetic, interested walkers – but also the experience of traveling with folks whose idea of a trip align all too poorly with my own. The only plan I had for Thailand was essentially to have none at all, and I wanted neither to subject anyone to my quirkiest quirks, nor feel beholden to somebody else’s.
I tossed a couple of tank tops, a toothbrush and my camera into the NCAA’s 2004 DIII swimming swag-bag; a pen, Chuck’s cell-phone number, Stephanie’s copy of The Elegant Universe, and disposable underwear, my favorite on-the-road accessory, which American drugstores are still too stodgy to carry. (I always kept a precious few weeks’ worth in the States, squirreled away from earlier trips to Taiwan.) I wore a light jacket, sneakers, and pants with cargo pockets. It was 2 degrees C in Shanghai.