We hadn't taken a proper break in months.
Work had been relentless for both of us, in the way it sometimes gets. Long days blurring into each other, weekends that didn't feel like weekends. By the time we finally blocked out a week together, we were both running on empty. Not dramatically. Just quietly depleted in the way that builds so slowly you don't notice until you stop.
We booked Bangkok without much thought. It was close, it was affordable, and neither of us had been. That was enough.
We stayed near Central World, and it turned out to be the right call.
Everything we needed was within walking distance. The BTS overhead, connecting the city in clean, air-conditioned lines. Malls when the heat became too much. Pharmacies, convenience stores, places to eat at midnight if we wanted. The kind of neighborhood where you don't have to think too hard about logistics.
That mattered to us. We wanted a holiday where the basics were handled. Where we could walk out of our hotel and find coffee within five minutes, food within ten, and a train to anywhere else within fifteen. Central World gave us that. A home base in the middle of everything, close enough to explore but comfortable enough to return to.
My wife and I share certain loves.
Weekend markets. Cafes where you can sit for hours. Art in any form, in any space. Bangkok, it turned out, had all of it. More than we expected. More than we could cover in a week, though we tried.
Art on the walls, rotating exhibitions every few weeks. Good coffee, the kind made slowly and handed over with care. Matcha too. Earthier, less sweet, served in cafes that treated it like craft. We'd order and sit by the window watching the city wake up before us.
We stayed for three hours. Nobody rushed us. Nobody asked if we wanted anything else. The culture here, we learned, allows you to exist in a space without constantly justifying your presence.
That became our rhythm. Find a cafe. Sit. Talk about everything and nothing. Watch Bangkok happen outside the window while we stayed still inside.
We collected cafes like souvenirs that week. Roots Coffee, in the basement of a nearby building, all concrete and seriousness about single-origin beans. A small place in Siam Square where the barista remembered our orders by day three.
I think what we found in Bangkok was permission.
Permission to do nothing useful. To sit in a cafe and watch rain streak down windows. To eat mango sticky rice for dinner because we wanted to. To wander a market for hours and come home with small, beautiful things that reminded us of the day we found them.
We went expecting a holiday. We got something closer to repair.
Maybe that's always how it works. You don't realize how much you needed to stop until you finally do. Until a city you barely knew opens up and offers you stillness in the middle of all its noise.
