BANGKOK, THAILAND
The first time I came to Bangkok will always be the most vivid. I showed up around three in the morning (as one usually does in Bangkok, regardless of your mode of transport), took a taxi to the guesthouse and stowed my bags in a room with nothing but a bed and a fan. Outside there was a pickup truck selling noodles, run by an congenial old man with most of his teeth and a serious penchant for Thai rum. I was eighteen and had never been outside of the US and Europe, paralytically terrified by Bangkok’s tangled streets, but somehow this old guy and his noodles made it all manageable.

I thought it’d be fitting then, on another first night so many years later, to stay in the same place, eat the same noodles and look at the whole thing with new eyes. He’s still there with his pickup truck, shelling out his pork soup for less than a buck a bowl.

by the way, I’d eaten half that bowl before I took the picture. It looked a lot better when it came out.