It's no secret (visually; otherwise) my origins are East Asian. From Tanzania, I flew straight to Bangkok — a flight that was booked off a niggling desire to continue travelling eastward and the demand for an outward flight on the Tanzanian visa application — arriving with very little plan. I haven't been back in Asia since I was 13. Puberty & high school were just two of the (admittedly more notable) things that came & went in that time. My parents came here twentysomething years ago for their honeymoon — their first time leaving their home country; twentysomething years on, my first time back "home": even if, physically, in continent only; even if, culturally, only occasionally and approximately. ~ Bangkok, similar to other megacities in Asia (as I would later discover), is a city almost overrun with options. Each block bursts to the seams with restaurants & cafes, niches & classics, institutions & new players. The power of culinary quality control lies in the hands of people; the result is a democratised swirl in the mall food courts and street vendors, the cafeterias and 7/11s, the restaurants and the home kitchens. ~ I knew I had an undertaking [[meditation]] ahead of me, and so I spent more time than usual resting in the hotel, cowering above the shadow of these options. In a self-described "quiet desperation", I tried fruitlessly to expedite my sleep schedule adjustment. Despite the comparatively limited time I spent exploring, in a welcome surprise, I quickly felt Bangkok grow more familiar, as methods emerged to rationalise the ostensible madness and the guilt of slow exploration evaporated. Sooner than I had ever experienced, I felt a feeling different from the sense of home, but also different from the sense of 'traveller lost abroad' that dogged throughout Europe and Tanzania. I felt "home", quotation marks included. And so it began.