2003 Nissan Almera vs. 10,000 Scooters — Lessons from a Summer in Bangkok
Driving in Bangkok is not an activity recommended for the faint of heart or for foreigners, generally. The average scooter driver embodies a confidence and bias-toward-action which I can only aspire to. The attention to detail of the woman sweeping the highway in front of her noodle cart is a mentality I’ve yet to adopt. Driving on the left side of the road is one thing, but mistaking the blinkers for windshield wipers at every turn certainly threatened my personal safety.
After 8+ hours of driving to and from Kanchanaburi province with my friend Izzy, we adopted a mantra: “With the dao, with the dao, with the dao”. This was our way of saying “Follow the critical mass of scooters”.
The last 10 weeks in Thailand have taught me the importance of relinquishing control. From accepting the limited authority of traffic lights to blindly letting my coworkers order my lunch every day, it’s been an endless stream of experiences teaching me when I should execute agency and when I should let the city take me as it will.
The wise words of my friend Marie have been ringing in my mind: “It is the delicate balance of life to know when to take control and when to accept what life is giving you”. Nothing highlights that tightrope like a foreign environment; You are constantly assessing how safe, wise, productive, and fun it will be to ‘just go with it’. Is my Grab scooter driver diverting from Google Maps because it’s faster, or because he’s kidnapping me? Is it normal to give 7–11 my passport number in exchange for wifi? When my coworkers hand me food and warn “It’s spicy”, I have to ask myself how farang I want to look that day.
Thailand has taught me a lot about life’s delicate balance.
Let the city rock you
On a Saturday in May, Izzy and I left Bang Nam Phueng Market, stomachs full of deep-fried food we couldn’t identify. Our goal was to navigate back without help from the man who led us out of the coconut farm where we got lost earlier. Then, we heard music and applause coming from behind a tree line. We followed the sound and sat down at a local outdoor concert.
Less than 2 minutes later, roses were being shoved in our hands as a man guided us to the stage. The instructions were clear: “You!”. Turns out this ‘concert’ was their local karaoke, and our contribution was wanted. We stared nervously at their high-tech karaoke machine. Finally, “Do you have… ABBA?”. The man typed a string of Thai characters into his computer. “Stand there”. We waited a minute, roses in hand, centre stage, the village watching. Then we heard the unmistakable first notes of Dancing Queen. If I do say so myself, we popped off. Everyone filmed us. We spent the next hour dancing with grandmas to Thai karaoke. Everyone filmed that, too.
We chose to go to Bang Nam Phueng Market at the recommendation of Google Maps (we take 4.8 Google stars very seriously). It’s not a spot you’ll find on the Trip Advisor Top 10 Things to Do in Bangkok, but that day, we followed our hunger over a plethora of curated online lists. Then, we followed the music.
When I told my colleagues I was visiting Phnom Penh for a weekend, I received 10 seconds of blank stares. Then I was told it was “the least desirable destination in South East Asia”. Fast forward 3 days, one tofu skin factory tour, and a $10 beer tower, I had the best weekend of my summer.
Branded as a place only to learn about Cambodia’s history, Phnom Penh is certainly not known for its nightlife. But how can you resist when the city literally labels it for you (👇)? We found a great restaurant, ate the most extravagant $25 meal of our lives, and asked our waitress where within “nightlife” we should go for a good boogy. It only took one ABBA request (perhaps you’ve noticed a trend) to get the whole bar dancing with us.
We all enter places with preconceived notions: Bangkok is the city for temples and Muay Thai fights, Singapore is the city for great food, Phnom Penh the city of boring nothingness (or so my boss and the internet told me). Instead of entering a place thinking “This is what I want my experience to look like”, I began constructing my experience the other way around. What if I start from the context? Allow the city to show me its strengths, and follow what feels like a good fit. Be guided by the context more than my existing conception of a place. When you wander rather than hit Time Out’s Must-Eats in Bangkok, you find a dim sum restaurant with one table in an alley run by a (secretly) ex-Four Seasons chef. When you give yourself time to be observant, you can spam ChatGTP with pictures and learn about Thai agricultural exports. When you read the neon street sign rather than obey the travel blogosphere, you get the bouncer at a Cambodian bar dancing to Gimme Gimme Gimme.
It’s hard to resist the urge to over-plan. Context-led decision-making requires relinquishing control and increasing uncertainty. You’ve loosened your grip on the daily schedule and upped the “risk” that you’ll be disappointed, bored, or miss the #1 Trip Advisor destination. However, I believe that by designing an experience around personal ideas of a place you have not yet been, you’re trying to jam a square peg into a round hole — trying to force a niche vision of an experience. Meanwhile, following the synergies between what is presented to you and what you’re drawn to creates the opportunity for delight. Relinquishing control doesn’t mean that you don’t care what happens, it just means that you don’t care if a specific thing happens.
To best experience a place — to access its abundance — let yourself be rocked by it. Work with it, not against it. You will learn so much more from holding back your assumptions. Collaborate with context, and you’ll unlock the best fit between you and the city.
Slowly, I’m learning to apply the philosophy of context-led decision-making to other areas of life. As an over-planner myself, I’ve long listened to Alice in Wonderland’s Cheshire Cat: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there”. Without a clear goal and specific vision, how can one optimize?
I spent an untold amount of time this summer panicking about my future. I graduate in December and have no idea what I want to do or how I’ll afford bubble tea. My first approach was to write down a list of jobs I theoretically want, then look for cool companies and job openings. Simple. Vision (specific job) → Plan (look for job).
Here’s the issue with that: Most visions are forced by the pressure to have a plan. Uncertainty is scary and a plan is the remedy. The creepy cat has a point—you cannot plan the route to an unknown destination. The jobs I wrote down are not ones I particularly want, but ones I particularly know how to get.
This summer taught me to balance a bias-toward-action with a bias-toward-observation. I’m learning that I’m allowed to decide slower. I’m learning to craft my vision patiently and iteratively. A vision for life is not binary—something you do or do not have. It should be flexible, changing with you and the world. Like day-to-day plans in Bang Nam Phueng Market or South East Asia’s least desirable city, context should be the guide.
Optimizing for *other*
The road trip from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi Provence came at the recommendation of precisely no one. I was again greeted with confusion when I told my colleagues my destination. We chose to spend our weekend there because Izzy and I read The Bridge Over River Kwai, and were excited to see the bridge in question.
After the long drive, having dodged all motorbikes and entrepreneurs on the highway, we arrived at our hostel. We were first told, “Drop your stuff quickly because your room was just sprayed with DDT”, followed by, “Come, we’re going paddle boarding now”. Why we trusted a man to take us paddle boarding when he just doused our room with an internationally banned carcinogen is a question I continue to ponder. But we went with (our definition of) ‘the dao’.
Paddle boarding down the River Kwai, we saw a beautiful sunset, met friends who later introduced us to Bangkok’s underground musical bingo scene, and even got our first glimpse of the bridge. The next day we discovered that Kancanaburi is beautiful. The waterfalls knocked our socks off, the temple was my favourite in Thailand, and the mulberry ice cream hit the spot.
That weekend, Izzy and I narrowed our travel criteria to the extreme: Where can we go that’s cheap, close, and contains a landmark mentioned in a book we’ve both read? Decision made. And it paid off.
“That’s probably the only Thai island I’ve never heard of” — My boss when I told him I was going to Koh Muk.
We arrived on Thailand’s most obscure island on the Friday of a national long weekend that I belatedly discovered my company “doesn’t do”. Oops. Hungry, we dropped our bags and set out to find lunch. Closed doors greeted us at 3/3 of Google Maps’ top-rated restaurants, and we faced the reality that this entire island was closed for the season. We walked down the street calling “luuunnchhh?” until someone graciously fed us.
Luckily, PK Mart—the convenience store with a monopoly on grocery, gas, ATM (singular on the island of Koh Muk), scooter rental, and boat tours — was open. We rented scooters and circled the island. We discovered that 1) We comprised 40% of the island’s tourists, and 2) There is a spectacular beach on the West side.
This destination was picked by ‘the dao’ of Google Flights. Where can we affordably fly from Bangkok? Supply and demand said Koh Muk.
When travelling, as in life, we must choose our criteria—what we care about enough to optimize our decisions around. We too often optimize for generally optimal. Optimal is a fallacy. There are endless variations of a great experience, and none will be perfect. Anything touted as “best” is just the most popular. It’s what satisfies the average taste, not necessarily yours.
Search for the most desirable destination in Thailand, and you’ll get Phuket and Chiang Mai. Hit the #1 Thing to Do in Bangkok, and you’ll drop $18 to enter a crowded temple that looks similar to the city’s countless free, less tourist-packed options. Yet the anxiety of missing what one should see seems to have a chokehold on travellers. It’s the most expensive manifestation of FOMO: $368 to fly to Phuket vs. $72 to Koh Muk or $58 for a rented Nissan.
If I optimized for the “best” location according to online research, I would have never ended up in either location (or anywhere I travelled, frankly). Travel guides are menus, not prescriptions; you’d never order everything at a restaurant and you should not try to see everything. Call me crazy, but you can even skip the Grand Palace.
When you stop seeking everyone else's take on the best experience, you can unlock a world of uncommon and enchanting experiences. Narrowing criteria also makes decision-making faster and less stressful. Choosing nicher and more personal criteria when travelling and making life choices steers you further from the echos of shoulds and towards a good fit for you.
Life is abundant
I recall sitting at a café in Florence a year ago, itching to leave. I only had 2 days in the city, and there were Davids to see and cooking classes to attend. I felt as though my time was scarce and couldn’t be wasted sipping coffee.
As a full-time intern this summer, my travels outside of Bangkok were 2–3 day weekend trips. Relative to the short stint in each place, I spent a considerable number of hours in cafés. I love getting to know a city by experiencing its cutest coffee shops. I love journaling and Kindle time. I love a good Americano and I love caffeine.
Sitting in a café when I could be on a tour, at a temple, or in a museum required me to loosen my grasp on my experience just a smidge. I had to feel like I had enough time. One antidote to the urge for control is embracing an abundance mindset—If you have lots, your stock does not need to be tightly managed. If you have bandwidth, you can journal in a café. If you have oodles of time in Tokyo, you don’t feel the need to plan every subway ride (and it’s probably more fun to get lost). If there exist endless potential friends in the world, you are less likely to stay in subpar friendships. If you have the resources to buy more food, you can share your cookie. If you don’t feel rushed, you can hold the elevator for someone.
An abundance mindset creates the emotional relaxation needed to relinquish control. You can let go because you believe that you have and will have enough. That you are and will be okay. You must believe the world is abundant, and trust your ability to access its abundance.
The concept of an ‘abundance mindset’ made me uncomfortable when I first heard about it. Isn’t that just privilege? But it’s proven to be incredibly admirable. Izzy is the foremost master of the abundance mindset. Despite a pretty average amount of material resources for a 21-year-old, she is extremely generous. When my friend visited Bangkok, I told her, “Izzy doesn’t bite. In fact, she will likely offer you her entire wardrobe, all her food, her life savings, and a coffee before you’ve put your bag down”. By assuming she can access the world’s abundance and have enough, she unlocked the magical gift of sharing and the deep friendships that are created through it.
Am I becoming… chill? (No.)
It was a running joke in my university apartment to call me “chill”. I am not chill. Yet, I think arriving in Phnom Penh with 3 beer tabs as functional currency (yes, that’s true) and no plans is pretty chill. My rented 2003 Nissan Almera and I have no power on the streets of Bangkok — I must release control to the sea of motorbikes. I can’t read the nutrition information on my granola, and it doesn’t actually matter. I don’t know what I’m doing in life, but I’ll patiently and iteratively figure it out.
There are, of course, times when I’ve used my judgement to resist ‘the dao’ that surrounded me to ‘control’ my situation. I love Bangkok’s street food, but the street meat in Phnom Penh’s “Russian” market would have likely killed me. The waterfall said “No climbing”; I climbed. I did, in fact, micromanage my Google Maps Local Guide review points to reach Level 8 at the same time as Izzy (it was a magical moment). I’ve spent many moments on that side of life’s delicate balance. But I’m learning to love the other.
I am incredibly grateful to everyone at the Cansbridge Fellowship for making this summer possible. I owe a lifetime of thank yous and mango sticky rice to Ivy Xu, William Yu, Gabi Foss, and many others. Thank you also to Izzy for helping edit this article, and for all the memories.
