I lost my wallet. It was entropy, I suppose. Chaos compounds. I’d lost my bank card a few weeks before. Karma. Retribution. Buddhism at least tries to give structure to it. They say Koh Phangan is a high energy zone. I met a guy who he said he was a medium, a trait he’d recognized in himself on the island. I think he said he was a high-powered executive in LA prior to that. I wish he could have foreseen me loosing my wallet. Is that what mediums do? I digress. Digression breeds chaos. I can figure it out. At least I have the capacity to figure it out. To write more blogs. It’s not much money, but it can sustain me for as long as a I need it to. I think so? I wonder if I’ll really need my savings soon. I could have planned for this better. Why do I love chaos so much? It’s a controlled chaos, I suppose. I wonder if that comes across on my Instagram, or if I just look like a complete mess. What would I be doing if I imposed more structure on my life. Like the Buddhists do. Would I be happier? Not that I’m unhappy, but would I still have my wallet? I guess Buddhists reject this idea of persistent happiness. I guess I should try to be content in the moment. I’d definitely be more content if I was still able to go to ATMs… I guess that line of thinking can apply to my life in general… I’ll figure it out later… Probably…

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‍LISTEN UP. If you lose your wallet in Thailand there are three steps, with two sub-variants that you must follow. Remember: the average tourist in Thailand is a borderline alcoholic European child without a fully developed prefrontal cortex. This happens! Clear headedness is crucial in the first days. Repeat after me: we’ve digitized the banking industry, your money is in the cloud. AGAIN. We’ve digitized the banking industry, my money is in the cloud! Step one: is someone using your card? Did you drop it or was it stolen? Do you have digital versions of your cards? Apple Pay? Maybe an emergency credit card in your backpack. **Deactivating your card will deactivate your Apple/Google Pay. “**Turning off” your card — which can easily be done from your banking app — when not using it and turning it back on for purchases is an easier way to manage this. If you notice unauthorized charges, DEACTIVATE. There are a few major cash-pickup money transfer services: Western Union, MoneyGram, Xoom (owned by Paypal). These are almost indistinguishable except the presence of physical branches varies by country. You need physical branches to pick up cash. Using your emergency credit card at ATMs means you’ll have higher interest rates (cash withdrawals are usually limited and more expensive). Some money exchanges will also let you buy local currency with a card (and some will let you do it contactless). That is the easiest, but it’s relatively unusual. This is the structure: if you are in a cash-based place, money transfers to yourself will give you cash. If you are in a card-based place, Apple/Google Pay is best. If you do not have Apple Pay, GET IT. If you need a first card (and you haven’t memorized your card number and pin — idiot…), PayPal will issue a digital card that can be used on Apple Pay without needing the physical card to be mailed. Don’t talk to me if you lose your phone. Bitch.

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How could they have known better, really. Leonardo DiCaprio’s characters had promised them a beach paradise. They get the map that they had quite explicitly asked for. The framing of their characters, invaders to this perfect utopia feels very unfair. That’s probably the point of the movie, now that I think about it. It’s not really about Thailand at all. Everyone is a villain. Everyone is flawed. The hedonistic drive towards something greater corrupts us all. It is profoundly human and profoundly inhuman. And who are we to perseverate on who has a legitimate claim to their own slice of hedonism. The impulse of violence is there too. Violence we cannot understand. Violence that comes and goes without so much as a passing thought for our own understanding of it. We are small. We carve out space in a universe that we create in our own minds. The universe is unforgiving though. We have no choice but to project warmth onto it. The figure of the Father. But our Promethean drive to create, to bring light into darkness, to create that warmth grows beyond our capacities. We forget about the fierceness of the cold. And so violence explodes before us, coated in an impenetrable layer of self-righteousness. The universe collapses in on itself and we place ourselves at its center. The figure of the Son. And we continue living with that burden our our shoulders. It can be so heavy.

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Bruhhhhh, these fucking tourists are EVERYWHERE. Get this, im in Koh Phangan (KPG) having the time. of. my life. Bangkok — rainy as hell, too many people. I take the longest train of my life TWELVE HOURS to get away, get to Koh Samui (mid) and then to KPG (y’all already know about that) and its fire. I’m there for three weeks (HONESTLY HOW) but apparently low season is like about to start, it’s getting suuuper rainy, all the parties are not the vibe anymore (Halloween was sick tho). So I’m like “time to gooo”. Chiang Mai is the spot apparently so i book a flight and a boat, $50 max combined so it’s not bad. Not gonna lie, almost missed my boat (thanks Jason) but I make it, buy some 7-Eleven Doritos, get to the airport, and bam I’m in Chiang Mai. Mind you, I LEFT KOH PHANGAN BECAUSE THE VIBE WAS ENDING. I didn’t have any plans or anything, just trying to continue the good times (Thailand is wild, idk if I’ve said that enough). Of courrseee, the day that I get there is the Chiang Mai annual international tourist convention, aka the Lantern Festival (no disrespect, the festival was honestly lit — hahah get it), aka Yi Peng. Not a single motorbike for rent in the city. Hostels are booooked out. I’m sitting there like “I didn’t even want this wtf”. Everyhwere is PACKED. But I have a good time. Zoe in Yellow is the Chiang Mai tourist spot and then everyone heads to the club Spicy after. I fr do that FOUR NIGHTS IN A ROW. Good times honestly. The festival ends and I’m like “Pai, let’s gooo”. Hear me out tho. Everyone in KPG said that Pai is mountain KPG. I’m a big KPG guy. I’m a big mountain guy. Mountain KPG… so I’m like word let me get away from these mfs and go. It’s the day after the festival. I’m online booking my bus. Sold out. Sold out for the next two days… EVERYONE AND EVERYONE’S MOTHER IS GOING TO PAI THE DAY AFTER THE LATERN FESTIVAL. I’m gobsmacked. I’m flabbergasted. I get a bootleg taxi there and my jaw drops. Pai is a small hippie mountain town, why am I in downtown Tokyo. 0 hostels left to book. 0 motorbikes anywhere. These damn tourists will not leave me alone. GET OUT OF MOUNTAIN KPG.

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I have to go home for Thanksgiving this year. Southeast Asia makes it really hard, though. It’s a unique region really. The density of different cultures and histories provides a backdrop unlike anywhere else in the world for a spontaneous kind of perma-travel. Most of the people that I meet are, in some capacity, embedded in this flow of humans. It has a few names, and a few shapes. “The Banana Pancake trail” seems to be the most popular. Most people start in Bangkok. You do the islands for a few weeks — Sea of Thailand (Koh Phangan/Koh Tao) and then Phuket (Krabbi if you’re fancy, Koh Phi Phi Islands if you want to get away) and then you come up north. Chiang Mai is close to Laos and Pai is close to Myanmar. Myanmar is going through a pretty major conflict at the moment (hence the large number of Burmese refugees in Thailand) so usually you’ll just head there for an afternoon from Pai, do an illegal border crossing for the fun of it, and come back. Going into Laos is cool because you can take “the slow boat” down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang, the ancient capital of Laos with heavily influences from the French colonial period. Then you can go to Viang Vieng to do some river tubing. You drink all day on your tube, stopping at river bars where you can get dangerously cheap alcohol. So dangerous, in fact, that the Australian government forced many of the bars to shut down after a politicians son died doing this. Then you can head to the modern capital, Vientiane, although I’ve heard it’s not the most exciting city to be in. Then you can continue east into the north of Vietnam and head down the coast. Now, Vietnam is often cited as the closest to Thailand in terms of the ease and excitement of travel. Hanoi is … No, but I really have to go home for Thanksgiving this year.

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Morning — actually, mid-day. Slightly hungover. Party last night. Same party as last week. Mid-day coffee. Sit on the beach for 10 minutes. Hostel owner smoking cigarette at bar. Tapping on computer. “One more night please…” 150 baht. Walk outside. Sun is hot. Get on motorbike. Ride to Thai restaurant. Crispy pork and kale. 50 baht. Pay. “Khap khun krap”. Thank you. Get back on motorbike. Ride to co-working. Same co-working as yesterday. Buy second coffee. 80 baht. Maybe buy pastry. Cashier gives wi-fi code. “Khap khun krap”. Thank you. Go upstairs. Upstairs is air conditioned. Open laptop. Enter wifi code. Different code from yesterday. Open emails. No emails. Open Upwork. New assignment due in 2 days. Open Slack. No new messages. Start writing. Finish in 2 hours. Open Notion. New World Person draft. Draft not good enough. Don’t publish. 6PM. Get dinner. Thai food or Western food. Depends on mood. Sun setting. Debate going to gym. Don’t go to gym. Go back to hostel. People sitting around. People playing pool. Talk to people. Party tonight. 80 baht Chang beer. Happy hour, two-for-one. 10PM. Go to motorbike. Assess ability to drive. Looks good. Ride to party. Dance, dance, dance. Stop drinking hour-and-half before end. Dance, dance, dance. Get on motorbike. Go home. Sleep.

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“Where are you from?”

“The east coast.”

“Yeah, but where on the east coast?”

“I was born in Maryland, went to school in Connecticut, and lived in New York City for 9 months.”

“Oh, are you from Baltimore?”

“Wow, not many people know about Maryland! It’s a bit of a sleeper state.”

“Yeah, I don’t know too much about it, honestly. I’ve seen [Hairspray, The Wire, {?}].”

“Yeah, I’ve never really lived in Baltimore. I’m from the middle of the state. Kind of the middle of nowhere.”

“Nice.”

“So where are you from?”

“I’m [nationality].”

if (a) French, (b) French-speaking Swiss (c) Brazilian, (d) Portuguese: “Oh cool, I lived in (a) Paris for a summer / (b) Brazil for six months! (a) Je parle French un peu / (b) Eu falo Portuguese.”

“Really!”

if (a): “D’oú viens-tu en France?”

“I’m from [city].”

Rarely: “Je suis (chuis) de [city].

if (c) “De onde você é no Brasil?”

“São Paulo!”

elseif “Oh cool, what part?”

“[Home town]. We’ll actually I’m from a small city right outside of there.

if small Western European county: “Oh cool, what town?”

elseif: “Cool!”

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I had an argument with an Austrian at Spicy (top club in Chiang Mai, keep up) the other night. It was her and her sister. The comment that I made felt fairly innocuous. Europe, and specifically the European Union has an interesting and cohesive culture. That culture is distinct from the United States and Asia, for example. “Ooh my god, I can’t believe you’re saying this. You think Europe is one place, ooooh my god.” No, I’m just saying that European countries tend to be fairly similar. “No way you’re saying this right now. Americans always think that Europe is a single place.” Well, my mom grew up in Europe. I’ve spent a lot of time there. I speak two European languages. I think my take is a bit more nuanced. “Europe is so many different cultures and so many different countries. How can you think there is one culture.” It’s not really like that though. I think the existence of the EU is proof that you all are pretty similar. “The EU is barely working. No one can get along. Europeans have fought each other for so long. I can’t believe I’m having this conversation right now.” I’m not saying it’s ONE culture, I’m just saying you all are more similar to each other than to other countries. “No, we really aren’t. Americans always think that Europeans are the same. There are so many different countries and so many different cultures. Do you think a French person, a German person, and a Greek person are the same?” Not at all, the cultures are definitely different but I think there is a common culture that also unites most people from Europe. “Oh my god, how can you be such a stereotypical American. Europe is so many completely different places. You just do not understand it.” As she said this, I noticed a shimmering black speck on the wall behind her. It was profoundly black, like this vantablack paint (the world’s blackest paint) I’d once seen on a TikTok. As it would turn out, that speck was the result of the spontaneous gravitational collapse of a hydrogen atom, and it began to suck in every object it touched. It proceeded to suck in Spicy, Chiang Mai, Thailand, Asia, the Earth, and the entire Milky Way galaxy before stabilizing in the vastness of space as a supermassive black hole. All of life on Earth was consumed by the blackness, along with 7 other species of intelligent life in the Milk Way that had, as of then, remained uncontacted.

New World Person

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