I’ve barely been back from Thailand for three days and I’m already heading off again (this time to South by Southwest), but I wanted to quickly jot down some of my impressions of the trip I’ve just taken before they’re dimmed by impressions from the trip I’m about to take.

I intended to keep a detailed journal of everything we did in Thailand, but that didn’t really pan out. It was so much to take in that I just couldn’t process it all, and even now the whole trip feels a bit like a dream. It was amazing and exciting and beautiful and exhausting, and there’s no way I could put it all into words—not words that would fit in a single blog post, anyway.

If I had to boil it down to the essence, I’d say that apart from the obvious pleasure of seeing old friends and acquaintances again and attending a lovely wedding, two incidents stand out most prominently in my memories of Thailand. Appropriately enough, one is urban and one is insular.

The insular one is something of a cliché, but it’s a lovely memory nonetheless: As I was snorkeling around on our second day on Koh Tao, clouds moved in and it started to rain. The beach emptied as most people headed for shelter, but I didn’t mind being out in the rain (I mean, I was wet already), so I swam to one of the bamboo rafts tethered further out in the water and hoisted myself onto it to enjoy the tropical shower.

I had a perfect, quiet moment out there, with cloud-shrouded islands behind me, brightly colored fish nibbling at the edges of the raft, and rain pattering all around me as I bobbed alone in the clear water. It was one of those moments that you try to burn into your mind so that you can recall that feeling of utter peace later on, when life has gotten hectic again. That never really works, of course; when the moment’s gone, it’s gone. But it was nice to have had it anyway.

My urban memory is quite different: When we arrived in Bangkok on our first night, it was almost 10 PM and we were exhausted, but we were also so excited to be there that when we got to the hotel, we dropped our suitcases, washed our faces, and immediately headed out again into the muggy night to explore the city a bit.

After poking around the narrow streets surrounding the hotel, we came upon a food cart on a street corner, with a small row of plastic tables and chairs next it. Jeremy was determined to have some street food, so despite being somewhat intimidated by the language and the strange surroundings, he bravely marched up to the vendor with a smile and a sawadee krap and asked what the cook recommended. The nice young girl manning the cart didn’t seem to know what to make of us at first, but when it became clear that we would happily eat whatever she suggested, she pointed us in the direction of a table and started bringing us a selection of dishes.

We had no idea what any of the food was called or how we were supposed to eat it, and we knew that we were somewhat running the risk of getting “Bangkok belly,” but it was all so delicious that we didn’t care. We tucked in with gusto to grilled beef and pork with a spicy dipping sauce, hot papaya salad, and tangy minced meat with lemongrass. We ate sticky rice with our fingers and cooled the chili fire with crisp raw cabbage and crunchy green beans. When we were done, we paid a grand total of about 3 pounds and wandered back to the hotel feeling full and thrilled to have gotten our first taste of Bangkok life.

When we arrived back in Bangkok from Koh Tao almost a week later, it was midnight and I could barely keep my eyes open, but once again we felt compelled to hit the streets. We made our way back to the food stall on the street corner, which we were delighted to find was still open despite the late hour. When we walked up to the cart this time around, we were greeted with big smiles of recognition and a warm chorus of hellos from the vendor and her friends assembled around one of the tables—it was like a little homecoming. And this time around, after a week in Thailand, we were able to ask for at least two dishes by name—som tam (papaya salad) and larb (the minced meat dish)—and then tell her that the food was delicious in Thai. She beamed and told us that she was so happy we had come back, and we told her (in all honesty) that her food was some of the best we had had in Thailand.

When we finally left, after another street feast and a few frosty bottles of Thai beer, I felt a wonderful glow all through me—and it wasn’t just the chilies. I think Jeremy put it best when he said that he felt we had made our own little mark on the vast sprawl that is Bangkok. We made a connection with someone, however fleetingly, and for a short while we weren’t just tourists or farang, we were a part of the city. And for me, that’s a big part of what traveling is all about.

As for everything else between touching down in Bangkok and taking off again, it’s all a bit of a blur. When I think about the past week, I see images of palm trees and tuk-tuks, of people crammed into the back of open pickup trucks or piled on four to a motorcycle, flying over twisty island roads or through harrowing Bangkok traffic. I remember the smells: lemongrass, fish sauce and car exhaust in Bangkok; grilled fish, flowers and salt water on Koh Tao. I think of pineapple daiquiris, banana coladas, and drinking coconut milk straight from a coconut. Snorkeling through glinting shoals of fish; being bitten by said fish. The sea breeze wafting over me as I enjoyed an outdoor massage. Night markets. Street food. Spices and heat. Muddy rivers and reclining Buddhas. Hanging with the high-tech kids at the UrbanPark. Trying to speak a tonal language for the first time. Spending a rainy afternoon on the verandah with my nose buried in a book and reveling in the feeling of not having to be anywhere else or do anything else besides that. The chaos of the city streets, and the peace of the sea.

It was, as predicted, a really good trip.