The Epicurean Hedonist

The first sensation was one of being in a blacksmith’s forge as a newly forged blade is plunged into cold water to temper. The sudden increase in temperature and humidity was stupefying. The heaviness to the air was as palpable as a physical embrace. The humid air, palpable and heavy as a physical embrace ; a stark contrast to the aridness of Africa that I was used to.

How I actually came to be staggering across this Bangkok tarmac is almost as bewildering as my year long stay in Thailand itself. It really was like being caught in a gyre, being pulled increasingly rapidly towards its center, and still to this day, almost a decade later, I cannot pinpoint a defining moment that summed up this trip.
It all started with a restlessness that was building up. I was unhappy in school; more specifically though, I was bored in a school assembly where a man with more hair in his ears than on his head was giving a presentation on a foreign exchange program. I paid very little heed for the most part and in fact forgot about the entire thing for the better part of a week, but somewhere along the line a wanton thought drifted across my mind. “Why not? What have you got to lose?”

Anyone who knows me will know that I am rather infamous for leaving everything to the absolute last minute. This was no exception. How I made the deadline for applications I don’t even know. How they accepted the indecipherable hieroglyphs I call handwriting is an enigma unto itself. Dazed and confused I was caught in the torrent, on an outer edge that I could perhaps still escape from if I really wanted to (or so I kept telling myself), but caught nonetheless.

Twelve months later, I am staggering from plane, to airport building, to car. The rapid change of temperature and humidity between the plane, outside, and finally squeezed into a bakkie (what Americans would call a truck? A vehicle of the Toyota Hilux variety.) with no aircon. Each change, a strike from the malus, leaves me faint and disoriented. Even if I had wanted to I could not even begin to explain how I had got here, where I was going. All that mattered is that I emerged tempered