How to Get to Bangkok details the more than six months I spent in South East Asia. I traveled with several people, met dozens of locals in different countries and under different circumstances, and observed both fantastical behaviour and solemn rituals, indiscriminate malice and profound kindness.

I kept a record of that journey and now that it has receded into the near past and I can be honest about the challenges, the embarrassing revelations, and the troubling conclusions, I've revitalized it here. My friend and I went to Thailand and traveled into the north and floated down the river in Laos on a boat loaded with tourists, went over the mountains to the capital, Vientiane, and then by train to Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

Once my friend left, I went south through the contested regions of Thailand on the Malay border, and then into Malaysia and to Sumatra in Indonesia by boat across the Malacca Strait. I returned along the same route only to meander into the north of Thailand at the height of dry season. There I traveled by motorcycle through the backcountry, crossed the border into Myanmar or Burma a few times, and went south to join friends who wanted me to show them the Thailand I'd found on my trek.