You're on an AC bus en route from Sukkothai to Chiang Mai. Speeding North on a gray, end-of-monsoon-season day.
Flashing through twisty green hills that poke misty clouds and brown rivers that are running fast and have spilled over their banks. The bus AC is cold – too cold even with a hoodie and long pants on.
Two observations:
1) Goodbyes:
The bus pulls over in some non-descript smallish village. Just a quick stop, the bus barely halts. You happen to look down from your second floor perch – a mother is saying goodbye to two pre-teen/teenage girls. They hug and the girls head onto the bus, the weight oft the bus shifting ever so slightly.
The mother smiles broadly. Then waves. The girls turn back and say one or two more words.
You wonder: how far away are they going? when will she see them again? Are they away from home often?
The bus speeds onward, curving North towards Chiang Mai.
2) AC is funny in Thailand.
I mean of course you know it's humid and tropical outside that bus window, but the bus AC is so damn cold. So thoroughly cold it has a feeling of permanence. So cold it makes the huge temperature variance to the heat outside seem impossible. Only an hour out of it, the sweat of Bangkok and Ayuthaya seems like a myth, a leftover from a vintage travel novel. Like all of Thailand is actually as cold as this bus is right now.
The AC system acts as a filter, a curator of aromas as well – scents sneak through slightly muted with a slight delay. You pass by a smoldering BBQ near the river – 30 seconds later the faintest hint of BBQ smoke flows through the AC vents.
A slightly damp fresh smell from new rain and a lush forest hits a minute or so after passing into a wet green forest.
It's kind of pleasant – you see things pass by outside the bus and have a good thirty to forty seconds to ponder them before a faint version of the aroma hits you. It's sometimes very subtle, kind of like a memory. It's a connection to those brown rivers and green forests you are speeding through. The have their own scents, do not have AC cold, and are very much real.
Actual(ish) 