05.21.25 | DMK>HKT

Thailand greets me with rain in the morning. The reality that I have returned to the country of my childhood has not struck me until this moment. My father kindly booked me a hotel directly across the street from the domestic airport. I simply walk over a skybridge to catch my morning flight to Phuket.

I feel the humidity embrace me as soon as I leave the hotel. It’s a broad, weighty warmth. Too early and cool to be sticky yet so I only feel the thickness. This is what I always notice first arriving in another country. The first breath. When I visited Texas as a child, the air tasted sharp, cold, thin, fresh. I found it exciting, invigorating. Now I drink in this heavy, warm, vegetal, musty air and feel the same excitement.

I check my bags and as I stow my boarding pass a torrent begins to fall outside. Earlier, the sky had been covered with a creamy down. Calm, and non-threatening. The sidewalks were dry and dusty. Now the vaults of heaven are open and thunder against the ground in undulating curtains of rain. This releases in a moment, without warning. And it will be gone just as swiftly. This is rainy season.

I laugh at how my Weather app attempts to explain the climate. It perpetually displays a severe weather warning, predicts 100% chance of rain, and forecasts temperatures and humidity ranging from the low to high 80s throughout the week. The forecast is useless. It will be dry and clear until the sky lets out an almighty sneeze drenching everything under it and this silly little app can’t say when except it can happen at any moment.

This is reflected in the culture. Unless one has an important appointment, you don’t bring an umbrella along. When it rains, people simply step under an awning, a tree, or inside a building and wait for the rain to pass. Here they yield to the weather.

The flight to Phuket is uneventful, as is the long taxi ride to Kata beach. And finally I am reunited with my parents and little brother. They wait for me in the resort lobby and embrace me the moment I leave the car.