It’s been three and a half weeks since I moved from Hong Kong to Chiangmai. It’s a move I wanted, a move I needed. I have no regrets.
I now live in a place that looks a thousand miles different from what my world had looked like in the last twenty years.
The difference is incredible and truly real.
Living in a village about twenty five minutes outside of Chiangmai proper, I find myself surrounded not by people, but by nature.
The sounds of hundreds of birds fill my days and nights, no more loud Hongkongers down the street. My views are of vibrant rice fields, trees and numerous plants I still cannot name. There are no more concrete, glass and steel buildings.
The cacophony of the city has been replaced with the steady croaking of midnight frogs and symphonic crickets, which are sometimes even more deafening than the drunken fools yelling out on the street below my old apartment.
I admit, there are days when I long for the company of other humans, as much as they drive me fucking crazy. But I will adjust, I am adjusting, slowly, steadily, day by day.
I hear the vibrant noise and see the lucid color of the village and realize it’s a different album from the one that used to play, on a brand new radio station that I’m learning to live with and to love.
It’s a strange frequency to this city boy's ears, but one that I am yearning to hear...and it grows on me still.